{"id":18923,"date":"2018-10-25T09:04:13","date_gmt":"2018-10-25T08:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ukactive.com\/news\/four-million-britons-get-active-as-result-of-milestone-national-fitness-day\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T13:59:26","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T13:59:26","slug":"four-million-britons-get-active-as-result-of-milestone-national-fitness-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ukactive.com\/cy\/news\/four-million-britons-get-active-as-result-of-milestone-national-fitness-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Four million Britons get active as result of milestone National Fitness Day\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

National Fitness Day 2018 directly influenced over 4.1m million to be active on Wednesday 26y<\/sup> September as Britons across the country embraced the fun of fitness.<\/p>\n

More than 1.25m children and young people got moving on the day, as schools across the UK led children in 10 minutes of activity at 10am, as part of the \u201810@10\u2019 programme. This represented a major increase of more than 56% on last year.<\/p>\n

Figures also show individuals in Scotland were the most active in the UK, clocking up a whopping 57 minutes of physical activity on average on National Fitness Day. Meanwhile, awareness of the campaign grew hugely across all of the home nations, as National Fitness Day fulfilled its aim to deliver positive impacts across the length and breadth of the nation.<\/p>\n

The increased regional participation and recognition of National Fitness Day was spearheaded by the #Fitness2Me hero campaign, which saw 12 heroes selected to represent the 9 regions of England, alongside the nations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and inspire their local communities into activity.<\/p>\n

Co-ordinated by not-for-profit health body ukactive, National Fitness Day is the most visible annual celebration of physical activity of the year. It is a chance to raise awareness of the role that physical activity plays in our lives, helping to highlight the fun of fitness and the rewards of exercise.<\/p>\n

National Fitness Day 2018 got off to a flying start style with DDMIX Founder and Strictly Come Dancing Judge Dame Darcey Bussell, leading hundreds of members of the public in a mass dance-fitness class at the City of London\u2019s Guildhall Courtyard in the heart of the capital, with cameras from BBC, ITV and Channel 5 in attendance \u2013 helping propel the media reach of the campaign up to over 66m.<\/p>\n

The event also once again proved hugely popular across social media, with 8,000 mentions on the day, including posts from Arsenal FC, comic-book writer Stan Lee and Loose Women\u2019s Andrea McLean taking reach to 64m.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s National Fitness Day methodology was the first to fully quantify the number of people who were directly<\/em> motivated into activity by National Fitness Day, arriving at a figure of 4.1m.<\/p>\n

Employing the same methodology as high-profile national campaigns such as This Girl Can, ukactive commissioned polling from research specialist ComRes to calculate participation levels, allied with real-time figures from the activity data aggregator, DataHub, website sign-ups and additional reporting.<\/p>\n

Over 58,000 people got active within the workplace \u2013 motivated by workplace partner AXA PPP healthcare\u2019s \u2018Flying Start\u2019 campaign for employees to get active before work or at the office, with workplaces across the country signed up for official activity sessions on-the-day.<\/p>\n

Other key figures from the day included:<\/p>\n