Gretchen Reynolds reports for The New York Times on a new study showing that most adults are exercising less during the coronavirus pandemic. But, interestingly, many older adults are exercising more. What’s actually happening?
There’s no question that most of us are leading very different lives during this pandemic. Overall, we are moving less. Working from home has become more of the norm, along with less travel and less running around.
The pandemic has also altered the way we exercise–when, where and how. Thanks to our smartphones, researchers can study some of our exercise patterns, including our steps. Not surprisingly, we took fewer steps, on average 27 percent fewer, in the first month of lockdowns. People who had exercised a lot were some of the people who reduced their exercise regime a lot.
To understand how people’s exercise regimes changed, researchers studied the routines of nearly 5,400 people. They all had downloaded an exercise app on their phones that tracked their movements: walking, running and cycling. And, they ranged in age from young to old.
During the summer, after the first couple of months of lockdown, people began to exercise more. Most interestingly, people 65 and older got back to or exceeded their prior exercise levels.
It’s not clear why exercise levels returned to where they had been or increased for older adults. But, some think that unlike working adults with kids around more and in need of more attention, older adults had more free time. Older adults also might have chosen to exercise more, in an effort to better protect themselves against the novel coronavirus.
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