Exercise Addiction and Its Relation to Psycho-Social Aspects and Motives

Abstract

Despite typical physiological risks of regular physical activity such as injuries or overtraining, particularly excessive exercise can have psychological side effects and become obsessive. This obsessiveness is often associated with symptoms of addiction (i.e., reduction of other activities, lack of control, withdrawal symptoms). However, the underlying process of developing an exercise addiction is not yet fully understood. Besides the physiological approach, there are several psychological and socio-theoretical models focusing on personal and situational factors. The aim of this research was to explore the role of psycho-social aspects and their influence on symptoms of exercise addiction. 501 participants were asked to record their current sport regarding type, intensity, frequency, and competitive activity. Furthermore, the participants were asked about the motives to exercise as well as their inspiration to start with their current sport. Addictive symptoms were assessed using the Exercise Dependence Scale (EDS). It was expected, that inspiration, competitive activity, as well as the motives achievement striving and catharsis have an influence on the EDS score. The results showed that athletes rating the motives achievement striving, catharsis and enjoyment of movement as important or very important showed significantly higher scores in the EDS. No significant differences were found for inspiration, but competitive activity. The findings suggest an important role of intrinsic motivation on the development of exercise addition, particularly the motive enjoyment of movement. However, the interaction of personal and situational factors needs to be explored further.

Egzersiz Bağımlılığı ve Sosyal Karşılaştırma: İşitme Engelli ve İşitme Engelli Olmayan Bireyler Üzerine Bir Araştırma

“…People with exercise addiction may also experience the following symptoms: The routine gets out of the individual's control, continuously increasing the duration, frequency and intensity of exercise in order to achieve the desired effect of the exercise, exercise and obsessive mood by postponing individual and social needs, negative differentiation in psycho-social aspects, perfectionism, narcissism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, sleep disorders, restlessness and sexual tension etc. (Adams and Kirkby, 2002;Zmijewski and Howard, 2003;Berczik et al, 2012;Egorov and Szabo, 2013;Landolfi, 2013;Szabo et al, 2015;Jee, 2016;Bircher et al, 2017;Walter and Heinen, 2019;Kula et al, 2020;Çakın et al, 2021).…”

Increased Exercise Effort after Artificially-Induced Stress: Laboratory-Based Evidence for the Catharsis Theory of Stress

“…Exerted physical effort via physical exercise is one means through which an individual can "let off steam" and, therefore, manifest a cathartic response (Huđin, Glavaš, & Pandžić, 2020) to experience psychological relief. It is not surprising then that recently exercise addiction, associated with coping with stress (Egorov & Szabo, 2013), was also linked to catharsis (Walter & Heinen, 2019). Catharsis can be conceptualized as an index of blocked or incomplete emotion and as a way of changing one's awareness or actions (Steckley, 2018).…”