15.06.2016 - Ausgabe: 3/2016

From sport to sportivity: the right to exercise

In future, the priority won't be to break records but to develop a new day-to-day lifestyle - the new buzzword in this context is 'sportivity'. A survey undertaken by German's trend research body the Zukunftsinstitut provides insight into what the future will be like.

Valery Rozov is not the sort of person who does things by half measures. On 5 May 2013, he leapt from Mount Everest in his specially designed wingsuit. His descent from an altitude of 7220 m to a glacier at just under 6000 m above sea level took him only one minute. The extreme sports star Joby Ogwyn even announced that it was his plan to jump from the very summit of the world's highest mountain in May 2014. Stéphane Mifsud, on the other hand, needed 11 minutes and 35 seconds to complete his new world record. That was the time the free diver managed to spend under water without surfacing to breathe. These are the kind of superlatives that we now associate with the world of sport: the achievements of people who push themselves to extreme limits. And they do this in such a way that we mere mortals can only gape in awe and wonder at their apparent disdain for their own life and limb.

The high performance machines that populate professional sport seem to be poles apart from the couch potatoes whose only activity is TV channel hopping and the leathery oldsters who gamely compete in marathons. What would occur if a triathlete happened to encounter a slow walker as both made their way around the shore of a lake - would they consider that they had anything in common? On the face of it, it would seem unlikely. But our civilisation is becoming increasingly 'sportified'. In any society that is supposedly egalitarian, sportspersons are the only acceptable superiors that we can look up to. When they fight, it is to shave tenths of seconds off a record. The power they tend to exercise is that which helps them drive their own bodies to extremes. When today's urban dwellers venture into the great outdoors, they take with them equipment that puts to shame NASA's safety provisions for its astronauts. Their desire to be 'ready for anything' is also demonstrated by the fact that, if they can afford to, they will choose to drive an SUV rather than the convertible or roadster that were formerly everyone's dream vehicles. Only those who are trim and trained are considered 'acceptable'. Gone are the times when the board members of a quoted business were able to happily sport generous paunches. Present day managers use activity trackers to ensure that they reach their daily, weekly and monthly exercise targets. Microsoft's Executive Vice President Scott Guthrie goes nowhere without his fitness monitor and UK PM David Cameron also keeps an eye on his fitness levels.

The training trend has become a worldwide phenomenon and the rate at which innovations are introduced is correspondingly increasing. More and more combined or extreme sports are being invented while more and more kinds of 'soft' exercise are being recognised as forms of sport. Consider a stroll in the woods, for example. This is not only good for your health in general but if you manage to cover 4 kilometres you will end up burning not significantly fewer calories than if you had jogged the whole distance.

There is only one problem: most people live such complicated lives that they cannot find time for activities of this kind. Among Germans, 59% claim that their work and private concerns leave them no time to take exercise. Although it has been postulated that there is a fundamental dislike of physical activities or perhaps a widespread belief that exercise is not really necessary, such theories crumble to dust in the face of the facts: only 7% of persons surveyed state that they have no interest in taking exercise.

The world of sport and exercise thus extends beyond that to which YouTube films about people springing from great heights or disappearing into the depths of the oceans bear witness. It is this other world that will have a massive influence on physical activity in the future. While there is a growing tendency to cast a more critical eye on the doings of professional sportspersons and on the orchestrated mega-events in which they appear, everything that bears the label 'recreational sport' seems associated with positive connotations. It is becoming apparent that those who attend these events wish to have more say in what is going on and are no longer satisfied with just being allowed to spectate. The profits made through sponsorship and the sale of rights and tickets are burgeoning; fans are demanding that they too should have a voice, that events should be made more family-friendly and their own ideas should be taken into account. There is a new concept that provides for a way of accommodating the natural need for exercise and the constraints on physical activity at work that is a particular feature of the life of the group of 30 - 55 year-olds: this involves developing work into exercise.

 

The future of exercise is at work

While at work, 44% of Germans sit throughout the day at a desk, another 26% do manage to get to their feet occasionally, but this is usually only to take a trip to the coffee machine and back. Experts estimate that most Germans walk only 1700 to 5000 paces each day; the recommended number is 10,000 steps daily. A call centre agent walks 1200 steps (including activities during breaks) at work.

The world of work will need to make greater provisions for the integration of exercise during working hours in the form of free, natural physical activity. There is an enormous potential here that will come increasingly to the attention of HR departments and service providers. A new outlook will be created to supplement the fun- and thrill-driven extreme sports and the more moderate recreational exercise activities - 'sportivity' will be its name. Here exercise itself will be the priority instead of performance, while creativity and vitality will be more important than winning trophies.

The solution will be to integrate exercise in new ways in the daily routine of work. In coming years, individuals will be exerting growing pressure on their employers to recognise their 'fundamental right' to take exercise and to provide more options for exercising while at work.

