Funding to help more people be active in Cumbria

A new government strategy is encouraging more people to become active and increase the amount of physical exercise they do.

The government announced their new sport strategy which aims to get 2.5 million more adults to be active by 2030.

Wellbeing walks are held across Cumbria in order to encourage people to move for their health.

Richard Johnson from Active Cumbria explains why they are trying to encourage more people to become move more.

He said: “So basically across Cumbria, 25% of adults aren't active and that means that they're doing less than 30 minutes a week physical activity. Also around half of children and young people are also inactive.

"So again that means that they're doing less than 60 minutes of physical activity each day. Well those figures are fairly consistent with with the rest of the country. So we're certainly not any any particularly worse. But then again we're not any better off than the rest of the country either.

"So I think through the launch of this strategy, what we're trying to do is to really pull partners together to to work collaboratively, as I say, to really try and shift the dial on some of these some of these figures.

“As people get older, they become less active And what we want to do is to try and sort of reach out to older adult communities and indeed to communities that have perhaps got long term health conditions and really say that, look, actually doing something is better than doing nothing.

"The link between physical activity and health outcomes and social outcomes is huge."

Richard Johnson explains the benefits to children are being more active.

He said: "We know that children who are more physically active are more likely to perform better at school. They're more likely to have better relationships in school and out of school.

"We also see that older adults and adults that are more physically active make better relationships have got better mental health outcomes.”

Helen Evans a SwingFit Instructor explains the benefits to people doing more physical exercise.

She said: “Physically there's a lot of stretching and a lot of obviously cardio as well. But then there's also the community aspects we stay behind once a month for coffee.

"So it's sort of make you friends as well. And everybody often comments the next day, you know how they could feel it but in how week a week they feel improvement. So I think it's definitely, definitely really beneficial."

The government strategy aims to target people of all ages and backgrounds with a target of 75% of funding going towards areas with the lowest levels of physical activity.

Jean Parker explains why she has been attending the fitness classes.

She said: “While it's giving me the stamina renewed. I'm a farmer's wife and I need to do quite a lot of walking.

"So this gives me a slightly different form of exercise from walking and I do need to have quite a bit of stamina looking after grandchildren as well as sheep. So yes, it is just keeping me fit and active for longer."