The public still doesn’t know how active it needs to be

The five-a-day message has been a marketing success, but people are unsure of activity levels / PIC: ©www.shutterstock.com/ Jill Chen

CEO,

Tonbridge & Malling Leisure Trust

I’m concerned that, despite the efforts of government and our industry, the nation doesn’t understand how much exercise it should be doing.

My fears were recently compounded by the results of a member survey we conducted. Of 199 respondents, all but one person knew they should eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day. However, only 38 per cent thought they should exercise for 150 minutes a week. Half of respondents believed the current activity recommendation is either 90 or 120 minutes a week.

In addition, while 85 per cent knew this exercise should be moderate, only 20 per cent understood the 150 minutes could be broken up into shorter, 10-minute bouts: almost half believed they had to exercise for 30 minutes at time.

What’s most worrying is that these are the views of people already committed to exercise – even they don’t know how much they should be doing.

The giants of supermarket retail clearly have greater influence over our thinking in respect of our health – witness their full frontal assault on selling us five-a-day – than the current resources or effort of government in communicating physical activity guidelines.

We need to join together as an industry to sell the Chief Medical Officer’s advice to our users and non-users, to help prevent the rising number of premature deaths caused primarily by physical inactivity – as well as by public ignorance of the level of exercise that could save their lives.

Remove online barriers to get people active

Group Marketing Manager,

Everyone Active

It’s vital that we as an industry take full advantage of online marketing channels and software solutions, so it was encouraging to see your ‘At the Touch of a Button’ feature (HCM June 15, p74). Just communicating online isn’t enough any more: we have to remove barriers and make it easier than ever to get active.

We have a responsibility to the local communities we serve to encourage people to meet physical activity guidelines. Everyone Active’s entire digital presence has just been overhauled for this purpose. Over 50 per cent of members visit us on mobile devices, so responsive design is critical.

In the first month after the site launch in April, we had 2.6 million page views, compared with just 1.3 million in April 2014. The Everyone Active app had 21,000 downloads in its first month, with 324,577 average visits per month.

Operators must be forward-thinking to keep up with the pace of technological progress.

We’re proud of ex-ukactive chief executive David Stalker’s comments on our new digital presence. He said: “It should be as easy to book exercise classes and other services as it is to book a train ticket or hotel room. These developments from Everyone Active have gone further than this minimum level, and are now supporting their communities using technology both inside and outside their facilities.”