You might have already seen a new cheeky little addition to our brilliant tools, and if not head on over to your wellometer page.
Beingwell have some new family members – introducing buddyboost!
So, what is it?
The concept is really simple. Buddy-up (virtually) and support each other to do 26 minutes of exercise a day.
Buddyboost is an activity app like no other. It isn’t about donning neon spandex, running a marathon, lifting more weights than is humanly possible, or training to get abs like Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson (unless you want to, in which case fill your boots!), it’s just about doing 26 minutes of ANY physical activity each day. In fact, you don’t even have to do 26 minutes all in one go. There’s a very useful ‘pause’ button.
One of the things we love is that we don’t have to go it alone! Buddies support us in getting our groove on and moving more. Buddies could be friends or colleagues and there’s a warm and fuzzy community feel. There’s nothing quite as motivating as not being bothered to pull on our yoga pants and then seeing in the app that our bestie or John in IT went to feed the ducks before work and logged their walk.
Why 26 minutes?
It’s not because 26 is a number associated with marathons. Nor is it because you can listen to S Club 7’s ‘Reach’ six times in 26 minutes – although that is an added bonus. It turns out, it’s because 26 minutes is just what the doctor ordered.
And not just any doctor. According to the UK’s Chief Medical Officers, we should all be doing at least 150 minutes of moderate activity every week:
“This threshold has been widely adopted internationally. For good physical and mental health, adults should aim to be physically active every day. Any activity is better than none, and more is better still.”
If we do 26 minutes every day, we’ll get to 182 minutes. Miss one day, and we’ll still hit our weekly target, clocking up 156 minutes. Boom!
There is also something mightily significant about it being less than half an hour. 26 minutes is psychologically much less intimidating for those of us who aren’t used to exercising much and it feels much easier to squeeze into a busy day, especially when we break it down into little chunks.
What counts as an activity?
Literally anything physical (as long as you put a bit of effort in)! Spring cleaning, going for a jog, doing a spot of yoga, having sex, walking the dog, dancing to some funky tunes, playing rounders or knock-a-door-run with the kids (ok, maybe not the last one). Anything that gets us moving more can be counted. We can even do a spot of exercise snacking, it’s not what you think, have a read here.
Final thought: We don’t have much to say, other than - keep an eye on your wellometer and unlock buddyboost when it appears and if you need some mighty good reasons to move more have a read of our blog ‘The power of movement on mental health’.
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