Dr. Ryan Rhodes
A new year often begins with the new resolutions and promises. However, we often find ourselves drifting away from all the promises we made the beginning of the year. The determination to be more active and maintaining a healthy lifestyle is often on agendas but we often are guilty of not following them through. The gap between the determination to achieve that active lifestyle and actually maintaining it often leave us feeling disappointed. This intention-behaviour gap is one of the expertise of IALH’s associate director, Dr. Ryan Rhodes. According to him, despite knowing the benefits of physical activity, people often fail to comply with it. He studies this disconnect between intentions to engage in health behavior and subsequent failure to engage in it.
Dr. Rhodes is an exercise psychologist, a professor, and the Director of the Behavioural Medicine Lab (BMED) at the University of Victoria. With an intention to find ways to motivate people to be more active, he studies the psychology of physical activity and sedentary behavior. He is interested in determining the behavioral and psychological aspects of physical activity and population health. Dr. Rhodes research has shown that over half of people who form good exercise intentions fails to follow through. His research focuses on finding the ways to motivate people to become more active and link the intentions to actions.
Dr. Rhodes will talk about making these intentions into reality and following them through in his talk “How do I do it? Transforming my resolutions into exercise habits” on January 25th at the David Lam Auditorium at the University of Victoria. Based on the results of his research, the talk will overview the extent of the intention-behavior gap and how to close this gap in various groups while increasing the physical activity among these groups. This will be a great opportunity to learn about forming high-quality motivation, regulate behavior and making physical activity more of a reflect through habit and identity formation. Register for the event here
Dr. Rhodes studies focus on how people can develop a better level of fitness and what that means for families and their lifestyle. Among many other endeavors, BMED lab, lead by Dr. Rhodes, will explore the formation of physical activity habits in the year 2017. The studies will examine whether physical activity can become a habit. According to Dr. Rhodes the physical activities promoting strategies focusing on educating on health benefits of physical activity attempts to build motivation. His studies will compare these approaches to habit formation focused on how one practices physical activity.