By the standards of many folk on here, I'm not particularly active. I ride a couple of times a week and walk to and from work (about 25 minutes each way) and I eat reasonably sensibly. Apparently though, this is pretty good going.
The NHS are setting up a scheme to encourage people to walk 30 minutes a day and will be incentivising this with rewards (quite what is a little uncertain at present).
Apparently physical inactivity is associated with one in six deaths (not sure if this is England or the UK), according to NHS England. A person is classified as physically inactive if they do less than 30 minutes of moderate-intensity equivalent physical activity per week!!
At least it seems slightly more helpful that handing out weight loss jabs like sweets (and having a reasonable bmi doesn't make you fit & healthy) but I can't help thinking that there are missed opportunities for encouraging & assisting folk to become more active (we've talked on other threads about how the Cycle to Work scheme could be made more about health & wellbeing than just getting cars off the road).
If would also be great to prioritize the young (and perhaps support youngsters and their families in buying bikes/sports equipment). It seems a particularly pertinent time as I'm starting to see articles about young folk unsure about what they're going to do with all their free time once the social media ban kicks in! Also a good opportunity for the ailing cycling industry & cycling bodies to get involved.
Anyway, the article's here if anyone is interested.
BBC.CO.UK The cynic in me only sees false benefits here – it will be negotiated deals with big brands for questionable discounts that could be found elsewhere (often better). All I see will be things like '10% off these £130 trainers' (when Sports Shoes Direct will have last year's colour in stock for £85 anyway).
From that article.... "Sonia Pombo, head of research and impact at Action on Salt & Sugar, says:"
I'm not sure they've thought very hard about the acronym of that organisation 😄
Good for people with dogs
Also a good opportunity for the ailing cycling industry & cycling bodies to get involved.
Active Travel England are really pushing active travel as a health benefit now. Saying how the increased active travel leads to X fewer days off sick, Y fewer GP appointments etc.
They're really trying to move away from the view of "active travel" as Middle Aged Man In Lycra or helmet hair or pollution. Just framing it as a cheap and easy way to improved health.
Bribing people to do the minimum exercise. What a time to be alive.
I'll start off by saying the OP, who walks for about an hour per day, eats well and rides their bike twice per week is easily in the top 5%, possibly 2% of active people in the UK.
I'll follow this by saying that this is a cycling forum and I suspect even those who don't cycle will still be active, so any views will be heavily skewed.
I work in an office job and have lots of colleagues who walk from car to office to car and that's it. There are way more who do that than do any kind of regular exercise. So, whilst I am inherently cynical about this idea, the concept of pushing people to active transport, or incentivising people to move is not the worst idea in the world.
I think we'll find it will be more directed at people at risk of serious health complaints like heart disease, or obesity, or diabetes. People already on the NHS books.
Not for the general public as a whole.
Bribing people to do the minimum exercise. What a time to be alive.
There are already various local schemes called Active Travel Social Prescription. Basically the doctor prescribes exercise instead of drugs, the person gets put in touch with a local council-run scheme to loan them an e-bike or join a walking group.
It can only be a good thing - it is a shame we have to incentivise things like this, but it's where we are.
Good for people with dogs
Yes, it really can take 30 minutes to walk the 200m from the car to where the dog routinely takes a dump and back, all without looking up from your phone. And then drive the 200m home.
Yes, it really can take 30 minutes to walk the 200m from the car to where the dog routinely takes a dump and back, all without looking up from your phone. And then drive the 200m home
Speak for yourself. My dog has zero recall so if he needs exercise I have to exercise, if he's off lead then he's gone. 40 mins walk morning and night for him, which gets my steps in as well. Good job he's a lazy greyhound really.
Speak for yourself. My dog has zero recall so if he needs exercise I have to exercise, if he's off lead then he's gone. 40 mins walk morning and night for him, which gets my steps in as well. Good job he's a lazy greyhound really.
