The link between health motivation and physical fitness

This study explores how personally-autonomous reasons in health behaviors (PARs) and controlled reasons in health behaviors (CRs) influence health status. This study predicted that PARs would be negatively correlated with body composition and positively correlated with fitness, while CRs would be positively correlated with body composition and negatively correlated with fitness. Participants (n = 284) were undergraduate students who participated in a free fitness testing event. The participants completed a survey that assessed their PARs and CRs and then assessments of their body composition and fitness level were taken. The results supported the hypothesis personally-autonomous reasons in health behaviors were negatively associated with body composition and positively associated with fitness. Results also indicated that CRs were not significantly related with body composition or fitness