“…Collectively these results add support to previous suggestions of potential public health value of parkrun [7][8][9]35 . Although average improvements in all outcomes were modest, this is expected in a sample of largely healthy, active adults who voluntarily engage in running.…”
Section: What This Study Addssupporting
confidence: 90%
“…The health and wellbeing potential of participation in parkrun has been widely endorsed 7,8 , and early research is encouraging. A cross-sectional analysis of 7308 adult participants in the UK who had been attending a median of 12 months, indicated that parkrun was successful in engaging some population sub-groups who are underrepresented in national physical activity statistics (females, middle-aged and older adults, and overweight) 9 .…”
Background
Mass participation events are recognized as a way of engaging low-active individuals in health-enhancing physical activity, but there is a need to investigate the sustained effects on behaviour and health. This study aimed to examine changes in self-reported physical activity, weight and wellbeing over 12 months in participants of parkrun, a weekly mass participation 5 km running event.
Methods
New parkrun registrants (n = 354) completed self-reported measures of physical activity, weight, happiness and stress, at registration, 6 months and 12 months. Objective data on attendance and fitness (i.e. run dates and finishing times) were obtained from the parkrun database.
Results
Overall physical activity levels were high at baseline, but significantly increased over the first 6 months, before declining. By 12 months, weekly physical activity was 39 min higher than baseline. Significant reductions in body mass index were observed over 12 months, with a weight loss of 1.1% in the whole sample, and 2.4% among overweight participants. Modest increases in happiness and decreases in perceived stress were recorded. Run times suggested a 12% improvement in fitness during the study.
Conclusion
Significant changes in weight, fitness and wellbeing outcomes indicate the public health benefits of regular participation in parkrun.
“…Collectively these results add support to previous suggestions of potential public health value of parkrun [7][8][9]35 . Although average improvements in all outcomes were modest, this is expected in a sample of largely healthy, active adults who voluntarily engage in running.…”
Section: What This Study Addssupporting
confidence: 90%
“…The health and wellbeing potential of participation in parkrun has been widely endorsed 7,8 , and early research is encouraging. A cross-sectional analysis of 7308 adult participants in the UK who had been attending a median of 12 months, indicated that parkrun was successful in engaging some population sub-groups who are underrepresented in national physical activity statistics (females, middle-aged and older adults, and overweight) 9 .…”
Background
Mass participation events are recognized as a way of engaging low-active individuals in health-enhancing physical activity, but there is a need to investigate the sustained effects on behaviour and health. This study aimed to examine changes in self-reported physical activity, weight and wellbeing over 12 months in participants of parkrun, a weekly mass participation 5 km running event.
Methods
New parkrun registrants (n = 354) completed self-reported measures of physical activity, weight, happiness and stress, at registration, 6 months and 12 months. Objective data on attendance and fitness (i.e. run dates and finishing times) were obtained from the parkrun database.
Results
Overall physical activity levels were high at baseline, but significantly increased over the first 6 months, before declining. By 12 months, weekly physical activity was 39 min higher than baseline. Significant reductions in body mass index were observed over 12 months, with a weight loss of 1.1% in the whole sample, and 2.4% among overweight participants. Modest increases in happiness and decreases in perceived stress were recorded. Run times suggested a 12% improvement in fitness during the study.
Conclusion
Significant changes in weight, fitness and wellbeing outcomes indicate the public health benefits of regular participation in parkrun.
“…anxiety, stress, guilt, negative affect). This supports previous research outside of the bereaved populations, which shows physical activity to be beneficial to mental health [26,29,[65][66][67]. Some common grief outcomes were not measured in these studies, for example alcohol consumption or self-harm.…”
Background
In 2018, there were 616,014 registered deaths in the United Kingdom (UK). Grief is a natural consequence. Many mental health concerns, which can be identified as grief outcomes (e.g. anxiety and depression) in those who have experienced a bereavement, can be improved through physical activity. The objective of this review was to identify from the existing literature if physical activity can benefit grief outcomes in individuals who have been bereaved.
Methods
A systematic review of nine databases was performed. Included studies (qualitative and quantitative) explored physical activity to help individuals (of any age) who had experienced a human bereavement (excluding national loss).
Results
From 1299 studies screened, 25 met the inclusion criteria, detailing eight types of bereavement (parental (n = 5), spousal (n = 6), patient (n = 4), pre-natal (n = 3), later life (n = 1), caregiver (n = 1), multiple (n = 4) and non-defined (n = 1). Activities including yoga, running, walking and martial arts were noted as beneficial. Physical activity allowed a sense of freedom, to express emotions, provided a distraction and an escape from grief, whilst enhancing social support.
Conclusion
There is some evidence that physical activity may provide benefit for the physical health and psychological wellbeing of those who have been bereaved, including when the loss has happened at a young age. This review is timely, given the wide-scale national loss of life due to COVID-19 and extends knowledge in this area. More research is needed to explore the benefits of physical activity for those who have been bereaved. In particular, there is a need for well-designed interventions which are tailored to specific activities, populations and grief outcomes.
“…). Indeed, various published testimonials have also articulated the value of participating with friends and family as well as making exercise less isolating and more enjoyable (Masters , Pringle and Pickering ). Anecdotally, McCartney (: 1), a UK‐based General Practitioner declares, ‘I love parkrun .…”
Critiques of public health policies to reduce physical inactivity have led to calls for practice-led research and the need to reduce the individualising effects of health promotion discourse. The purpose of this paper is to examine how parkrun - an increasingly popular, regular, community-based 5 km running event - comes to be understood as a 'health practice' that allows individuals to enact contemporary desires for better health in a collective social context. Taking a reflexive analytical approach, we use interview data from a geographically diverse sample of previously inactive parkrun participants (N = 19) to explore two themes. First, we argue that parkrun offers a space for 'collective bodywork' whereby participants simultaneously enact personal body projects while they also experience a sense of being 'all in this together' which works to ameliorate certain individualising effects of health responsibilisation. Second, we examine how parkrun figures as a health practice that makes available the subject position of the 'parkrunner'. In doing so, parkrun enables newly active participants to negotiate discourses of embodied risk to reconcile the otherwise paradoxical experience of being an 'unfit-runner'. Findings contribute to sociological understandings of health and illness through new insights into the relation between health practices and emerging physical cultures, such as parkrun.
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