London: New research has shown that people who work full time are fitting in more exercise and sport than those who work 25 hours or less each week.
Fitness Firsts ten-point Health Tracker has questioned more than 8,000 people over the past 18 month on a range of health aspects such as stress, alcohol consumption, water intake and fitness levels and found that those who work part time are significantly less likely to take any exercise or participate in any sport.
In a society that is well documented for being short on time the research found that those working more than 30 hours a week are almost 50% more likely to exercise or play sport than those who work part time. According to the research 44% of the population are working over 30 hours a week, this means that nearly 12,500,000 of the population are participating in over 16 hours a week of exercise.
The retired age group, a population of roughly 11,500,000, are the second highest group to take part in some form of exercise, with 18% putting on those sweat bands to do 16 hours or more exercise in a week, putting students and part time workers to shame with only 3% working out for this length of time.
Though those who spend over 16 hours a week doing exercise dont see themselves as the fittest, in fact those who spend between 11 to 15 hours per week working out rated themselves 12% healthier than those who are exercising more and for longer.
Nick Smith of Fitness First believes, in a time poor society sport and fitness is a great way to escape from the day to day stresses of work. These findings are very encouraging as it shows that fitness is not being ignored when time is precious.
The Index provides an overall health score out of 100: the higher the score the better the overall health of the person surveyed. Full time workers gave themselves an average score of 42 out of 100, whereas part time workers, working less than 8 hours a week gave themselves the poor score of 2/100 and students, fairing not much better, gave themselves 5/100, while those who are retired rate themselves at a medioca 24 out of 100.