Health Survey for England 2008 | findings

Physical activity and fitness

Researcher | Not available

The Government recommends that adults should do at least 30 minutes of at least moderate activity five days a week. This can be accumulated in bouts of at least 10 minutes. Children should do a minimum of 60 minutes each day of at least moderate physical activity. We found that:

Based on self-reported information, 39% of men and 29% of women aged 16 and over met the government's minimum recommendations for physical activity: There was a clear association between meeting the physical activity recommendations and body mass index (BMI) category. 46% of men and 36% of women who were not overweight or obese met the recommendations, followed by 41% of men and 31% of women who were overweight and only 32% of men and 19% of women who were obese.
Using objective measurements, only 1 in 20 adults meet activity recommendations.: When actual physical activity was measured, only 6% of men and 4% of women met the government's current recommendations for physical activity. People were asked to wear an accelerometer, a small device that measures intensity of activity, for a week, to find out how much they actually did.
Young adults were most likely to have met the recommendations - 11% of men and 8% of women aged 16-34. The proportion of men and women meeting the recommendations fell in the older age groups.
Men are significantly fitter than women: 32% of men and 60% of women were not fit enough to sustain walking at 3mph up a 5% incline, and were classified as 'unfit'. Cardiovascular fitness was measured among a sub-sample of survey participants aged 16-74, using a step test. We found that lack of fitness increased significantly with age.
Teenage girls are the least likely to be active: Based on self-reported data, 31% of boys and 22% of girls aged 4-15 met the government recommendations for children's physical activity. The results were almost the same when based on objective measures. But there are big differences by age - half of boys and a third of girls aged 4-10 met the target, but only 7% of boys and none of the girls in our study aged 11-15.