Research on the Impact of App-Driven Zero-Time Exercises on College Students’ Physical Fitness

Abstract

The “Zero-Time Movement” offers a new approach to addressing the problem of “pre-exercise initiation resistance” among college students. By leveraging its low barriers and high adaptability, this movement successfully transforms instantaneous impulses into long-term behavioral habits through instant reward mechanisms, fragmented interactions, and social comparison psychology. Empirical data show that this model has significant benefits in improving cardiovascular endurance, optimizing body composition, and enhancing self-efficacy in the short term. However, after three months of intervention, it often enters a “yield plateau” and is accompanied by the “check-in hollowing out” phenomenon of behavioral alienation. This study points out that there is an essential distinction between “behavioral initiation” and “exercise efficacy,” and existing applications overly rely on fun incentives while neglecting the scientificity of load intensity and advanced planning. Future research needs to go beyond simple effect verification and shift to exploring the interactive matching mechanism of “solutions-populations-contexts” to precisely promote the advancement of college students’ physical health.