Movement Circle helps professionals encourage others to be more active

The Movement Circle is a tangible laminated booklet that is easy to take with you. The Movement Circle is primarily aimed at the following three groups: young people (12–18 years), parents (25–40 years) of young children (4–12 years), and older people (65+). The physical activity guidelines form the basis of the circle.

The Movement Circle contains 5 steps that help bring more physical activity into your day. These steps are based on principles of behaviour change and give users insight into their own physical activity behaviour. In addition, the steps offer the opportunity to make plans to become more active. Each step includes examples that can help set goals.

The 5 steps

Step 1: What do you do in a day?

The first step is to map out what someone already does in terms of physical activity. Insight into current physical activity behaviour is important as a starting point for considering whether someone could benefit from additional opportunities to be active.

The step is divided into morning, afternoon and evening. This division makes it somewhat easier to think about the opportunities someone has to be active. For many people, it is difficult to look at the entire day at once. If someone finds it difficult to fill this in, it may help to ask them to describe an average day. As a professional, you can then filter the opportunities for physical activity from that description.

Every movement counts: cleaning the house, playing with the children, walking the dog and working up a sweat for an hour at the gym.

Once you have completed this step together, you can look together at the times during the day when someone could be more active. Is it in the morning? Or perhaps in the afternoon?

Step 2: Which physical activities can you do?

Step 1 provides insight into what someone is already doing. Step 2 helps provide inspiration for more physical activity and to set a goal.

To make being active as accessible as possible, we have provided examples for each situation: in the house, around the house and outside the house.

Now that it is clear what someone is already doing in terms of physical activity and what else is possible, you can set a goal together. What does someone want to achieve?

It helps to make the goal specific. “Becoming healthier” is too vague to generate real motivation. Taking 1,000 more steps per day or climbing the stairs without becoming breathless are goals that someone can monitor themselves, where progress can be seen quickly and that are achievable. This is motivating. Setting specific goals is often difficult. As a professional, you have an important role to play in helping with this.

Based on the goal someone has, you can look together at what that person can do to achieve it. To sustain physical activity, it is important that someone does something they enjoy. Perhaps there was something enjoyable among the examples in the Movement Circle.

Make sure that the user does something they both enjoy and that contributes to the goal.

Need additional Movement Circle inserts?

You can use the fill-in exercises in the circle for the first few times. Download the PDF of the fill-in exercises and print them. This way, you can use the Movement Circle indefinitely!

Download the fill-in exercises

Step 3: What fits into your day?

In step 3, you schedule the physical activity during the day. Here, you can refer back to Step 1: during which part of the day is it possible to be more active? It may be that this is possible at every point in the day. It is not a problem to fill in three things in that case. However, make sure that the user is not too ambitious at the beginning. As a professional, you can assess whether the goals and times someone plans are achievable.

This step uses ‘if–then planning’. Formulating a plan in this way makes it more concrete and helps with carrying it out and maintaining it. This is because the person no longer has to make a decision at the moment itself. The decision has already been made: while formulating the if–then plan.

Step 4: Go for it!

After making all the plans, it is time to get started. Becoming more active, and therefore changing behaviour, does not happen without setbacks and difficult moments. In this step, you can find out which moments may be difficult for the user. Is it sitting on the sofa in the evening? Or at the weekend? Recognising difficult moments helps someone deal with them. Here too, you can make a plan to keep up the physical activity despite the inevitable difficult moments.

Rewards can be an effective incentive for maintaining physical activity. Discuss with the user what they like to do to reward themselves and thus keep up the physical activity.

Step 5: Which next step will you take?

The final step concerns the possible next step. Perhaps someone wants to become even more active? Or do something else instead?

When you can start this step depends greatly on the user’s situation. Perhaps they need to spend more time on step 4 and discuss from time to time what is going well and what is still difficult. As mentioned earlier: behaviour does not change overnight.

If you notice that the person you are talking to is ready for something new, be sure to use step 5. Here you will find examples of what someone can do when things are already going very well. But you can also discuss step 5 when things are not going so well yet. It contains tips for dealing with difficult moments and maintaining physical activity.

Order the Movement Circle here.