Kinesiology I Am Choosing Sphere

Kinesiology

I am choosing sphere 2. In working with Jeff, I will be working in a rehabilitative therapeutic format, likely in a clinical setting (such as in a hospital, a private clinical practice, or any clinical setting associated with physical therapy) and my work, therefore, involves restoring his muscular strength, endurance, and flexibility.

Although Jeff states that he has never worked out regularly and, in fact, dislikes exercise, the fact that his job involves moving furniture excludes him from having occupied a sedentary lifestyle. This will be beneficial to him in our workout program, since he is already used to a certain level of physical activity and prizes being active.

The types of exercise that I will do with him will include rehabilitative exercises, namely processes and treatments that aim to restore his former skills and functions lost due to his injury, and habilitative therapeutic exercises where I will focus on processes and treatments leading to the reacquisition of skills and functions normal and expected of an individual of his gender, occupation, and age. Both the rehabilitative and the habilitative exercises are geared to developing the body's systems. As in Jeff's case, both are used in conjunction: the first to restore Jeff to his former strength and ability, the second to help him maintain and augment that strength and ability so that he is less likely to become injured or disabled again in the future, particularly as far as his back is concerned.

I would equally focus on increasing Jeff's skill and physical capacity, particularly given his insistence that he cannot afford to experience further injury and miss work again.

Designating a suitable exercise curriculum for my client would involve taking into account the following factors: Jeff's needs, work activities and experiential lifestyle, environmental / situational / geographical existence, his personal attributes (namely his self-perceptions and feelings), his economic considerations. Very important here would be the fact that he has never worked out regularly and does not enjoy working out. Furthermore, another factor to consider is that Jeff possesses little confidence in his ability to become sufficiently motivated in the program so that he will exercise on a continued level. A workout plan would, therefore, have to take all these elements into account.

For Jeff to become interested in an exercise regimen, I would have to combine both extrinsic and intrinsic approaches. Extrinsic benefits would be the benefits that Jeff would achieve from routinely following the exercises. In an immediate sense, it would be his ability to not only return to his workplace but also be capable of and know how to prevent future injury. Stressing these extrinsic benefits (and other benefits accruing to Jeff which I would become aware of when I know more about his personal lifestyle and related variables) will likely make Jeff more interested in following the regimen.

Intrinsic experiences will be more challenging to relay to Jeff, particularly since he has not received much thrill from exercise in the past. The intrinsic approach revolves around the subjective exhilaration and personal meaning that one receives from physical activity; the 'high' that it gives us and the consequent motivation to persist.

Jeff has to find the exercise component that personally gives him the greatest satisfaction and exhilaration and that is relevant to strengthening his back. Finding an activity that is enjoyable for him to engage in and seeing definite results will merge the subjective and extrinsic approaches causing Jeff to retain the motivation to engage in this exercise on a long-term basis.

Factors primary to the enjoyment of the physical activity are that they must provide Jeff with evenly matched challenges -- it must be neither too difficult for him nor too simple, so that he will neither be discouraged nor bored. He must, also, receive clear goals and feedback so that he will best know how to practice the exercise. Feedback will focus on praise with the intention of reducing Jeff's aversion to physical activity. Goals are particularly important in Jeff's case given his low level of self-efficacy. Finally, Jeff must be given a sense of competition, so that he will begin to associate exercise with excitement. In this way, Jeff's prior associations of exercise as tedious and not enjoyable will, hopefully, be reversed so that his approach to exercise will determine in a positive manner his resolution to incorporate at least some of the activities in his post-therapeutic life.