Exercise
Exercise can enhance the overall well-being of people experiencing disability. Exercise programs that participants view as meaningful, enjoyable and tailored to their individual needs foster quality participation.
Quality participation in exercise can promote long-term engagement, enhance social connections, and improve health outcomes for people experiencing disability. Quality participation in exercise is the result of repeated and continuous quality experiences in exercise activities, including fitness assessments, exercise adaptations, and training sessions.
Quality experiences are built from 6 building blocks: autonomy, belongingness, challenge, engagement, mastery and meaning.
Autonomy
Having independence, choice, control
Belongingness
Feeling included, accepted, respected, part of the group
Challenge
Feeling appropriately tested
Engagement
Being in-the-moment, focused, absorbed, fascinated
Mastery
Feeling a sense of achievement, accomplishment, competence
Meaning
Contributing toward obtaining a personal goal; feeling a sense of responsibility to others
How can I support Quality Participation?
Individuals, exercise professionals, supportive peers and caregivers, community-based organizations, and researchers all have a role to play in creating quality experiences that lead to long-term engagement in exercise. The CDPP Resources and Blueprints provide clear suggestions to encourage quality participation no matter your role in the exercise environment.
Exercisers
Exercisers play an important role in shaping their own exercise experience. Open communication about your exercise goals and willingness to share details about how your body moves best in the exercise setting with exercise professionals, healthcare professionals, supportive peers, volunteers, and other supports are key to creating a positive experience.
To build a quality experience for yourself, think about these building blocks:
Autonomy
- Work with your exercise professionals and supports to find adaptations that work well for your body.
- Provide feedback to the exercise professional about the exercises they recommend.
Mastery
- Keep track of your progress toward your exercise goals and regularly look back on your progress.
Belongingness
- Ask a friend, partner, or peer to join you when you go to exercise. Enjoy challenging each other and support each other during the exercise session.
Learn more about how you can ensure you prioritize quality experiences
Exercise professionals
Exercise professionals have an important role in shaping quality experiences in the exercise environment. By establishing supportive relationships with exercisers and providing evidence-based information, exercise professionals can positively influence the health and well-being of exercisers.
Exercise professionals who want to create an environment that fosters quality experiences for exercises can think about:
Engagement
- Educate exercisers about how they can be active with a disability and different ways to adapt exercises depending on the equipment available.
- Encourage exercisers to track their exercise progress so they can see the gains they have made.
Autonomy
- Listen to the exerciser to find out what types of exercises work well for their body and be flexible to their individual needs. Provide options and encourage the exerciser to share their preferences.
Belongingness
- Create an exercise environment that is supportive and accepting of differences. Introduce exercisers to each other and encourage family and friends to participate.
Find out more strategies for exercise professionals to support quality experiences
Supportive others
Social support from peers, family and friends plays an important role in shaping exercise involvement for exercisers. Physical activity provides an opportunity for families to bond and grow. In turn, family bonds can contribute to quality experiences.
Family members and supportive others can support these building blocks:
Belongingness
It’s exciting and fun for family members to bond over participating in a new activity that all family members can engage in.
Engagement
Participating in an activity alongside family members (for example, as training partners) can increase engagement for exercisers experiencing disability.
Community-based organizations
Creating spaces and programs that focus on quality experiences enhances long-term participation. How can your organization ensure that exercisers continue to register and be active within your organization?
Community-based organizations interested in fostering quality experiences in their programs and spaces can think about:
Autonomy
Provide opportunities for participants to engage in physical activity outside of the program session, for example, including a voluntary option to drop-in to the gym outside of program session time.
Belongingness
Engage in communication with the program participants outside of the program hours or session times., for example, circulate a monthly newsletter about the program community, upcoming events, etc.
Learn more about how you can create programs that prioritize quality experiences
Why is quality participation important?
Participation, whether in sport, exercise, or play, has been connected to improvements in physical and mental health. It can also contribute to overall satisfaction in life.
In fact, we have we learned through our research that participation is about more than being involved in an activity (Evans, 2018). The quality of participation matters. An athlete or exercisers well-being is more strongly linked with the quality of an experience than how often they participate (Martin Ginis et al., 2024). We believe that supporting these feelings may lead to greater and more meaningful participation
Quality participation results from an individual’s quality experiences. Quality experiences involve feelings of autonomy, belongingness, challenge, engagement, mastery, and meaning.
Quality participation results from repeated quality experiences. This image depicts the components of quality participation.
At the centre is a circle. The circle represents the participant in the activity. The next layer shows a series of arrows circling around the centre. These represent the cyclic nature of participation, in that all components are important for continued quality participation.
The final layer is three sections that form the outside circle. These are the components that must exist for sustained quality participation.
The first section is labelled 1. Building Blocks and represents the six building blocks identified as central to creating quality experiences. They are listed and magnified to the left of the screen in boxes, with a long bar indicating that these support a safe, welcoming, and inclusive environment. The six building blocks are defined and associated with a coloured bar:
- Teal Bar: Autonomy: having independence, choice, control
- Orange Bar: Belongingness: feeling included, accepted, respected, part of the group
- Red Bar: Challenge: Feeling appropriately tested
- Yellow Bar: Engagement: Being in-the-moment, focused, absorbed, fascinated
- Green Bar: Mastery: Feeling a sense of achievement, accomplishment, competence
- Blue Bar: Meaning: Contributing toward obtaining a personal or socially meaningful goal; feeling a sense of responsibility to others.
The second section of the outer circle is labelled 2. Quality Experiences. Quality experiences involve feelings of autonomy, belongingness, challenge, engagement, mastery, and meaning. The third section of the outer circle is labelled 3. Quality participation. Repeated quality experiences are linked to greater and more meaningful participation, increasing overall well-being versus how often someone is participating in an activity.
Visit the full resource library to learn more about CDPP 2.0’s work on Exercise