Erasmus plus - Stretching and Strengthening at Work interact

Stretching and Strengthening at Work

It appears that a majority of Europeans do not meet the physical activity recommendations, while staying more sedentary during both leisure time and work. According to a recent report ( European Commission , 2018), nearly half of Europeans (46%) never exercise or play sport, and this proportion has increased from 2013 to 2017 for 4% ( Figure 3 ). Less than half of Europeans (44%) do some form of other physical activity (such as cycling, dancing or gardening) at least once a week, while 35% never do this kind of activity at all.

Seldom, 14

Never, 46

With some regularity, 33

Regularly, 7

Figure 3 | The proportion (%) of Europeans who exe rcise or play sport On a usual day, around two thirds of Europeans (69%) spend between 2.5 and 8.5 hours sitting, while 15% of respondents do not walk for 10 minutes at a time at all in a weekly period. The amount of regular activity that people do tends to decrease with age, with an engagement in sport and physical activity being less prevalent among people with lower levels of education and those with financial difficulties. A lack of time is by far the main reason given for not practicing sport more regularly (40%). Other factors mentioned are a lack of motivation or interest (20%) and having a disability or illness (14%) ( European Commission , 2018). Only 13% of Europeans play sport or engage in other physical activities at work ( European Commission , 2018). Considering socio-professional categories, 26% of managers never exercise or play sport, compared with 37% in other white-collar jobs, 36% of self-employed people and 49% of manual workers. Furthermore, people in white collar occupations tend to spend more time sitting down. The proportion that spends more than 8.5 hours per day sitting down is 17% among managers and 19% among other white-collar workers. In addition, it appears that the lack of time is the principal obstacle to take part in regular exercise, while informal sport settings (e.g. home, parks, outdoors, workplace) are more popular than sport clubs and health or fitness centers. This perhaps opens a window of opportunity to develop and implement specific exercise programs that are straightforward, time-efficient and highly applicable to different categories of employees for advancing physical activity at an informal setting such as workplace ( Figure 4 ). Tackling physical (in)activity at work

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