Should you build your exercise regime around your personality type?

Understanding your personality traits may be key to getting the best from your exercise regime, new research suggests.

Matching your workout to your personality might increase your enjoyment of exercise. Picture: iStock

Don’t be surprised if your next fitness assessment goes beyond your BMI, sleep patterns and dietary habits and takes a look inside your head.

New research has found that our personality type can dictate the type of exercise we most enjoy, a key indicator of whether we will stick to our regime or not.

The UK study examines the “big five” personality types – extroversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism and openness – as they pertain to exercise, finding different training regimes may suit different traits.

Notably those who scored high on neuroticism, which is associated with negative emotions such as anxiety, frustration and depressed mood, benefited the most from the potentially stress-reducing effects of aerobic training, the paper, published in Frontiers in Psychology, found.

Those who score high on neuroticism might prefer to exercise alone, and are more likely to enjoy high-intensity workouts than long, drawn-out sessions. Picture: iStock

“Understanding personality factors in designing and recommending physical activity programs is likely to be very important in determining how successful a program is, and whether people will stick with it and become fitter,” says report co-author Professor Paul Burgess, from University College London’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.

The study used an eight-week exercise program of strength training and cycling, with assessments on both fitness and enjoyment. It tracked the results against the big five personality traits.

The results showed significant differences based on personality.

For instance, extroverts preferred high-intensity exercise alongside others as well as team sports, while those associating with neuroticism enjoyed working out in private.

Those who rate highly on conscientiousness are likely to exercise regardless of whether they enjoy it, as they obtain other benefits such as attaining health and performance goals. Picture: iStock

The study finds that because extroverts possess a lower resting state of arousal than introverts and therefore seek greater stimulation, they gravitate to harder exercise.

“Extroversion was predictive of greater enjoyment only of the VO2 peak (maximum cycling) and HIIT (high-intensity interval training) sessions, the highest exercise intensities,” it says.

People who scored highly in terms of conscientiousness were likely to exercise whether or not they enjoyed it.

“This group might engage in physical activity largely for health purposes, where enjoyment might play a smaller motivational role compared to the reward of achieving their intended health or performance goals,” the study says.

There were more complex findings about the best exercise for people with neuroticism.

“Considering the higher emotional instability associated with neuroticism, it is possible that HIIT may be more tolerable than a long continuous vigorous session, where anxiety, worry and negative self-talk are more likely to impact performance,” the paper finds.

It also finds that undertaking an exercise program reduced stress most significantly for those who scored high on neuroticism.

“It highlights that those who benefit the most from a reduction in stress respond very well to exercise,” says co-author Dr Flaminia Ronca, from the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health.

For those who identified most closely with openness, a trait largely associated with intellect, curiosity, reflection and introspection, the study finds they don’t enjoy higher-intensity exercise.

“Openness has been associated with greater body awareness, perhaps indicating that open-minded individuals may have a stronger tendency to focus on their sensations, leading to a higher likelihood of perceiving high levels of exertion as threatening.”

As for agreeableness, the study supports other academic work that finds no relationship to the trait and physical activity.

With less than a quarter of adults meeting the World Health Organisation minimum 150 minutes of weekly strength and endurance activity, understanding what type of exercise suits a particular personality may help encourage people to stick with a program.

“If people can find physical activities that they enjoy, they will more readily choose to do them,” Professor Burgess says.

“Being so physically inactive that we start to feel miserable might be a peculiarly human thing to do. In effect, our body punishes us by making us miserable.

“But for some reason, many of us humans seem poor at picking up on these messages it is sending to our brain.”