America’s Favorite Exercise May Not Be Enough On Its Own

Most Americans Who Walk for Exercise Still Aren’t Meeting Federal Fitness Guidelines

Walking is, by a wide margin, the most popular way Americans choose to be active in their free time. More than 44 percent of adults call it their go-to workout. It’s free, it’s simple, and just about anyone can do it. But a sweeping new analysis of nearly 400,000 American adults turned up a troubling finding: among walkers, more than one in five didn’t meet any of the federal guidelines for exercise. Not for heart health, not for muscle strength, not for either one.

That gap between the activity Americans love most and the health benchmarks many walkers don’t reach sits at the center of research published in PLOS ONE. A team of eleven researchers from universities across the country dug into 2019 data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a large phone survey run in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Their goal was to map out what kinds of physical activities Americans prefer during their leisure time, how those preferences differ between city and country dwellers, and which activities actually line up with meeting the government’s recommended health benchmarks.

What they found highlights clear differences in how Americans move their bodies across geographic lines. Rural Americans gravitate toward hands-on, purpose-driven activities like gardening, yard work, hunting, fishing, and farm chores. Urban Americans lean toward gym-style workouts, running, weightlifting, cycling, swimming, dance, and organized sports. That gap in preferences may help explain why rural adults consistently fall behind their urban counterparts in meeting physical activity guidelines, a health disparity that has persisted for decades.

Walking Is Wildly Popular, but Is It Enough?

Federal guidelines recommend that adults get at least 150 minutes per week of moderate-to-vigorous aerobic activity, plus at least two days per week of muscle-strengthening exercises like lifting weights or doing resistance training. Meeting both targets is what researchers call meeting the “combined” guidelines.

Across all adults surveyed, only about 23 to 24 percent hit that combined target. But the numbers shift when broken down by activity type. Among people whose primary leisure activity was weightlifting, roughly half met the combined guidelines. Same for those who favored conditioning exercises, dance, or running. Among walkers, only about 25 percent met the combined guidelines, and about 22 percent failed to meet either guideline at all, the highest rate of any activity group.

Walking is enormously popular, but many people who rely on it alone don’t reach the full guidelines. That’s not because walking is bad exercise. Meeting the full requirements requires more than aerobic movement. It also requires muscle-strengthening activity, which walking alone doesn’t provide.

The Urban-Rural Exercise Divide Is Wider Than You Think

One of the study’s most telling findings is how sharply exercise habits split along the urban-rural divide. After adjusting for age, income, education, race, sex, self-reported health, body weight, region, and the month the survey was taken, rural residents were still 6 percent less likely to meet the aerobic guidelines and 8 percent less likely to meet the muscle-strengthening guidelines than their urban peers. Rural adults were also significantly more likely to be completely inactive during leisure time and 5 percent more likely to meet neither guideline.

Researchers suggest several factors may help explain this. Rural culture tends to value using leisure time for practical labor rather than health-focused exercise. Rural workers are more likely to hold physically demanding jobs, which can leave them too fatigued for recreational activity. Higher poverty rates in rural areas limit access to gyms, fitness classes, sports leagues, and parks. Family and caregiving responsibilities, especially for rural women, squeeze what little time remains. These are plausible contextual explanations, not findings the study directly tested, but they are consistent with a broader body of research on rural health.

Access to infrastructure matters enormously. Many activities most strongly linked to meeting the combined guidelines, things like weightlifting, running, and dance, depend on gyms, trails, sports fields, and studios that rural communities often lack. Even bicycling, linked in previous research to higher rates of meeting activity guidelines, was notably less common among rural residents, about 2.7 percent compared to roughly 4 percent in metro areas.

How to Close the Exercise Gap

Researchers suggest building on what people already enjoy. Walking is already popular everywhere, so walking groups, which have shown success in boosting activity levels and social connection, including among rural women, could serve as a bridge to adding muscle-strengthening activities. Activities more often linked to meeting the full guidelines could also be introduced in culturally adapted ways, such as chair exercises for older adults, regionally familiar dance styles, or group fitness classes that double as social gatherings.

More targeted ideas surfaced as well. Since hunting is more common among rural men and is associated with serious cardiovascular strain, messaging at hunting license sales points could encourage year-round fitness. As the paper notes, something as pointed as “Struggling to drag that deer out of the woods? Be more active year-round and drag that deer with ease” could resonate where a generic health campaign would not.

What people do for exercise is shaped by where they live, what’s available, what their culture values, and how much energy they have left after work and family obligations. Closing the rural-urban fitness gap will likely require real investment in the infrastructure that makes varied exercise possible, no matter someone’s zip code.

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Disclaimer: This article is based on an observational study. While the research draws on a large, nationally representative dataset, observational studies show associations between variables and cannot establish cause and effect. Findings may not apply to all individuals or populations. Consult a qualified healthcare provider before making changes to your physical activity routine.

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