Dr Jackie Hargreaves, Senior Lecturer in sport and exercise psychology, is determined to help people get over this barrier and her research is helping people overcome these negative feelings and enjoy the huge benefits being more active brings.

Jackie’s research passion began many years ago when working as a support worker at in-patient units for people with severe mental health issues - she noticed just how physically inactive some people were.

Jackie discovered there was no encouragement to do physical exercise, which resulted in a very inactive life for people in the units. She found that none of the usual keep fit messages seemed to work in this population. That experience started a lifetime passion for finding new ways to help people engage with exercise.

Today, Jackie combines teaching the next generation of exercise professionals with carrying out research to discover how exercise can also produce life-changing benefits for those living with the most serious mental illnesses.

Bad experiences can stay with you for life

So, what prevents us from doing exercise?

Whether it’s from a negative experience early in life, or simply feeling like they don’t fit in with the gym crowd or are too unfit to start; these messages create barriers to people exercising.

As Jackie explains; “People may have subconscious negative feelings to the thought of exercise without even realising it, due to their past experiences of exercise. When this happens, they often do no exercise, with both their physical and mental health suffering as a result.”

From running round the track during PE lessons at school, a spin class at the gym or the Park Run 5k, we tend to think of exercise as aiming for a specific goal. This belief continues to be fed into our subconsciousness throughout our lives. Many people think of these goals as a chore that we feel we should do, not something to enjoy.

Reframing the conversation

Jackie’s research shows that we need to re-frame the messages given out regarding exercise. Instead of focusing on physical fitness, Jackie has seen from her research that many people – especially those with severe mental health problems – would benefit from a new way of thinking about exercise.

Jackie found exercise had a major benefit even when people were suffering conditions such as psychosis, with people reporting a reduction in certain symptoms once they increased their physical activity.

“For many people living with a severe mental illness, the fact that their attention is focused on their body when they exercise, shifts their thoughts away from their mind. This occurs naturally when the body is purposefully being physically active.

“Many people don’t know that exercise can help reduce the most challenging symptoms of mental illnesses such as hallucinations, hearing voices and extreme severe anxiety.”

She discovered that the way to get around people’s subconscious negative thoughts and encourage them to be more physical is for them to enjoy exercise without thinking about it as, or even calling it, exercise.

Her work has the potential to improve people’s lives, as well as redefine how we think about and talk about exercise. It has many clinical applications – Jackie works with a range of health professionals including physiologists, nurses, and consultants to provide an expert view on how to improve mental health outcomes for people living with cancer and obesity through exercise.

Her students benefit from learning the latest developments, learning about Jackie’s research and using it to sharpen their professional skills. For example, students carry out work to devise strategies to effectively get different groups of people to increase their physical activity. The groups include teenagers, older adults and those living with mental health problems.

Jackie knows that some of her students go on to work in important roles in health promotion, for example in local councils, public health, charities, or the fitness industry. For that reason, she’s keen to help them learn how to communicate with people as well as work on their physical needs– it’s not about telling people what to do, it’s looking at what will work for them as individuals.

We're at the start of the journey

Jackie is carrying out a new research project using the ‘Think Aloud Method’, which involves asking people to share their thoughts before, during and after exercise. For the first phase of the project Jackie is working with students as research participants with the intention to broaden the scope of the research to include people from different clinical groups in the future. Jackie expects the insights gained from this project will help clinicians develop new, more appropriate exercise programmes for those who would benefit from being more active including people living with mental health problems.

There’s still a long way to go with Jackie’s work. The public messaging around exercise is still very much focused on keeping fit and losing weight, and many people with mental illnesses are still living very inactive lifestyles. But the more people like Jackie can do to change the perception of exercise, the more likely it is that people will be healthier and happier for the rest of their lives.