Cover Story
Swinging into action
by Sarah Barnett
Congratulations, New Zealand. We’re right up there in
the exercise stakes – and it’s bringing us big benefits.
Who knew we were such a nation of groovers? Tania Kopytko, executive director of Dance Aotearoa New Zealand, reports that just a couple of years ago her organisation estimated around 270,000 Kiwis were involved in some kind of dance. But the latest research from Sport & Recreation New Zealand (Sparc) reveals it’s more like double that number.
In the biggest physical activity survey Sparc has undertaken to date, dance came eighth on the list of most popular activities in the past year, with more than half a million Kiwis taking to the floor. That’s more followers, Kopytko points out, than rugby – which didn’t make the top 20 – and netball have combined. It drives golf into ninth place.
“New Zealanders love to dance,” Kopytko says, delightedly. “But for some reason, it’s not sitting up there, acknowledged for its huge amount of energy and passion.” While there are reasons dance doesn’t have the visibility of something like rugby – “You don’t drive past people doing it in fields on the weekend” – she thinks the growth in involvement has been simmering for a while.
Unlike previous activity surveys undertaken by Sparc or the Ministry of Health, the 2007/08 Active New Zealand Survey of adults aged 16-and-up didn’t merely ask how much exercise people were doing, but drilled down into what kind of sport and recreation activities were getting Kiwi heart rates up. The survey found that, overall, 48% of us met the recommended levels of physical activity of 30 minutes a day, at least five days a week.
The survey isn’t directly comparable with previous years’ studies but Grant McLean, Sparc’s manager of research, says we’ve held fairly steady at that level. If “holding steady” doesn’t sound overwhelmingly good news, he points out that given increased pressures on people’s time, it’s actually a major achievement. “We think it’s good in this day and age … people are pushed for their leisure time through longer working hours and the lure of TV, the PlayStation, things like that – but people are still doing a lot of sport and recreation in New Zealand.” Similar studies in the US, the UK and Canada have found declining levels of physical activity.
And if 48% also doesn’t sound outstanding, it does put us around the top internationally – although, Mclean says, it’s hard to quantify, as study methodologies differ. We took part in a 20-country comparison study between 2002 and 2003, which put us at the top of the charts.
Although the results weren’t published, Adrian Bauman, professor of public health at the University of Sydney, wrote to congratulate Sparc on the unofficial results: “Having a sustained and comprehensive physical activity and sport strategy is a likely contributor to this remarkable achievement: namely, having the greatest proportion of physically active adults, in New Zealand.”
There is a clear slant in New Zealand towards recreation activities, like gardening and fishing, over the classic team sport activities that round out the bottom of the list.
What that means, McLean says, is that getting out and about is still “core to the Kiwi way of life”, and it bears out other research into why we exercise – not to reduce our blood pressure or risk of heart disease, but rather that “right at the top of the list is the fun factor, the enjoyment, and then the social side of it. And people do like to challenge themselves, set personal goals. But pleasure and enjoyment are always going to be a big hook to get into it.”
“The encouraging news from this is half the population are there already,” McLean says. “Half the population is doing five days, 30 minutes, but another 20% of the population is almost there, doing three or four days a week … Really 70% of the population is doing pretty well.”
As Sparc moves into forming its strategic plan for the next year, McLean says, the survey results will play a part. One of the keys will be getting that next group over the line. “New” activities like dance highlight how many opportunities there are to encourage not-quite-couch potatoes, and McLean is heartened by some of the other new research, which shows when Kiwis exercise. A third of those who meet the minimum requirements do so through their jobs, and another 18% do so through “active transport” – in other words, walking, running or cycling to work. Because this survey is the first to measure that, McLean says it’s hard to say whether there has been an increase, although “where I live, in Karori, I’ve definitely noticed an increase in people cycling to work”.
If the results of this survey mean employers provide the means for their staff to exercise at work, then so much the better, he says. “You’ve got a captive audience; you can make sure people get out and organised in groups – make sure you take your hour.”
And if local authorities know that a sizeable number of people use the ultimate in personal transport – their legs – to get around, more could put the resources in place to make commuting more pedestrian- and bike-friendly.
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