What Is Your Fitness Personality Color?

By Gina DeMillo Wagner, Experience Life

Understanding the nature of your personality comes in handy for landing the perfect job or fine-tuning your communication skills with your partner. But did you ever consider the role your personality type plays in determining your fitness tastes?

Think about it: Would you prefer swimming laps solo over attending a rowdy group-cycling class? Would you rather take a samba class or an uphill nature walk, or put in 45 minutes on a treadmill? Do you feel better about exercising with a fitness buddy or going it alone? Your answers to these questions probably have less to do with your physical characteristics than they do with how you’re wired — socially, emotionally and psychologically.

“Understanding these nuances and tailoring your fitness regimen accordingly give you a major head start on the path to success,” says Suzanne Brue, MS, a longtime Myers-Briggs practitioner and author of The 8 Colors of Fitness (Oakledge Press, 2008).

This may sound like the equivalent of a fitness horoscope to you — potentially more fun than functional — but matching activities to personality type has been shown to have real-world relevance, even for those cynical about the whole personality-typing concept.

“Research suggests that people who engage in personality-appropriate activities will stick with the activities longer, enjoy their workout more and ultimately have a greater overall fitness experience,” says Susan Davis-Ali, PhD, a researcher who developed a fitness interest profile test for Life Time Fitness. (Take Davis-Ali’s quiz at www.lifetimefitness.com/fip.)

Plus, discovering your fitness personality can save you time and trouble, Davis-Ali adds, because you can proceed directly toward activities you’re likely to find rewarding and avoid false starts with fitness fads that just aren’t for you. (For more on maximizing fitness enjoyment, see “Welcome to the Fitness Revolution” in the October 2008 archives.)

Though not the first to dig into the topic of fitness and personality, Brue is the first to create a system based on the principles of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment. Brue took the MBTIs — Introversion (I) or Extraversion (E), Intuition (N) or Sensing (S), Thinking (T) or Feeling (F), and Judging (J) or Perceiving (P) — and reworked them into an easily maneuverable color-coded fitness personality model.

Next: Get to Know Yourself

1 of 10

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Leah C.

10:40AM PDT on Sep 3, 2011

WOW! It's crazy how accurate this is. I took the MBTI assessment before this school year began as part of my pre-orientation program. I'm red according to this article and all the suggested activities are right on target. If fact I did most of them yesterday! I went to my break dance club practice, went to a Nerf gun war tournament, played a couple games of pick up basketball, then played a game of touch-football, then two games of soccer and finally hit around a volleyball with some friends. This is because I'm involved in all the club sports here at my college. So awesome!

send a green star

Darla G.

1:53PM PDT on Aug 17, 2011

interesting. I and an entj and it is OK but ENTP fits my fitness better.... they are mighty close personalities though...

Lupe G.

8:52AM PDT on Aug 12, 2011

As everyone has commented; I fit every catergory at different times of my life. I seem to be more of a silver/saffron/green right now though at one point I was more green/red & after I went into gold/white/purple phase...

Nycole L.

7:03AM PDT on Aug 6, 2011

Fantastic! I need to get my but in shape and this will help immensely!

Diana S.

11:16AM PDT on Aug 3, 2011

I took the quiz and got blue. So accurate!

myra d.

10:44AM PDT on Aug 3, 2011

interesting

Treesa M.

2:02AM PDT on Aug 3, 2011

thnks