COVID-19 Pandemic and Exercise (COPE) Trial: Engagement with exercise apps and psychological stress

The interventions delivered to participants in each arm involved six weeks of at-home exercise requiring no additional equipment. Relationships between psychological stress and engagement with the commercially available exercise apps were explored using a random intercept cross-lagged panel model. This model simultaneously assessed the longitudinal and bidirectional associations between psychological stress and subsequent exercise adherence and vice versa.

Both psychological stress and engagement with the exercise interventions demonstrated significant positive autoregressive effects across successive weeks. However, the cross-lagged associations between psychological stress and engagement with the exercise intervention were not significant. While the cross-lagged effects were non-significant, there was high variability between individuals.

Future studies should use larger samples and methods that would allow an examination of an individual's relationship between stress and exercise engagement.