1. Introduction A variety of physical and psychological health benefits are achieved when engaging in physical activity and exercise including reduced likelihood of coronary heart disease, obesity, certain cancers, increased self-esteem, and positive body image (Bouchard, Blair, & Haskell, 2007). However, many individuals do not persist with their engagements in physical activity or struggle to adhere to exercise regimens. Exercise Motivation has been shown to be a reliable predictor of exercise persistence (e.g., Markland & Hardy, 1993; Li, 1999; Kilpatrick, Hebert, & Bartholomew, 2005; Hagger & Chatzisarantis, 2007). Self-compassion can be defined as “being in touch with one’s own suffering” and “offering nonjudgmental understanding to one’s pain, inadequacies, and failures” (p. 87; Neff, 2003a). Breines and Chen (2012) explored self-compassion as it relates to self-improvement motivation and found that when individuals were accepting of personal failure, they may be more motivated to improve themselves. Based on Dweck’s work with self-theories, it’s been noted that people with entity beliefs see abilities as fixed or difficult to change whereas those with incremental beliefs see abilities as malleable or ever- changing (Hong, Chiu, Dweck, & Sacks, 1997; Dweck, 2000; Dweck & Moulden, 2005). In this study, we looked at whether self-compassion and entity/incremental beliefs predicted exercise persistence beyond exercise motivation alone. For this study, data gathered were analyzed using SPSS and Bivariate correlations were used to decide which subscales of self-compassion and exercise motivation to include in the regression analyses. Simultaneous linear regression revealed that several components of exercise motivation and self-compassion as well as entity and incremental beliefs significantly predict both exercise persistence (length of maintenance of exercise behavior) and behavior (workouts per week and minutes per session). The first model revealed statistical significance [F (16,198) = 6.10, p <.001] accounting for nearly 35% (R2=.349) of the variance in exercise persistence. Similarly, the second model [F (16,198) = 5.13, p <.001] accounted for roughly 31% (R2=.311) of the variance in exercise behavior. Some of the significant predictor variables for exercise behavior include self-kindness (ß=.193, t=2.43, p<.05), common humanity (ß=-.236, t=-2.97, p<.05), isolation (ß=.143, t=2.12, p<.05), enjoyment (ß=1.99, t=.265, p<.05), competition (ß=.384, t=4.13, p<.001), and weight management (ß=-.235, t=-3.37, p<.01). Further, both entity and incremental beliefs were found to be significant predictors as well (ß=.238, t=3.34, p<.01; ß=.149, t=2.16, p<.05). Participants College students from Oklahoma State University were recruited for participation through an online survey credit website called SONA. Participants were told the study was to examine beliefs related to exercise persistence. Data collected included basic demographics, beliefs related to exercise, current and past exercise patterns, and current exercise affiliations (e.g. club sports, athletics, classes). Participants received credit in certain classes for completing this survey. The sample consisted of 217 students, 57 of which were males and 157 were females, with 1 reporting other and 2 participants not reporting gender. The mean age of participants was 22.86 (SD = 6.25). The mean time spent exercising in minutes per week was 197.58 (SD = 237.10). METHODS ASSESSMENTCARE PLAN RESULTS Procedure and Measures Participants completed a packet of questionnaires including an informed consent, a demographic sheet, the Exercise Motivation Inventory-2 (EMI-2; Markland & Ingledew, 1997), the Conceptions of the Nature of Athletic Ability Questionnaire-2 (CNAAQ-2; Biddle et al., 2003), and the Self- Compassion Scale-Short Form (SCS; Neff, 2003b). Reliability has demonstrated acceptable internal consistency with alpha coefficients of.955,.645, and.663, respectively. Exercise behavior was a self-report of the number of days per week the participant exercised and the average length of their workout sessions in minutes; exercise persistence was a self-report of how long the current level of exercise was maintained (i.e., six levels ranging from “1-3 months” to “over 5 years”). Between the EMI-2 (Markland & Ingledew, 1997) and SCS (Neff, 2003) there were 20 sub-scale factors being explored along with entity and incremental beliefs (CNAAQ-2; Biddle et al., 2003). With just over 200 participants, it would not have been feasible to look at all the sub-scale variables. Therefore, bivariate correlations were ran to find which sub-scales to include in the regression analyses. Results from the regression models yielded some interesting outcomes. Half of the self- compassion subscales (self-kindness, common humanity, and isolation) were found to be significant predictors; however, the relationship that exists within the data was not expected. For example, it appears as though the roles of common humanity and isolation are opposite than originally presumed. Although this may be explained as individuals who endorsed higher scores for common humanity perceived their lapse in exercise behavior and persistence more globally, accepting that this is part of the human condition. Another notable finding is the significance of both entity and incremental beliefs. Previous analyses with a similar data set revealed that only entity beliefs significantly predicted exercise behaviors (Murrell, Dunkle, Chung, Gilbertson, & Jacobs, 2013). It was formerly hypothesized that incremental beliefs may not have been good predictors due to a variety of different motivations for exercising or seizing an exercise regimen, despite the belief that exercise abilities can be learned. Based on this and the new findings disputing it, we learned that incremental belief scores yielded from the CNAAQ-2 did correlate significantly with several of the EMI-2 and SCS subscales; including the ones identified as other predictor variables. While the EMI-2 yielded fewer significant predictors than anticipated, it is still important to note that exercising for enjoyment, competition, and weight management all seem to be strong predictors of one’s commitment to exercise. With any study, limitations exist. First, it is difficult to remove other variables that may affect the relationships found between entity/incremental beliefs, self-compassion, motivation, and exercise behaviors. This appears to be a major limitation to the study. Additionally, the demographics are more limited in this sample (i.e., all Oklahoma State University students), which limits the generalizability of the results. REFERENCES Biddle, S. J., Wang, C. J., Chatzisarantis, N. L., & Spray, C. M. (2003). Motivation for physical activity in young people: Entity and incremental beliefs about athletic ability. Journal of Sports Science, 21(12), 973-989. Bouchard, C., Blair, S. N., & Haskell, W. L. (2007). Why study physical activity and health. 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The development and validation of a scale to measure self-compassion. Self and Identity, 2(3), 223-250. Wang, C. K., & Biddle, S. J. H. (2001). Young people’s motivational profiles in physical activity: A cluster analysis. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 23, 1-22. Behavior Variableβtp Self-Kindness0.1932.4280.016 Common Humanity-0.236-2.9740.003 Isolation0.1432.1200.035 Entity Beliefs0.2383.3380.001 Incremental Beliefs0.1492.1590.032 Enjoyment0.2721.9900.048 Competition0.3163.2970.001 Weight Management-0.186-2.5840.011 Persistence Variableβtp Common Humanity-0.173-2.2340.027 Isolation0.1812.7730.006 Entity Beliefs0.1902.7530.006 Incremental Beliefs0.2163.2120.002 Enjoyment0.2651.9910.048 Competition0.3844.1300.000 Weight Management-0.235-3.3670.001 DISCUSSION