Finding the Right Exercise
Sep 5, 2025News
For those who do not particularly enjoy working out, science may have found an explanation and a better fitness match. Frontiers in Psychology recently published a study exploring the relation between individuals’ personality traits and preferred types of exercise. Based on the increasingly sedentary global population, Dr. Flaminia Ronca from the University College London Surgery & Interventional Science and the Institute of Sport, Exercise, and Health conducted a study analyzing the way in which personality influences effective changes in an individual’s health.
After studying 132 participants, a connection was established between the participants’ personality traits and the type of exercise they would prefer. The study group included a broad range of fitness levels in individuals who were placed in either a control group or an experimental group. Only the experimental group completed eight weeks of cycling and strength training, including three weekly cycling sessions of varying intensity. The factors assessing personality were measured using the Big 5 model: openness, agreeability, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and extraversion.
At the onset of the program, both groups’ stress levels, ranked on a scale of 1 to 10, of both the control group and eight-week exercise program participants remained similar. Participants rated their enjoyment of each type of exercise prior to starting the eight-week program and again at the conclusion of the program. Individuals were assessed based on strength training, such as sit-ups, jumping jacks, and planks, as well as through a 30-minute cycling test where VO2, or peak oxygen capacity, was measured after a short rest period for the participants. 86 of the 132 participants successfully completed the program and were all determined to have increased strength as compared to their pre-training measurements.
According to the study, conscientious individuals had a tendency to focus more on becoming healthier when seeking out physical activity as opposed to exercising for enjoyment; they adhered to the eight-week program because it was “good for them.” Extroverts were found to prioritize high-intensity exercise, including HIIT or maximum intensity cycling. Highly neurotic individuals, on the other hand, tended to prefer short periods of exercise that require bursts of energy rather than a prolonged workout. These participants preferred that their heart rate or other metrics not be recorded while exercising. Likewise, those who experienced the most significant reduction in stress post-exercise were participants in the experimental group who scored high in neuroticism. The individuals who ranked highest in conscientiousness also scored high in both aerobic fitness and core strength and were considered more physically active than the rest of the participants. Openness was not found to be relevant to the enjoyment of any particular exercise.
As explained by Professor Paul Burgess of UCL,
We found that people who scored more highly in the neuroticism personality trait showed a particularly strong reduction in stress when they undertook the fitness training recommended in the study. This suggests that there may be particular benefits in stress reduction for those with this trait.
Ultimately, findings from the study concluded that though neurotic individuals may benefit best from exercise, as it leads to the greatest stress reduction, it is more important for individuals to find something they enjoy to improve their activity levels. Most individuals are more likely to maintain the discipline to stick with an exercise routine that they personally like.
An understanding of the influence of specific personality traits on certain kinds of exercise could help in tailoring exercise classes and group work-outs, and motivate individuals to get moving. It turns out exercise is not your enemy when you choose a brain-based routine.