This is one of the great as yet unexploited potentials that can significantly enhance the quality of life. All younger employees who have been surveyed repeatedly iterate that, for them, there are three factors that together play the most important roles in determining the quality of their working life; work should be fun, it should be worthwhile while it should be possible to reconcile career and life outside work. Physical activity promotes the release of endorphins and thus a feeling of well-being. What better incentive could there be for incorporating this intrinsically motivating element in the world of work? There will be a new attitude towards day-to-day life - and its name will be 'sportivity'.

 

Sportivity – exercise as the paradigm of post-modern societies

From sport to sportivity: record-breaking will become a thing of the past; the future will see the triumph of a new routine lifestyle. This phenomenon will result in massive changes to the way we perceive sport and exercise in coming years.

What do that triathlete and slow walker who encounter each other on the shores of a lake have in common? What connects the individuals in a bunch of cyclists waiting at a red light? In what do a 70-year-old granny and a 20-year-old student sitting next to each other in yoga class resemble each other?

The answer is that they are all taking some form of exercise, although among them one or the other wouldn't necessarily describe what they or the others are doing as exercise. Forms of physical exercise and sport have become as diverse as our societies in the 21st century. Exercise is a reflection and the objective of our lives and is progressively penetrating into the core of our existence.

 

The basic right to exercise

It seems not impossible that the future might even see the introduction of a basic right to exercise, similar to the right to life and physical integrity that has been enshrined in the German constitution since 1949. This is not as absurd as it may seem; after all, human beings as biological life forms have certain basic needs, one of which is exercise. Studies have demonstrated that people who take no physical exercise enter a rapid decline, degenerate and drastically shorten their lifespans. What happens in the opposite case has also been the subject of extensive research. Professor Ingo Froböse of the Centre for Health (ZfG) of the German Sport University in Cologne summarises the results of investigations undertaken by his institute as follows: "People who regularly exercise prolong their lives and also improve their quality of life." Quality of life is also one of the core factors that in coming years will be at the centre of discussions about sport and exercise. One of the underlying assumptions in connection with the megatrends we are witnessing in the area of health is that the main concern for those in future living environments will be to ensure that they maintain the necessary 'vitality'; this means that among the main driving forces for people in this connection will be exercise and sport.

 

New - more people over the age of 50 are taking up sport-related activities

We are currently at a tipping point. Exercise is increasingly being seen as fit for purpose; it has never actually been 'unfit for purpose' - that would be to deny the fundamental biological needs of human beings. Industrialised societies formerly considered anything that did not actually contribute to the work ethic as unfit for purpose. The standard concept can be readily described; work required routine, mechanically repetitive activities to be carried out over a predefined period of time. Sport and exercise were nothing more than diversions to be enjoyed outside the working day. For decades, it has been the fate of office workers to commute to grim concrete towers on industrial estates where they would spend their working hours cooped up like battery hens in the cubicles of open plan offices. No wonder that when knocking-off time came round they would use the opportunity to work off all that suppressed energy and gambol about like puppies let off the leash. But the 'New Work' culture will soon make all this a thing of the past. Work that does not require the worker to be physically located in a particular place for a pre-specified period will lead to the distinctions between working hours and leisure time becoming blurred. But the need to take exercise will remain as relevant as ever.

All surveys of the extent to which individuals take exercise have found that the amount of physical activity people indulge in increases until they enter a career, at which point there is a steep decline in their exercise quota. The reason for this is fairly obvious. As cited above, 59% of Germans claim that their work and private concerns leave them no time to take exercise. The importance of the time factor in this equation is shown by the results of a survey of health in Germany undertaken by the Robert-Koch Institute. Their statistics indicate that both men and women over the age of 50 years (again) consider it important that they take 'sufficient exercise'; they are, of course, in the phase following the 'rush hour of life' when they have rather more time on their hands.

And at this point the dilemma becomes apparent. On the one hand, there is the world of work:

• Demographic changes mean that our working lives are becoming longer.

• The percentage of women among the workforce will increase as a result of the headway of the New Work culture.

• The rapid evolution of online connectivity in combination with the New Work ethic will make physical movement even less important at work.

On the other hand, there is the fundamental need to take exercise and the difficulty of realising this need:

• The age group of 30 - 50 year olds in particular are leading more complex lives because they are assuming multifunctional roles; as a result, their amount of unplanned leisure time is decreasing.

• Those in work are very often not able to meet the pressures placed on them to be more mobile and flexible on foot or using a bicycle,

• There is an increasing general acceptance in our individualist society that when it comes to 'ageing', it is the responsibility of each individual to ensure that they age in the 'proper' way.

It is this impasse when it comes to the fundamental need for exercise and the inability of people to meet this need because their lives are dominated by the inactive time they spend at work that requires a new solution to be found:

• Hence, it is the world of work that will need to make greater provisions for the integration of exercise during working hours in the form of free, natural physical activity.

 

Exercise and work

In coming years, individuals will be exerting growing pressure on their employers to recognise their 'fundamental right' to take exercise and to provide more options for exercising while at work. And society and politicians will also be demanding that new answers be found. Attempts have long been made to improve the health of the general public and thus reduce the economic consequences to health services of the lack of exercise; one such endeavour has been the dissemination of the recommendation to walk at least '10,000 steps a day'. Concepts such as this are aimed at individuals in the hope of getting them to take more exercise outside regular working hours and using the argument that it will improve their quality of life.