Ooh touchy! I didn't say all dog owners. Just most.
So if I ride and swim most days am I at top level bribery? Something like a new E Bike for instance 👍😁
It’s a sad state of affairs when people need encouragement to do such a small and pathetic amount of exercise.
It’s a sad state of affairs when people need encouragement to do such a small and pathetic amount of exercise.
Part of the problem, as I alluded to above, is that so many people are used to going everywhere by car. Even to the gym (oh the irony!). Lifestyles are generally fairly sedentary - many people walk 20m to the car, drive 30-60 minutes to an office, sit in the office all day, walk 20m back to the car, drive home, walk 20m into the house then sit on the sofa watching TV all evening. That can be their entire working week.
Literally the only "exercise" is a walk from the house to the car, the car into the shops / the office etc and then the car into the house. Kids grown up being taken everywhere by car so it's entirely normal for them.
And social media feeds you videos of people apparently doing 4 minutes of exercise a day or taking one simple supplement and ending up looking like Jack Reacher. Everyone wants the easy way out and most people don't even realise how little exercise they're doing.
Bribing people to do the minimum exercise. What a time to be alive.
if exercise was a drug it would be regarded as a wonder drug that prevents and improves a wide range of physical and mental health conditions. It would also, if just invented, cost loads.
it is a shame we have to incentivise things like this, but it's where we are.
people en masse respond to the circumstances they're in. If we were still Hunter gatherers we'd get exercise hunting and, er, gathering. If it was 60 or so years ago most of us wouldn't have cars and would be doing physical jobs. And there'd be no deliveroo etc. Our country is now set up to surround people with tasty but poor quality food that it takes zero effort to get hold of (the US is even worse). Businesses make loads of money from this situation.
Given the extent of these pressures it's unlikely that rewarding modest exercise will be able to make more than minor inroads, but it is very worth doing.
It’s a sad state of affairs when people need encouragement to do such a small and pathetic amount of exercise.
Calm down dear 😆
Not everyone is poised ready to jump up and go running across the land. Some folk are working 60+ hours, are getting home knackered and just want to sit and do nowt.
Perhaps even previously they kept fit, but due to commitment of one type or another have let things lapse
Bloody ell
they owe me a fortune in back pay
Some folk are working 60+ hours
168 hours in a week even with an hour each way commute you’ve got 98 hours left. 8 hours sleep a night leaves you with 42. 1 hour per days exercise still leaves you with 35 hours spare.
Im being deliberately provocative, but time is not the thing that stops most people exercising.
Im being deliberately provocative, but time is not the thing that stops most people exercising.
A friend of mine walks pretty much everywhere, he thinks nothing of walking an hour each way to work, it's just his 'personal time' and he routinely does 15,000 steps / day. His leisure time is hiking, he walks to the shops and the gym...
His wife is a member of the same gym and while he goes 3-4 times a week, she goes once a month at most (mostly just to use the spa!). He was complaining about her attitude and her constant excuses that "she doesn't have time" and "she's always busy" and he was saying he regularly does a 60hr working week but the difference is that she finishes work (a much less arduous job than him and working from home!) and flops on the sofa in front of the TV; he finishes work, walks home via the gym and doesn't watch TV.
I did wonder how they were still married because it seemed to genuinely frustrate him that she was so lazy - but so much of it is ingrained habits and attitudes.
I did wonder how they were still married
If she's anything like My Wife she'll be worn out because she's cooking, cleaning, doing the laundry & generally looking after him (I'd imagine that this all counts as exercise). To my shame I'm the lazy one in our relationship.
I am dubious that most participants will get anything of much value but gamifying exercise may well be a good way forward. Maybe if there were some genuinely desirable prizes which could be won via a lottery drawer which you earn entries to by hitting certain step targets could be a good thing especially if businesses could supply these free in exchange for some free advertising.
Holidays from Jet2, phones from Samsung, meal vouchers from Spoons - lots of scope.
