Most individuals realize participating in regular activity is not easy. To start doing something we are not accustomed to and stop living a sedenentary lifestyle can be scary. We have to venture into what we don't know and in a big sense leave behind what we do know and what we are comfortable with.

          As we become less active we get more overweight. We lose strength, flexibility, and endurance and therefore physical activity can hurt. For overweight and obese people they should find comfortable exercises that won't impact their already stressed joints. Water activities are very easy on the joints and still work the muscles well.

          Working adults may be overwhelmed with work related stress, family demands, and worry about the economy. It can be hard to get a person like this to find time for physical activity, so I suggest getting some work buddies together a couple days a week at a park or gym. Families can work together and take some demands off the working adults. They can split duties to ensure that one does not have more to do than the other. If the children are old enough, they can help with some duties, too.

          Many elderly people have physical impairments to worry about, and just getting to and from a gym can be impossible without help. If a senior is in a nursing home the staff and management should work on physical activities on the property or going for short walks and building up to longer amounts of time.

          Children should have many options so they aren't forced to do what they don't like. Boys and girls have ballet, martial arts, baseball, softball, soccer, tennis, racquetball, and swimming, to name a few. Their options are much larger than options for adults because adults often have to work into these activities.

          Men often prefer muscle building whereas women think more about health using treadmills, bikes, and exercise classes like aerobics or yoga as well as weight lifting. When a father or mother have children they struggle with childcare, but many gyms have cheap or free child care onsite.

          Allen W. Jackson et al, who co-wrote Physical Activity for Health and Fitness: An Individualized Approach, report that "the most dramatic decrease in physical activity occurs during late adolescence," specificially "the last years of highschool and first years of college" (p320). This could be because they are mentally maturing and will no longer "play outside," but many students are more aware that their grades will affect the college of choice and most or all of their high school teachers give them homework requiring the students to spend hours on school work at home leaving little or no time for fun, including physical activity. I personally found out that exercise early in the morning does so well at waking me up that I don't need coffee for the day. I have yet to completely rely on exercise as an absolute replacement to coffee. What if colleges and communities could use a program like the Neighborhood Watch Program in that there would be a block captain or a captain per so many dorm rooms? They can help get those people motivated and get them moving. There could even be a captain for different times of the day, ensuring that everyone can get help. Whether everyone would go for it depends on the knowledge of the captain.

          Bess H. Marcus and LeighAnn H. Forsyth, who wrote the book Motivating People to Be Physically Active, explain the "stages of motivational readiness for change" (15). Stage one is "inactive and not thinking about becoming more active," stage two: "inactive and thinking about becoming more active," stage three: "doing some physical activity," stage four: "doing enough physical activity (30 or more minutes of moderate intensity physical activity at least five days per week)", and stage five is making physical activity a habit (15 table 2.1). They say that an individual may need to make numerous attemps at behavior change until he or she is able to reach the point of making physical activity a habit stage (14).

          Marcus and Forsyth explain what could be done for people in the first and second stages to get them motivated to move more. They say "those of us interested in helping people to lead more active lives need to think about other types of programs to offer those in stage one and two. They are the ones who are likely to most need to change, yet few opportunities for change are offered to them, and they are not motivated enough to seek out opportunities on their own" (Marcus, Forsyth. 16) This is why I suggest a captain to get people motivated to change their current behavior of little or no activity becasue people in the stage one or two categories might not know what to do or how to do exercise right. It helps to have friends with me, although we aren't always working at the same intensities. It also helps to know I have friends doing something like what I'm doing, although we aren't doing together that day.