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Women Who Exercise
With Mirrors Feel Worse
Mirrors are as common as paint on the
walls of health clubs, but what is so inspiring about watching
yourself gasping and drenched in sweat? For exercise novices,
not much, according to one study, which found that women who exercised
in front of a mirror felt worse than women who exercised without
them.
"Placing mirrors in exercise centers
may need to be reconsidered, especially in centers that are trying
to attract exercise initiates," said the study in the American
Psychological Association journal Health Psychology.
The researchers at McMaster University
in Hamilton, Ontario, looked at 58 sedentary women with an average
age of almost 21. The women first answered questions about how
they felt their bodies looked, how confident they were in their
ability to ride an exercise bike, and what their mood was —
whether, for instance, they felt "calm" or "worn-out."
The women rode the exercise bike
twice, at a moderate intensity, for 20 minutes, one week apart.
In one ride, they were in a mirrored room; in the other, the mirrors
were covered by curtains.
After each ride, the women answered
again the same sort of questions they had answered in the beginning.
When women rode while they could
watch themselves in the mirror, they wound up feeling worse than
they did when they could not look at themselves, the study found.
For example, the mirrored rides left women feeling less calm and
more fatigued.
This can't be simply a case in
which women who watch themselves exercise come away with a worse
opinion of their own bodies, said researcher Kathleen Martin Ginis,
an associate professor of health and exercise psychology at McMaster.
These women on average were not overweight, and even women with
high body-image scores felt worse after exercising in front of
a mirror, she said.
Other studies had found that gazing
into a mirror tends to make a person feel worse, Ginis said.
It's not just the body, either.
Even without exercise, periods of staring into a mirror make people
start to think about their other flaws as well. "We tend to be
quite critical," she said.
Exercise, on the other hand, tends
to make people leave feeling better about themselves, and the
study was designed to see if the exercise effect outweighed the
mirror effect.
It did not, and the psychological
tests picked that up. "This is the kind of thing where people
come away thinking, 'I don't feel that great,'" she said.
Women who hadn't exercised before
typically have low expectations of how well they would be able
to exercise, and the women in this study probably felt the mirrors
proved them right, the researchers said.
Although the study did not look
at men, Ginis suspects men might have some of the same reactions,
although less strongly, because men tend to be less self-critical
than women.
The findings, published in June,
indicate that health club operators should start changing their
decor, the researchers said. "If a bout of exercise leaves a sedentary
woman feeling worse than before she worked out, it will be difficult
to persuade her to establish a regular exercise program," they
said.
This fits the experiences of Curves
International, a fast-growing chain that focuses on women, especially
those who are not competitive. Members don't want mirrors, said
founder Gary Heavin. "When we didn't put them in, they could concentrate
on having fun," he said.
However, the bad experience with
mirrors may not be true of more advanced exercisers, the study
said. Other researchers have found that highly active women who
exercised in front of a mirror felt better for it, possibly because
they got to show themselves how good they did.
And Ginis is not about to bring
upon herself the amount of bad luck that would develop if every
health club in North America trashed its mirrors on her say-so.
Mirrors are necessary equipment that help people such as weight
trainers confirm they are doing their moves properly, she said.
She suggested that clubs create mirror-free zones for women who
are getting started.
On
the Net:
Journal abstracts: http://www.apa.org/journals/hea/703ab.html.4
Reference
Source 102
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