But when we consider that the worlds of work and leisure are likely to become ever more intermingled it is conceivable that the efforts in this respect will be concentrated on exploring new ways of making work and exercise compatible. Top managers already consider it to be part of their image to be seen to be fit and trained; the rest of the workforce will progressively claim this as their right too. At this point, we can formulate the following hypotheses:

the future of exercise is at work

This is one of the great as yet unexploited potentials that can significantly enhance the quality of life. All younger employees who have been surveyed repeatedly iterate that, for them, there are three factors that together play the most important roles in determining the quality of their working life; work should be fun, it should be worthwhile while it should be possible to reconcile career and life outside work. Physical activity promotes the release of endorphins and thus a feeling of well-being.

What better incentive could there be for incorporating this intrinsically motivating element in the world of work? The subjects of work and sport will no longer be seen as incompatible. As employers increasingly come to recognise that exercise is an important aspect of the life-work balance of their employees, sport itself will become an element of the working world that opens up new options for achieving professional success

Across the whole of the social spectrum, the current system of performance assessment will be steadily replaced by the concept of 'achievement', which, on a higher level, is associated with the demands placed on modern sports persons. This will make it possible for individuals to demonstrate their competitive strengths and abilities without ignoring aspects such as health, well-being, quality of life and awareness. The use of the more complex concept of achievement will also involve a change to those responsible for making the necessary evaluation because achievements are produced by individuals and groups; performance measures only the ability to play by the rules.

In future, there will be no inconsistency between being an achiever in sport and career even if the achievements are those of a hiker rather than a track athlete or of a nurse rather than a broker. And this is because the definition of what represents an 'achievement' will become more wide-ranging.

Let us return to the initial question of what a triathlete has in common with a slow walker, what connects those cyclists waiting at a red light and what it is that makes a 70-year-old granny and a 20-year-old student in yoga class resemble each other. As we have said, all are taking some form of exercise so our three core hypotheses demonstrate what the unifying factors are:

• Exercise is a basic need of all humans

• The boundaries between exercise and work are disappearing

• Individual achievements will in future define success

 

In conclusion: the seven needs of future 'athletes'

Sport as entertainment is no longer the exclusive preserve of the passive, beer-drinking sluggard on the couch. Those who enjoy watching sport are becoming more active and are becoming involved in the events themselves.

Sport can be consumed, sport can be purchased. The ambition of the sports fashion victim is to create the semblance of sportiveness - with himself as much as others in mind.

We are seeing the dawn of the era of the 'casual athlete'. For them, it must be possible to exercise ad hoc and anywhere. This new attitude towards exercise represents a major challenge for the designers of public spaces.

And the borderlines between sport and work are vanishing so that fitness will become more important than career success and/or will become an integral component of working life. This will eliminate the exercise deficit that occurs in the years between youth and old age.

Thanks to ongoing innovations, it would seem there need to be no limits to the escalation of achievements in sport.

Are sports clubs no longer relevant? Yes and no. Sport and exercise are more than ever group experiences but the places where they take place and the forms they assume when we come together to enjoy them are changing radically.

The thrill-seekers are continuously looking for what no one has previously attempted and are thus developing into the explorers of a whole new world of sport. They are setting new standards.

Despite all the current clichés about couch potatoes, our society has never been as interested in sport and exercise as it is today. And the results of the survey indicate that our concepts of sport and exercise will change in future. The need to set new records, be competitive and perform will be increasingly replaced by the wish to integrate a new awareness of life in day-to-day activities. This will be the predominant factor in the sport- and exercise-orientated society of the 21st century. There will be no differentiation between the 'right' and 'wrong' forms of sport and no emphasis on the need to undertake a certain level of exercise; the aim will be to provide individuals with their own personal life situations and with their particular needs access to the various exercise options.

The 'Sportivity' survey offers revealing information on the groups within society who find it difficult to take sufficient exercise. Among the main influencing factors is work itself, which prevents many people – against their will – from indulging in active sport-related exercise. While a high exercise index is associated with young people and growing numbers of elderly people, the inflexible work structures in the phase between apprenticeship and pension force many into physical lethargy. For futurologists, the solution to this problem is not the promotion of the time-honoured concept of the company sports programme but a more flexible approach to work and exercise cultures with the 'casual athlete' in mind, for example, who has the need to exercise ad hoc and anywhere and whose requirements represent a major challenge for the designers of public spaces, particularly in urban settings.

Other phenomena will be the placing of equal stress on personal fitness and career in people's perceptions, a desire on the part of certain individuals to achieve apparently limitless performance enhancement and overcome extreme challenges in sporting activities, an increased emphasis on sport 'fashion' and a change to the 'group' mentality in sport in that traditional sports clubs will be complemented by other forms of 'communities'.

 

The concluding contention of the researchers is thus that we will require a statutory right to exercise in future.

 

The full text of the survey can be found at:

http://www.zukunftsinstitut.de/documents/downloads/Sportivity.pdf

Photo: playfit