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Expert panels and government agencies recommend 45-60 min of moderate-intensity physical activity (PA) daily for the prevention of weight gain and 60-90 min for weight management in individuals who were previously OB (1-4). However, these recommendations have been criticized as "too daunting" (5, p. 769) and "too ambitious" (6, p.2264). In actuality, no more than 4.1% of overweight (OW) women, 3.0% of OB women, 6.9% of OW men, and 6.4% of OB men trying to lose weight report reaching 420 min of PA weekly (7).At least one prospective study has shown that, in this apparently negative relationship between obesity and PA participation, the causal path from obesity to inactivity is stronger than that from inactivity to obesity (8). Thus, it appears that, once obesity develops, it becomes a barrier to PA participation, perpetuating a vicious cycle. Developing a PA prescription for OB individuals represents a considerable challenge. According to the American College of Sports Medicine (9), "the balance between intensity and duration of exercise should be manipulated to promote a high total caloric expenditure" (p. 218). This implies that the caloric expenditure per session must be raised as much as possible without the session becoming "too long" for what each participant considers acceptable and without it being "too intense" to be pleasant or at least tolerable. Attaining the right balance between these two factors is not easy. On the one hand, lack of time consistently ranks as one of the top perceived barriers to PA participation among adults (10). On the other hand, a higher intensity can exacerbate the risk of musculoskeletal injury and, just as importantly, OW and OB individuals report higher levels of pain, discomfort, displeasure, and perceived exertion during PA than their normal-weight (NW) counterparts (11-13).The unique challenges associated with PA intensity among OB individuals are poorly understood. In particular, the element of affect, despite its importance, seems to have been neglected. Affect is a key component of the exercise experience and, as recent studies have shown, it may also be related to PA participation (14,15). Understanding how OW and OB individuals respond affectively to different levels of PA intensity, and how they differ from NW individuals, could help shed light on the dramatically low rates of PA participation among OW and OB individuals.Affect could stem directly from bodily sensations (e.g., feeling energy and exhilaration or pain and discomfort) or it may follow from certain patterns of cognitive appraisals (e.g., perceptions of achievement and competence or failure and threat). The former varieties are perhaps less amenable to change, as they probably require improvements in fitness. The latter varieties however At least 60 min of daily physical activity (PA) are recommended for weight control, a target achieved by only 3% of obese (OB) women. The purposes of this study were to examine (i) the affective responses of normal-weight (NW), overweight (OW), and OB middle-aged sedent...

Objectives. Little is known about the influence and nature of the motivational climate initiated by peer groups on children's sport behavior and experiences. To address this research need, in-depth interviews were employed in order to identify the factors that underpin the motivational climate created by peers in youth sport.Methods. Individually and in small focus groups, 14 boys and 16 girls (N=30), aged between 12 to 16 years old from both individual and team sports, were interviewed regarding peerinduced characteristics of their motivational climates.Results. Using content analyses, the following 11 dimensions of peer climate emerged: cooperation, effort, improvement, mistakes, intra-team competition, intra-team conflict, equal treatment, normative ability, autonomy support, evaluation of competence and relatedness support.Conclusions. Some of the resulting dimensions are similar to the factors included in existing instruments assessing adult (i.e., PE teacher or coach-created) motivational climates.However, some facets of the climate unique to peer groups were also identified in this study.The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed and suggestions for future research on the peer motivational climate are provided.

The influence of the peer group on young people's achievement motivation has been highlighted in the literature as an area that needs examination (e.g., Harwood & Swain, 2001). To this effect, a new measure of youngsters' perceptions of the peer motivational climate (Peer Motivational Climate in Youth Sport Questionnaire; PeerMCYSQ) was developed and tested across three studies. In Study 1, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) with 431 athletes between the ages of 11 to 16 years suggested that the PeerMCYSQ had 6 factors that could also be subsumed into 2 higher order factors (TaskInvolving climate: improvement, relatedness support, effort; Ego-Involving climate: intra-team competition, normative ability, intra-team conflict). In Studies 2 and 3 the 6-factor solution and the corresponding hierarchical one were tested using CFA with two independent samples (N = 606 and 495, respectively) of similar age. The results showed that the 6-factor model was problematic and that a 5-factor solution should be preferred instead. Further support to the 5-factor model was provided with hierarchical and multilevel CFAs. Suggestions for further research on peer motivational climate are discussed.Key Words: peer influence, scale development, confirmatory factor analysis, achievement goal theory Youth sport involves the participation of young people in sport activities organized and/or supervised by adults. Such activities are considered as some of the most pervasive and popular pursuits for boys and girls in many countries around the world. Peer interactions and relationships are particularly important in youth sport and can contribute to the quality of youths' overall experiences in this context (Smith, 2003). The literature on peer relationships in youth sport has rapidly increased in size and diversity (for comprehensive overviews of the literature, see Brustad, Babkes, & Smith, 2001;Smith, 2003). Issues such as peer acceptance and its relationship to physical competence, friendship in sport, information sources for competence evaluation, and the links between peer relationships with affect and moral development are some of the topics that have attracted research interest in this area. For example, research has shown that peers become progressively Motivational Climate in Youth Sport / 433 more important as significant others as children grow older. Young children under 10 years of age rely more on adult feedback to judge their competence compared to those in late childhood and early adolescence, whose central source of competence information is peer comparison and feedback (Horn & Weiss, 1991).Research on how peer interactions affect children's motivation in youth sport is limited. Studies have shown that peer acceptance and friendship are related to correlates of motivation, such as high levels of commitment and enjoyment and lower levels of anxiety (e.g., Kunesh, Hasbrook, & Lewthwaite, 1992;Weiss & Smith, 2002). However, only a handful of studies have examined how peer influence transmits and fosters achieve...

We examined the affective consequences of an exercise intensity that slightly exceeded the preferred level. Twenty-five middle-age sedentary women participated in two 20-min treadmill exercise bouts, one during which they could select the speed and one during which the speed was 10 per cent higher than the selfselected. During the bout at selfselected intensity, ratings of pleasure remained stable, whereas during the imposed-intensity bout pleasure decreased. Therefore, even a minor increase in exercise intensity beyond the level that a new exerciser would have self-selected can bring about a decrease in pleasure. Over time, such experiences could lower adherence.