Exercise Addiction: A Comparison Between the Individuals Who Exercise for Physical Recreation and Who Receive Personal Exercise Training

Abstract

In the study, we aim to investigate the exercise addiction levels of the individuals who join sports centers for recreational activity and the ones who also receive personal exercise training. The universe of this study is the individuals who are members of The Club sports center located in Istanbul province, the European side of Esenyurt. The sample is composed of 120 members who are selected by the simple random sampling. The participants are all the members of the sports center who have regularly exercised for at least one year and continue to sports center at least two days a week. Participants have received enlightened approvals for voluntary participation either.

In order to measure exercise addiction level, we used "Exercise Addiction Scale-21" developed by Hausenblas and Downs (2002) and adapted to Turkish by Yeltep and İkizler (2007).

Frequency test is used to reveal the features of the participants. The data were not normally distributed. So Kruskal-Wallis and Mann Whitney U Tests were used for cross-group comparisons. Findings were accepted as statistically significant at p <0.05 level.

Results show that exercise addiction levels of individuals who have received special training and those who spend more time on monthly and weekly exercise are higher than the rest.

As a conclusion, the increase in the number of days and the number of hours of exercises seems to be an antecedent, of exercise addiction. We also find out that the exercise addiction levels of individuals who receive personal exercise training are higher.