Intelligent Health’s award-winning physical activity initiative, Beat the Street, has helped thousands of women become active in the past year.
Beat the Street is a unique walking and cycling challenge that sparks long-term behaviour change by turning communities into a giant game. Last year, more than 300,000 people from towns and cities in the UK, Ireland and Austria competed to see if their school, community group or business could travel further than others in their area. 71% of all adult registrations (42,150) were women with the majority between the ages of 35-44.
New data released by Intelligent Health shows that the game had a powerful impact for hundreds of thousands of women by massively decreasing inactivity. In 2017, there was a 39% reduction in women reporting doing just 30 minutes or more of exercise on just zero or one a day week after playing Beat the Street. Additionally, there was a 17% increase in the proportion of women meeting Chief Medical Officer guidelines of 150 minutes or more of exercise per week after taking part in the challenge.
Women are significantly less likely to take part in sports compared to men with just 31.9% of women taking part in sport at least once a week compared to 40.5% of men. Sport England’s This Girl Can research stated two million women were less active than men but 75% wanted to be active. Beat the Street has been proven to be hugely successful at breaking down the barriers to physical activity and encourages people to make long-term changes to their behaviour.
Beat the Street has had a powerful impact for thousands of women across the world such as Hayley from Rhondda Cynon Taff who became more active along with her family after taking part in the challenge.
Katherine Knight, Marketing Director for Intelligent Health, said: “Tackling the imbalance in inactivity between men and women is essential to improving the health of the UK and we are proud that so many of our registered participants are women. Not only have we encouraged hundreds of thousands of women to become more active but we understand the strong influencing role they have within their own families.
“If we want to transform activity levels then listening to women and really tailoring activity to fit with when, where and how they want to get active is the solution. Sport England evidence shows women want to get active (1) but they need support to get active on their terms and in their community. Beat the Street is designed to do just that and that’s why it works.”