Maybe have some drawers which you can only enter by doing 50k steps a week for six weeks etc.
This makes me so angry.
Really really angry.
For the last 30 years local authorities have been selling off playing fields for housing. You can’t get more than 100 yards of badly designed cycle lane before the local idiots start protesting and it gets reversed. Every new shopping centre is built out of town with only roads to connect to it. The previously free car parks in my local forest have been changed to unreasonably expensive. I could go on and on about how physical excercise in the UK has been literally taken away from the poor and become the preserve of the rich - and now suddenly this.
Get. In. The .Sea. You. Patronising. W.A.N.K.E.R.S
Yup, it's a social problem caused by 40 years of Neo Liberalism.Lazy is just a Bourgeoisie concept.
On hearing the headline of this proposal late afternoon yesterday (she records then later watches Jeremy Vine Ch5), my wife's visceral response was "Oh God, no wonder the NHS never has any money " 🤷
Literally the only "exercise" is a walk from the house to the car, the car into the shops
Who do you think is embracing online grocery deliveries?
This makes me so angry.
Really really angry.For the last 30 years local authorities have been selling off playing fields for housing. You can’t get more than 100 yards of badly designed cycle lane before the local idiots start protesting and it gets reversed. Every new shopping centre is built out of town with only roads to connect to it. The previously free car parks in my local forest have been changed to unreasonably expensive. I could go on and on about how physical excercise in the UK has been literally taken away from the poor and become the preserve of the rich - and now suddenly this.
Get. In. The .Sea. You. Patronising. W.A.N.K.E.R.S
Must vary from place to place then. Around Glasgow there are a few big shopping centres built close to motorways. You can also walk or cycle to them. I know because I do cycle to some of them.
And aside from rural roads and motorways almost every road has a custom separated walking lane beside it. THere are little used though.
People are choosing to use cars, buses, trains, or taxis. They are not forced to because it is impossible to walk or cycle anywhere.
Plenty free rural car parks around here as well.
Lifestyles are generally fairly sedentary - many people walk 20m to the car, drive 30-60 minutes to an office, sit in the office all day, walk 20m back to the car, drive home, walk 20m into the house then sit on the sofa watching TV all evening. That can be their entire working week.
exactly, the announcement of the scheme has really made me think how much time I spend on my feet in the working week, I do a lot of WFH, I should try and do a lunchtime walk for 30 mins, if only to help clear my head, but it's inertia, getting into the habit of making a walk outside sometimes needs a spur, perhaps this scheme might be it.
days in the office are much more walky, perhaps I should get into the office more 🤣
actually I'd rather go by train/bike when I am on campus, and sometimes come the long way home...
We already have a similar system in Sheffield where you can log miles and get discounts, in principle it's a good idea but in practice the execution was absolutely terrible, the app was more clunky than this forum, the data collection was super vague, data security was was even worse (there were no privacy regions and times / routes were automatically made public... hello burglar / stalker), you could only ever get anywhere near the advertised points on the day you signed up, the rewards were kinda poor (something like walk 20 minutes a day for a month for 50% off a single coffee) and the company running it looked like their business structure was based on the Panama Papers, there also seemed to be no oversight so the company could quite easily be billing the council for all these discounts but no one could tell if a, people were actually being all that active and b, no one could tell if all the cash was being passed on... Oh and no 3rd party integration so you couldn't push or pull data from or to Garmin or Strava etc. Totally stank of a local councillor who had a friend with an idea how to milk the system.
I hope but really doubt it's improved since I last looked.
the app was more clunky than this forum
🤣
exactly, and NHS and rolling out tech have not had a good track record...
Maybe allow those that achieve this low hanging target to gain priority use of the NHS when they need it as a reward? You know, like actually seeing a doctor without the three week wait!
