Perceived Fitness Predicts Daily Coping Better Than Physical Activity

Abstract

One hundred sixty‐six participants (70 males, 96 females) completed a series of questionnaires measuring perceived fitness, social desirability, self‐esteem, hope, and perceived stress levels and coping abilities. Participants were then given an activity monitoring device to wear for 1 week. Participants recorded daily measures of physical activity, perceived fitness, and perceived stress and coping over 7 days. Results revealed that although perceived physical fitness was reliably associated with coping, actual physical activity was not. These associations remained even after statistically controlling for gender, social desirability, self‐esteem, hope, perceived stress, and anxiety. Findings suggest that perceived physical fitness may be a better predictor of daily coping than actual physical activity.

Perceived Fitness Protects against Stress‐based Mental Health Impairments among Police Officers Who Report Good Sleep

“…It further confirms laboratory studies that found reduced stress reactivity among participants with high exercise or fitness levels 38) . Moreover, this finding accords with the notion that self-rated fitness is negatively related to daily stress 15) . Also, perceived fitness explains significant variance in the psychological and physiological reactivity to laboratory stress beyond that attributable to estimated aerobic physical fitness 18,32) .…”

“…This new focus is warranted because in previous studies, self-rated fitness was more closely related to mental health and daily stress than objective fitness measures 15) . This suggests that some of the positive emotional results associated with exercise may occur because of the psychological gains from the experience of trying to get fit or believing that one is fit rather than from an increase in aerobic physical fitness 16) .…”

“…Perceived physical fitness was measured with one item ranging from 1 (very poor fitness) to 10 (excellent fitness) 15) . Concretely, participants were asked to respond to the following item: "Overall, how would you rate your physical fitness?"…”

Fitness and Exercise as Correlates of Sleep Complaints

“…Perceived physical fitness was measured with one item ranging from 1 (very poor fitness) to 10 (excellent fitness) (30). This measure has proved to be correlated with measures of objective physical fitness and perceived well-being (29).…”

A Mixed-Method Investigation into Therapeutic Yoga as an Adjunctive Treatment for People Recovering from Substance Use Disorders

“…Self-perceived fitness does accurately correlate with objective measurements of fitness (Lamb 1992) and each of our interviewees perceived their fitness to have increased. It is also important to note that perceived fitness has been found to be a more accurate measurement of "daily coping" than actual fitness (Plante et al 2000). There is potential for future research to build upon these findings firstly by exploring the interplay between perceived and actual fitness and also mood state for this cohort and secondly by measuring levels of flexibility and self-perceived pain.…”