Fitness Friday

Exercising Together Improves Quality of Life

A recent study conducted by the American Osteopathic Association found that group exercise improves many different aspects of participants lives. 

Going to the gym by yourself can be tough, whether it be because we could be doing something else more fun with our friends or just due to time constraints from our busy lives spent with other people. While these other options may seem like a good excuse to not get to the gym, they're more harmful to your health than you think when you don't exercise. But what if you could workout with those same friends and reap the social benefits, and increased overall quality of life compared to working out by yourself? Dr. Dayna Yorks, DO, had the same question and conducted a study in which she took 69 medical students (famous for their high stress levels) and divided them into groups of individual exercise, group exercise, and no exercise.

The groups took part in the study over the course of twelve weeks, and completed surveys that evaluated the quality of their lives based on their mental, physical and emotional health. The individual exercisers could not participate with other people during their routine in groups larger than two people, while the group exercisers took part in a CXWORX exercise group for at least 30 minutes once a week. At the end of the twelve weeks Dr. Yorks found that the group exercisers showed a 12.6% increase of improvement in mental health, a 24.8% increase of improvement in physical health and a 26% increase of improvement in emotional health compared to the beginning of the study. The individual exercise group showed no changes other than an 11% increase in mental health. The group that did not exercise showed no change in quality of life. So the next time that you want to choose hanging-out with a group of friends over exercising, convince those friends to hit the gym with you to improve everyone's' quality of life.