Enjoyment during activity with different cardio equipments: comparison between expert and inexperienced practitioners

Enjoyment is considered one of the main determinants of adherence in regular physical activity for people of all ages. The aim of this study was to evaluate enjoyment experienced by two groups of practitioners (experts and inexperienced) when they performed short sessions of exercise on three different cardio fitness equipments. Participants were 133 volunteers (51 men and 82women) with a mean age of 32.4 years (SD = 10.8). Seventy-three were experts and 60 inexperienced. They performed 8 minutes of exercise on each of three Technogym cardio equipments: treadmill, elliptical and Vario. Participants had to regulate exercise intensity on the basis of their feelings. At the end of each 8-minute period, they filled in a questionnaire included a 12-item adapted version of the Physical Activity Enjoyment Scale (PACES) and two visual-analogue scales about fun and movement naturalness. No significant differences were found in PACES scores for the three equipments between expert and inexperienced participants. Naturalness of exercise resulted significantly higher (p <.01) with Vario for experts compared with the inexperienced participants. Both experienced and inexperienced participants reported lower PACES scores when using elliptical (F = 12,98; p <.001). Different levels of experience with fitness equipments seam not influence enjoyment, confirming the notion that modern technology can facilitate the use of these equipments also for inexperienced people.