Promoting Sport blog

Why people do exercise

Men and women say reducing their risk of cancer is last on a list of reasons to exercise according to a national survey* by Cancer Research UK and Cannons.

After keeping fit, the main motivation for 16-24 year olds to exercise is to look good. 59 per cent of women said they wanted to lose weight. And only 39 per cent of people wanted to reduce their risk of cancer.

This backs up our research, and makes me think that if people's main reason for exercising is to look good and lose weight, then that's what we should promote. The reduction in the risk of cancer will come automatically if people do exercise or sport, so let's promote the benefits that they're really interested in.

For tips on how to promote sport to people of different ages, and to see why people of different ages take part visit the How to promote sport to different people section of the Promoting Sport toolkit.

Go Play Rugby

Go Play Rugby is the Rugby Football Union's campaign to get people back into playing rugby.

The main element to it is the club finder, but it also has information about rugby events.

What the clever guys in the Rugby Football Union found out was that most people who used to play rugby but don't play anymore just need to know where to go in order to get involved. Using this tool they just have to find their local club, put in their name, phone number, email and preferred time of contact, and someone will get in contact with them about coming along and starting playing.

Promoting Sport labs

The Promoting Sport labs is a section to the Promoting Sport toolkit where I'm going to be trying stuff out. The things in here might now work 100% of the time, but it should give me a chance to put in some interesting bits and pieces.

Examples of what I've put in there so far are the automatic press release writer and some search engine optimisation tools.

Let me know what you think in the comments section, if you've got any ideas for what you'd like to see created then do tell me and I'll see what I can do.

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Support by mail versus over the phone

We know that helping people with motivation and goal-setting is an effective way to help them increase their activity levels. But what is the best way to provide them with that support? It's generally considered best to do it face-to-face, but can it work over the phone, by email or by mail?

Some researchers in America found feedback delivered via mail was equally as effective at increasing physical activity in the short-term and potentially more effective long-term than feedback delivered via phone counseling.

This lets us know that it could be very worthwhile developing that support tool for people. I will be looking into how this support was delivered and seeing if we can develop a tool to make the best of Temple University's experience.

The report is saved in the Promoting Sport toolkit in the How to Guides section, or you can see the original article on Eureka Alert.

Together for Sport conference

The first lot of feedback from the Together for Sport conference is in now, and is stored in How to guides section of the Promoting Sport toolkit.

According to the delegates the biggest problems with promoting sport were:

Mixed messages

Lack of money

How to use non-traditional media

Lack of time.

For people's ideas on how to solve these problems, and others take a look at the feedback sheet. I'll be updating this as we get the rest of the feedback in.

The Yanks do some great work too!

The Centre for Disease control and prevention just released a report about Active for Life a work-based activity project run by the American Cancer Society.

After 10 weeks of running the project all physical activity measures had increased significantly, with the proportion of people doing enough exercise increasing from 34% to 48%. However when they did a follow up after 6 months they found that people were going back towards their previous activity levels.

They got these results through the use of posters, newsletters, health fairs, and site captains to promote enrollment in Active for Life. The interventions themselves included goal-setting, self-monitoring, incentives, and team competition.

If you want to mimic some of their success in the future then I believe the stages of change leaflet (working title) will help with the best tool we have for the goal-setting and self-monitoring. I'm working on this at the moment with Jo Foster (one of the physical activity coordinators in London).

The report is also stored as a pdf in the how to guides section of the Promoting Sport toolkit.

Together for Sport conference

The Together for Sport conference from last Thursday gave us lots to think about, with some interesting presentations about sponsorship, segmentation, the Shape Up Notts campaign and the Promoting Sport toolkit.

Feedback from County Sports Partnerships about the main problems they and others in sport face when trying to promote sport were:

• Lack of money
• Lack of time
• Lack of a clear message (ie 3x30 a week or part of the 5x30 a week? Or to focus on something else entirely)
• Lack of understanding of how to use non-traditional media

I'm getting feedback in from everyone and will post more detailed feedback when I have it, including people's suggestions as to how to start to solve these problems.