By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO, May 14 (Reuters Life!) - Using the Internet can help motivate inactive adults to get up off the couch, researchers said on Monday, in a finding that could put some personal trainers out of work.

Researchers at Rhode Island's Miriam Hospital, an affiliate of Brown University's Warren Alpert Medical School, found people who took part in a tailored Internet exercise program went from doing virtually no exercise to an average of two hours a week.

After six months of following a tailored Internet program, users were exercising 120 minutes per week, they reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine on Monday.

This was better than two comparison groups, with users of mailed, printed programs exercising 112.5 minutes a week while people who accessed standard Internet activity programs were exercising 90 minutes.

The researchers studied 249 healthy, sedentary adults from Rhode Island and Pittsburgh who were selected randomly to take part in one of the three physical activity programs.

To measure whether the volunteers became more fit, the researchers measured their use of oxygen while exercising. Overall, they found everyone had on average a 5.2 percent improvement in fitness at six months, and a 5.9 percent improvement at 12 months.

The most popular form of exercise was walking.

Researcher Bess Marcus, who worked on the study, said the motivational program worked like a counseling session, helping people find the barriers that kept them from exercising.

She said her team was a bit worried about using a sedentary activity like the Internet to motivate people to exercise, but people did not spend much time sitting in front of their computers. They typically logged on for about 5 minutes to ask a question or record their activity and then logged off.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends regular, moderate-intensity physical activity, such as 30 minutes of brisk walking, five or more times a week.

The U.S. Institute of Medicine has said people need far more than that -- up to an hour virtually every day.

AlertNet news is provided by