Green Exercise: Can Nature Video Benefit Isometric Exercise?

Abstract

Green exercise is the combination of physical activity and nature exposure, which has been associated with positive effects on psychophysiological health. This study aimed to investigate the effects of nature video viewing on isometric exercise and find a useful practice for green exercise in urban living. In the current study, 18 male subjects were recruited in a randomized crossover trial and underwent a sequence of wall squat exercises. The whole experiment contained three periods of baseline (before exercise), exercise, and recovery (after exercise), and each period lasted for 2 min. A video of forest walking was played in the exercise and recovery periods as treatment, while a black screen was set as control. The Rate of Perceived Exertion Scale (RPE) and Feeling Scale (FS) were employed to measure perceived exertion and affective responses in the exercise period; heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) including the standard deviation of normal-to-normal RR intervals (SDNN), the root mean square of successive differences (RMSSD), and the standard deviations of the Poincaré plot (SD1), were recorded in the three periods. Heart rate recovery (HRR) in the recovery period was further calculated based on 30 s and 60 s time frames. Results demonstrated that during the exercise period nature video viewing was associated with better affective responses (median of 1.00 and an interquartile (IQR) of 2.00, p = 0.017), lower perceived exertion (median = 6.00, IQR = 2.00, p = 0.021), and lower HR (median = 89.60, IQR = 20.94, p = 0.01), but the differences in HRV indices between the experimental settings were not statistically significant. In the recovery period, significantly higher values of RMSSD (median = 34.88, IQR = 24.52, p = 0.004), SD1 (median = 24.75, IQR = 17.41, p = 0.003), and HR (median = 84.18, IQR = 16.58, p = 0.001) were observed in the treatment setting, whereas no statistically significant difference was found for HRR. In general, our findings support that nature video viewing may help reduce perceived exertion, increase exercise pleasure, buffer heart rate, and improve cardiac autonomic recovery for wall squat exercising, which implies the potential of nature-based stimuli in green exercise. However, due to the limited research sample, further study may need to include female participants and focus on various populations to confirm the effectiveness of using virtual and environments depicting nature at home or in public exercise places to promote positive exercise experience.