Outdoor Adventure Activities

Role

Outdoor adventure activities are the physical activity forms most consistently associated with sustained lifetime participation — because their intrinsic rewards (discovery, challenge, natural beauty, adventure) are independent of and additive to health outcomes, producing the intrinsic motivation that health-obligation exercise cannot sustain. The person who hikes for the experience of being in mountains, who climbs for the cognitive-physical problem-solving challenge, or who surfs for the experience of riding waves will sustain physical activity across decades that the person who exercises primarily for health outcomes will abandon during the inevitable motivational valleys. Adventure activities are the exercise modality most directly solving the adherence problem.