ABSTRACT
Over recent years the benefits associated with habitual exercise and physical fitness have become better understood. However, the psychological mechanisms which underlie successful adherence to exercise regimes still remain obscure. Indeed it is only in the last 20 to 30 years that the systematic study of motivational processes in sport and, more recently, in exercise has received significant and sustained attention from sport and exercise psychologists. This chapter stands apart from other contributions to this book by taking as its starting point not the data set itself but the process of motivation. In this sense it is primarily driven by theory, or the need to set in place a theoretical substrate to our discussion of the data. Along the way the data are referenced, but always in the context of a process model of participation.
