The middle-aged are fittest
Middle-aged people are fitter and exercise more than younger people.
Researchers found that the increases in sports participation were not equal across all groups. People in good health and with good incomes, with cars and in higher social classes tended to exercise more. This was particularly evident in white men.
The lead researcher, Dr Emmanual Stamatakis, of University College London, suggested that older people might have been influenced by the exercise boom in the 1990s and kept it up since. He felt it was hard to explain “why younger people are falling back to doing less sport” and why it was more pronounced the younger the person was.
Dr Stamatakis suggested that the London Olympics in 2012 was a great opportunity to encourage participation in sport across a wide range of social groups. But he felt there had to be a “co-ordinated strategy to target those groups most in need” if the results were going to be long-lasting.
Stamatakis E, Chaudhury M. (In Press 2008) Temporal trends in adults’ sports participation patterns in England between 1997 and 2006: The Health Survey for England. British Journal of Sports Medicine.