Exercise “as beneficial as smoking cessation”

Dare I contend that exercise in the shape of Green Gym is also more fun?

Today’s exercise equipment

The research paper which made that headline was from a Norwegian team: a follow-up to the Oslo Study, which was one of those late-20th-century epidemiological studies.*  The findings were stark.  Basically, of the people being tracked (male, average age 73), those who exercised, lived 5 years longer than those who did not.

* ‘Increases [sic] in physical activity is as important as smoking cessation for reduction in total mortality in elderly men: 12 years of follow-up of the Oslo II study’ – Prof Ingar Holme, Dept of Sports Medicine, Norwegian School of Sports Sciences, Oslo; S A Anderssen, Oslo Center of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Research Support Services, Oslo University Hospital
British Journal of Sports Medicine (Br J Sports Med doi:10.1136/bjsports-2014-094522) first publ online 14 May 2015

Even allowing for other factors (also bearing in mind that by its nature, epidemiology cannot prove causation):

• 1 hour’s light exercise per week had no noticeable effect
• 2½ hours’ serious exercise pw?  Now we’re talking!  Those who did that, were 40% less likely than the others to have died during the 11-year study
• It made no difference whether that exercise took the form of going to a conventional gym, participating in competitive sport, or just having a very active lifestyle

The researchers’ conclusion (except they did not quite put it this way):

From all the different forms of exercise available, find something you like,
and just do it – because it’s sitting on your bum, which does for you.

Doing nothing won’t exactly kill you, but it reduces you to the point where your health can be as poor as if you had been invalided by a serious health condition.

At Green Gym, we go for the option of working in the great outdoors.  NB: as part of the mix of exercise during the week – I don’t think any of us would claim that one session of Green Gym a week will do the business on its own.  So let the good times roll! 

Admittedly, this does entail being prepared to work in all weathers: au soleil, sous la pluie – not so easy in a rural context to maintain that lightheartedly.  Today the outlook was decidedly mixed:

“Heavy shower day”, the forecast said.  In fact, the hailstorms did not begin until we were done, and safely under cover.

As is well known, rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.  In this case, they had also taken down a crack-willow tree.  The target was immediately obvious on my arrival on site, via the downstream entrance to the reserve:

The first sight that most volunteers got was from the other side.  From there it was clear that there was a considerable amount of work to be done to clear wood from overhanging a public right of way:

This was just the sort of job that appeals to a Green-Gymmer.  However, when it comes to speed, I have to admit it will not be any time soon that one of us is entering the World Lumberjack Championships.  Only one volunteer had actually to stand in the stream:

This does not happen at lumberjack competitions

By session end, the area had certainly been made safe.  Most of the wood had been stacked into a brash pile.  Some of the more substantial branches had been carried to another area of the site, and used as pathway markers, to discourage people from walking across a meadow area which features some interesting plants:

One branch had been left untouched.  This will have to be tackled later, by another group, equipped with a chainsaw.  However, it does not compromise the safety of the path:

Before leaving, I saw the first member of the public using the right of way, after it had been cleared:

Meanwhile – that being a task which only a few could work on at a time – there was another team of Green-Gymmers at work:

Their task, using shears, was to ‘shave’ the sides of the main pathway: cutting down to size some of the taller vegetation which hangs over the path when it gets wet.

And for members of both teams, walnut-and-nutmeg bakes at ‘half-time’:

This never happens in the conventional gym I go to between Green-Gym sessions