Bio-psycho-social Perspectives on the Individual Response to Physical Activity

About this Research Topic

Background

In everyday life, we consider variability between individuals regarding characteristics such as appearance, attitudes and lifestyle as normal. In contrast, in health-related activity programs, people are often treated in a stereotypical, one-size-fits-all way and do not get individually tailored behavioral advice. In recent years, there has been an increasing number of studies on the individuality of both physiological and affective responses to physical activity stimuli that show considerable differences between individuals. For example, studies show that at vigorous intensity levels, there appears to be a particularly high inter-individual variability both regarding affective and physiological reactions to the activity. Yet, most studies focus on this issue from only one perspective and neglect – on the one hand – the individually different impact of the social environment and social benefits of physical activity, and – on the other hand – the interaction of the bio-psycho-social determinants with regard to the response to physical activity. Furthermore, a comprehensive framework for the investigation of individual effects of physical activity is still missing. It remains unclear how rising knowledge about the individual response to physical activity can be translated into training practice.

The main goal of this Research Topic is to gather research that addresses how individuals react affectively, physiologically and socially to physical activity interventions, and critically, how these responses are interrelated. Thereby, we are also interested in studies which address to which extent the individual health- and activity-related biography has an impact on the subjective rewarding of physical activity (respectively the aversion to it).

We welcome articles that deal, for example, with the following research questions:
• How do individuals physiologically, affectively, motivationally, and socially respond to different training regimes? (dose-response-relation, individual variabilities, short-term/long-term)
• How are these physiological, affective, motivational, and social responses interrelated?
• Which molecular or cellular mechanisms can help to explain the individual response to physical activity?
• To which regard can ‘social epigenetics’ explain individual differences regarding the response to physical activity?
• How individual are activity-related biographies, and what role do biographies play regarding the bio-psycho-social response to physical activity?
• How can the bio-psycho-social complexity of the individual response to physical activity be methodologically grasped? (e.g., theoretical frameworks, advanced statistics, big data analyses)
• How can individual responses to physical activity be defined?
• How can an individual response to physical activity be translated into training practice?

Keywords: Individual Response, Physical Activity, Variability, Social, Affective

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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