Table 3.
Social and Environmental Barriers To Exercise With Illustrative Comments Expressed by Focus Group (N = 7) Participants, by Exercise Level
| Theme Identified | Exercisers (n = 2) | Insufficiently Active Individuals (n = 3) | Nonexercisers (n = 2) | |||||
|
| ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. of Groups | Illustrative Comment | No. of Groups | Illustrative Comment | No. of Groups | Illustrative Comment | |||
| Social barriers | ||||||||
| Insufficient advice from health care provider | 1 | "And I don't know if it's here or I suspect it's probably nationwide that they don't tell you that. [The doctors], they're busy trying to calm the pain down and not maybe helping you as much with the exercise." | 3 | "And the only information I've gotten has just been minimal things from the doctors like, 'Yoga would probably be really good for you' or 'work on stretching the lower back.' You know, just minimal things." | 1 | "I will say that there is very little information being passed around that'll tell you you can go here or you can go there. It's sort of like a word of mouth thing." | ||
| Competing roles and responsibilities | 0 | ----- | 2 | "My barrier is that fact that I work 3 days a week and I have two kids in the first grade and, you know, I try to do everything while they're at school so that when they're home, I can be like a mom. And you know I've got 8 million things to do and that is a big barrier to exercising." | 1 | "And it's all I can do to get up, go to work and take care of my family." | ||
| Environmental barriers | ||||||||
| Natural environment and weather | 1 | "I was walking since January. I'd take a break at work and two 15-minute times during the day, and I was doing okay until it got really hot. Now I can't do it outside because it's too warm." | 1 | "When the weather's bad and it's raining, you're aching and steps are almost impossible to go up." | 1 | "I'd been riding my regular bicycle and the weather had been so rainy and all." | ||
| Exercise programs | 2 | "They have some exercise classes. They aren't specifically for arthritis. They are exercise in general, but I am talking about for specifically arthritis self-help or fibromyalgia self-help or whatever." | 3 | ". . . None that I know of. You hear all this about the gyms, . . . but, like he said, they are for healthy people, people that are not in pain that I know of. You never hear them say, 'Well, we have exercises for people with this problem or that problem.'" | 2 | "And then like the water aerobics. I love the water aerobics, but I live next to [town name]. . . and that's like a 40-minute drive." | ||