Exercise and environment: New qualitative work to link popular practice and public health

Abstract

The health benefits of physical activity are many and well known. Those hoping to promote public health are therefore understandably keen on encouraging physical exercise. This commentary considers the role of qualitative research in this undertaking, given a context in which medical researchers have more commonly taken a quantitative approach to the motivations that are thought to underpin exercise. Our core argument is that studies concerned with how particular environments are inhabited by particular groups of exercisers could play a more central part in public health promotion. In making this case, and by way of an introduction to this Health and Place special issue, we present a series of statements that we think could usefully guide the further development of this work. Specifically, we argue for further attention to: the ways in which different material settings play into the exercise experience; how many of the exercise practices that we may hope to understand sit rather uneasily with the idea of sport; the subtleties of how sociality features in contemporary exercise practices; the physical pleasures that come from exercise; and how exercise practices are both acquired by individuals and evolve as a whole. In so doing, the aim is to encourage relevant researchers to engage more directly in conversation with health promoters instead of either being indifferent to, or critical of, them.

Introduction

The health benefits of physical exercise are many and well known. Researchers from a wide range of disciplines have documented the positive effects of exercise on reducing and managing the risk of a range of chronic diseases (Colberg et al., 2010), on mental wellbeing (Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee, 2008) and life expectancy (Paffenbarger et al., 1986, Lee et al., 2012). Nonetheless, throughout the wealthy economically developed world the majority of adults are insufficiently active (Sisson and Katzmarzyk, 2008, Ng and Popkin, 2012). There are many explanations for this; changing employment patterns, the motorisation of transport, the mechanisation of household chores, and the decreasing physical demands of everyday life more generally are just a few causes (Bassett et al., 2004, Brownson et al., 2005, Hallal et al., 2012). In response, a great deal of social scientific and medical research has examined how individuals and communities might be persuaded to become more physically active (Frank et al., 2005, Frank et al., 2006, Brownson et al., 2009). There is also a significant body of research that explores how people may be encouraged to participate in physical fitness activities more generally (Sallis et al., 2006; Heath, 2012) and an established public health agenda that aims to act on its insights (WHO, 2004, Bull et al., 2010).

Yet, just as the world faces a ‘pandemic of physical inactivity’ (Kohl et al., 2012), many wealthier countries are experiencing a flourishing popular interest in a plethora of physical fitness practices. Activities like jogging, cycling, walking, yoga, swimming, tai chi, weight training, roller blading, dancing, and a whole range of calisthenics increasingly animate many people's everyday lives in all sorts of ways (Silk et al., 2017). Many of these popular practices are in their own ways a response to the corporeal inertia of modern society (Lieberman, 2013, McKenzie, 2013, Latham, 2015). But they are not only that. Some also draw strength from changing ideas about the ethics of bodily care (Syman, 2010, Shusterman, 2012). Others represent distinct forms of self and group expression (Bunsell, 2013, Castelnuovo and Guthrie, 1998, Fullagar and Pavlidis, 2014). Yet others are as much about physical aesthetics as any attempt to prevent future health issues (Sassatelli, 2010, Andrews et al., 2005). If we reconsider the inactivity problem in light of their popularity, as for example England Athletics (2013) have argued regarding the recent rise of recreational running in the United Kingdom, the task suddenly appears much less overwhelming as it recast as merely a matter of amplifying existing trends.

Given this diversity of popular fitness practices, and the speed with which many seem to be appearing and evolving, they present an obvious target for agencies charged with promoting greater physical activity within populations (Marcus et al., 2006, Bouchard et al., 2012). Yet, whilst existing research has told us much about the broader social barriers to such activities (Heath et al., 2012), and the varying motivations that are taken to prompt participation (Sallis and Hovell, 1990, Ingledew and Markland, 2008, Teixeira et al., 2012), there remains relatively little work that aims to extract public health lessons from a detailed appreciation of the exercise experience (Sallis et al., 2006). Meanwhile there is a sizeable and growing body of qualitative research in human geography, sociology, and physical cultural studies that provides exactly this appreciation (see Andrews, in press; Silk et al., 2017). This work has, however, not often been directly oriented towards public health promotion. Indeed, as we describe later, some of those working on these topics are suspicious of how public health agendas are inclined towards instruction and regulation, whilst others often stop tantalisingly short of considering what could be done with the sensitive accounts that they provide. Without dismissing the reasons behind these tendencies, we think the result may be a missed opportunity for more productive exchange.

In response, this commentary outlines some ways in which we think qualitative researchers could work towards developing such an exchange. Qualitative research strategies involve spending time in identified social contexts and learning from doing relevant activities, listening carefully as particular groups describe their experiences, and closely considering how different phenomena are represented. Here we specifically consider the potential role of such activities in: (1) examining the detail of how concrete environmental components play into the exercise experience; (2) exploring how many forms of contemporary exercise have a rather uneasy relationship with the more formalised idea of sport; (3) uncovering how exactly social relations now feature in identified exercise practices; (4) attending to the corporeal pleasures of exercise; and (5) drawing attention to how exercise practices are personally acquired and what that means for how they evolve as a whole. We then provide an overview of the special issue on ‘Exercise and Environment’ which this commentary heads, highlighting how the papers that have been collected here serve, each in their own way, to substantiate this argument.

In making this argument, we do not want to suggest that these matters have hitherto been ignored by researchers. There have, for example, already been a number of qualitative studies featured in this very journal that have explored exactly this kind of issue. Two excellent recent examples are Doughty's (2013) careful analysis of how moving together shapes the perceived benefits of group walks and Foley's (2015) conceptually bold account of how open water swimming could be recast as physical immersion. Our objective is to not to brush such endeavours aside. Rather it is to draw attention to what we see as some of the key ways in which qualitative studies of contemporary exercise practices might work more directly towards a fuller dialogue with public health promotion agendas.