Maintaining the mental well-being of bodybuilders through physical activity within the restrictions of quarantine

The Covid-19 virus pandemic and related government recommendations and restrictions have affected many aspects of human life, including exercise and mental well-being. The purpose of this study was to investigate the physical activity and mood of Iranian bodybuilding athletes.

In this applied research, 875 bodybuilders from different cities of Iran during a period of March to May 2020 were selected as the statistical samples and completed the self-rating online questionnaires covering sociodemographic information, former and current physical activity patterns, and current mood states. The standard comprehensive physical activity questionnaire was used to assess the level of physical activity and also the short form of mood assessment questionnaire was used to assess the mood of the participants. To evaluate the changes in physical activity and the effect of gender on it, the Wilcoxon test was used at a significance level of 0.95. Pearson test was also used to examine the relationship between mood variables and exercise. Data were analyzed using SPSS software.

The results showed that there is a significant decrease in the intensity and duration of weekly exercise during the lockdown period compared to the previous period (P-Value=0.001) and the mood was also significantly associated with exercise time (up to 10 minutes and more than 10 minutes) (P-Value<0.005) and the number of training sessions (P-Value<0.05).

Decreased exercise during the Covid 19 epidemic can have negative effects on athleteschr('39') moods. Therefore, appropriate planning should be considered to perform regular physical activity and exercise safely.