This thread is interesting… not because it actually provides any substance to the idea behind the scheme (it seems to have been borrowed from some private health schemes where activity can get you advantaged like reduced premiums or other benefits). Rather that (a) people are blaming the government / infrastructure for lack of activity - not their own choices or corporate greed carefully crafted to manipulate you into those choices and (b) people who are already way better than average scoffing at those who struggle for whatever reason. Not actually that different to a bunch of pious religious types looking down their noses at people who drink or smoke too much and believing they are better people.
getting into the habit of making a walk outside sometimes needs a spur, perhaps this scheme might be it.
And there's a disproportionate benefit to even a small amount of exercise. According to my detailed medical research (I watched a YouTube video) even a 10 minute walk after meals can make a big difference to your glucose level, so paying someone to do a post-prandial stroll could well be very cost effective if it reduces diabetes even by a tiny amount.
Poly,big food and their corrupt lackies in govt are very much to blame for the obesity epidemic.
Poly,big food and their corrupt lackies in govt are very much to blame for the obesity epidemic.
I'd say that's not entirely untrue but a bit simplistic. You have to add a pretty huge dollop of 'the human condition'. Humans are short termist creatures and given the options of cheap, convenient and tasty will rarely look much further. We are inherently lazy - why walk when we can drive, why drive when someone will deliver it. We are also lazy cognitively. Why research, why think for yourself when you can just put your blinkers on and put your hand out. As a vegan who cares about animal welfare I am reminded daily how the vast bulk of the population are just too 'self' and 'now' orientated to think about the factory farmed calories they put in their mouths beyond 'mmm tasty' and doing what they have always done.
'Big food' has merely given us what 'we' craved. Government could have stopped them maybe, but would any government accused of generating a 'nanny state' and a hiking up food prices ever got re-elected by the turged masses? As in many parts of life we very much get what we deserve, and we are collectively a smear of shit.
Weirdly they don't reward staff that regularly walk for longer than that while working for the NHS.
Obviously they do charge us to park in the staff carpark but don't guarantee a space, maybe that's how they'll fund it?
Part of the problem, as I alluded to above, is that so many people are used to going everywhere by car.
This is why Low Traffic Neighbourhoods improve health - by making driving slightly less convenient than walking/cycling you reduce the number of very short car journeys as people walk instead when they realise it'll take the same time. The best way of making people more active is redesigning streets to enable people to fit in 'incidental activity'.
But then politicians back down in the face of puce faced car brains on Facebook and the schemes get binned/pulled out...
Weirdly they don't reward staff that regularly walk for longer than that while working for the NHS.
Some NHS Trusts are really good on this, if not necessity for the "right" reasons. MFT (one of whose sites is extremely space-constrained) apparently pushed quite hard for the Oxford Road cycle lane to be built. And as we know, people who walk or cycle to work are less likely to be off sick…
Government could have stopped them maybe,
we did for a while, put some pretty harsh limits on the amount of salt that manufacturers could put in ready-meals and it worked really well, the Tories changed it to voluntary rather than compulsory (of course they did) but still just under half the ready meals you can buy contain the recommended level and are far far healthier than they were.
Our council used to have a 'walkaday' scheme. I trained as a health walk leader for this. This meant looking after and walking with people who had been 'prescribed' exercise (in our case light walking) by the nhs. The patients were usually very, very overweight, or recovering from heart attacks, stokes and certain surgery.
The walks were short, easy with the path in a figure of eight, flat and had benches every so many metres. I was absolutely shocked at how some of these people (some often fairly young) had ended up so ill. The reason was always lifestyle, bad food, little if no exercise and not having any role models.
I went on to lead walks that were 2 hours long and were for people who had progressed from the very easy health walks to something longer, more strenuous and out in the countryside.
These were always well attended and it was safe for women to come along on their own as everyone was friendly, encouraging and welcoming. These walks also helped to fend off loneliness.
Sadly the council ended this fantastic scheme due to the cost of insurance for the leaders. Sad really as many walkers made friends, lost a lot of weight and got fit with like minded people.
