The use of sport and wellness technology devices among athletes is highly popular. At the same time the demand for easy to understand, clear, and personalized information is also growing. Instead of numbers, users need and want solutions. Digital coaching can offer solutions for this by providing valuable training data and offering guidance and instructions on how to improve the training. This exploratory study focuses on the experiences, needs, and wants regarding a digital coach application among physically active people, more precisely crosscountry skiers. We found that the digital coach was perceived to have motivational elements. It was also viewed having potential to increase the awareness relating to personal performance level and technique as well as bring diversity into training. However, some perceived demotivating elements suggest that future development is needed. Our findings give insights to sport technology companies as well as athletes and coaches about the influence and possibilities of digital coaching among athletes and physically active people.
University aged people have been found to be at a high risk of disengagement of physical activity. They also belong to a generation where technology is strongly integrated into most parts of their lives. Therefore, using technology also in physical activity promotion has potential. This exploratory study investigates the perceived effects of a sport and wellness technology digital coach among physically inactive university students during a 10-week intervention. The perspective for the research came from exercise psychology focusing on the effects of the use of a digital coach on self-efficacy related to physical activity and exercising. The results indicate that a digital coach can increase the user's self-efficacy and awareness regarding their own exercising. However, the results also show that further development could be done for digital coaching to reach its full potential. These results give more insight to sport technology companies as well as to coaches and trainers about the effects and possibilities of digital coaching among physically inactive people.
The importance of sustained physical activity in healthy aging is well established. To achieve sustained physical activity and exercise, related self-efficacy is important. Hence, solutions to promote self-efficacy for exercise among aged people are urgently needed. Digital wellness technologies provide a potential solution, but research on their potential to promote selfefficacy for exercise is scarce and more research is needed. To address this need, this study investigates how effective is the use of a physical activity application in promoting self-efficacy for exercise among aged people. Self-efficacy levels were compared between three different time points: before taking the application into use and after 4 and 12 months of use. The results suggest that physical activity application use can be effective in promoting self-efficacy for exercise among aged people as there was an improvement in most of the self-efficacy items as well as in total self-efficacy already after 4 months of use and this improvement was sustained after 12 months of use.
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