As a long-distance runner, my father taught me to warm up before my runs, cool down and always stretch afterwards to prevent injury. But even after following this fatherly advice, I’ve always had running-associated injuries (admittedly I’m also chronic “run-through-the-pain” runner which probably doesn’t help).

A recent New York Times article even discusses this disconnect, “The truth is that after dozens of studies and years of debate, no one really knows whether stretching helps, harms, or does anything in particular for performance or injury rates.”

So, why do I continue to stretch? The reason I stretch after my runs is more emotional than physical. There’s nothing better than calming my body down to an almost meditative state by concentrating my movements. Unlike the “runner’s high” I get while I’m running, it’s rewarding to breathe a slow, controlled pace and think about my accomplishment. It’s my way of coming back down to earth.

At HDC, we continuously seek to understand the mind of the Active Lifestyle Consumer. And it strikes me as interesting that as an active lifer, my emotional state is associated with my fitness activity, but it’s also more complex. My emotions change from a state of excitement/enjoyment while I’m doing my activity to a calm/relaxed emotional state as I stretch from my workout. As marketers, we need to acknowledge these emotional complexities as we think about the consumer’s entire fitness experience and what they are really seeking from that activity.

For my peace of mind, I think I’ll keep stretching.

I’m involved in our ongoing research, Active Insights, which is a study of the mindsets of those who live an active lifestyle. Recently we were discussing how motorized sports fit into our research. After reading a recent Sierra Magazine article about ATV riding, I was intrigued to learn about the growth of this activity in the US. According to this article, “Off-road recreation in this country has grown enormously in the past three decades, jumping from 5 million users in 1972 to 51 million in 2004.” With that sort of growth, it might be an activity that deserves more attention from us as we focus on active lifestyles.

But why the huge growth trend? Sierra asserts, “While backpacking numbers are going down, the refinement of off-road engineering has yielded a wide array of vehicles at a multitude of price points, making off-roading, for many, the default way to interact with nature.” That may be one reason for the growth of these activities, but given the tenfold increase in the past 30 years of off-roading, I wonder if there’s even more to it. Could the psychographics of off-roaders give us a better insight into the other active people we’re studying?

Maybe it’s time for us to include motorized sports enthusiasts in our research. Depending on how we define “active”, they may or may not belong there alongside the paddlers and cyclists. Let’s start that debate here. I’ll go out on a limb and say “yes!” we should include motor sports. Why not? It would be interesting to see how they compare psychologically with our other survey respondents. What do you think?