Social Media Fitness Challenge – Risks and Benefits

Abstract

Summary Social media is part of the lives of young adults. Their influence extends to health behavior or nutrition. “Fitness challenges” often appear and they should affect the motivation to exercise, body composition changes, performance improvement. 67 healthy young adults (32 women, 20.3 years; 35 men, 20.8 years) took part in the “challenge”, where they completed 3 series of 12 – 15 push-ups every day for 30 days. After the intervention, both groups showed a statistically significant (α = 0.01) improvement, women 5.8 repetitions, men by 7 repetitions. The research was supplemented by a questionnaire, which showed a positive effect on increasing motivation for this activity. Furthermore, it has been shown that “fitness challenges” bring obvious health risks that need to be taken into account. It seems that with the optimal setting of the content of the exercise program, the “fitness challenge” can be a good instrument of increasing the physical acitivty, motivation to exercise, and positively influencing strength performance.