A new study from ASICS shows a direct link between teenage physical activity and adult mental wellbeing

The ASICS State of Mind Study has discovered a link between being physically active in teenage years and positive mental wellbeing in adulthood reaffirming the positive link between physical exercise and mental wellbeing.

The global study surveyed over 26,000 respondents across 22 countries to find their State of Mind Score, with the global average being 65 out of 100.

Countries including Australia, Canada, Japan, France, South Africa, the US and the UK were surveyed between November and December last year.

However, it seems those in the UK have a lower score than average. Brits who are regularly active have an average score of 61, while those who are inactive have a much lower score of 54. This puts the UK as 17th out of the 22 countries surveyed.

Levels of physical activity across the globe were also measured, with 55% of the British population exercising regularly compared to the global average of 56%.

The findings also uncovered that being physically active in your teenage years directly impacts your mind later in life.

Ages 15 to 17 were pinpointed as the most critical years for staying active and when dropping out of exercise significantly affects your mental state for years to come. An increasing number of the younger generation is increasingly becoming less active.

In the UK, 55% of the Silent Generation (aged 78+) said they were active daily in their early childhood. Whereas only 35% of Millennials (aged 28-42) and just 21% of the Gen Z generation (aged 18-27) said they were active.

To learn more about the study and its importance, AW attended the ASICS Festival of Running weekend and spoke to Professor Brendon Stubbs, a leading researcher in exercise and mental health and a researcher behind this ASICS study.

For those who dont know a lot about the study, can you explain the background behind it?

The State of Mind index is a global study looking at 26,000 people across 22 individual countries where a thousand people, at least from every individual country looking at the relationship between how much we move and engage with exercise and our state of mind (that is, our wellbeing).

What we specifically see across all of those individual countries is quite a consistent relationship. The more people move the better their state of mind.

On average the people who are active they had a 66 score out of 100 compared to 57 for those who were inactive. We defined active as 150 minutes per week and inactive as 30 minutes or less per week.

Another interesting finding is we continue to see what we are concerned about being an exercise gender gap where women are exercising on average less than men and we need to do something about that, and we have been doing things to address that.

Ages 15-17 seems to be a real critical window for people to continue to remain in activities. So for people who remained active during that window we see much better wellbeing later in life compared to those who drop out. In fact, every year people remain active there is a dose responsive relationship between better state of mind in adulthood so it really goes to show it is key to keep people engaged.

Gen-Zs and younger people are doing much less on average than the older generations and we dont want that to be becoming an issue for peoples wellbeing from here on now and also in the future.

What was the inspiration behind the study?

The inspiration was really to try and have a leading novel way to understand the relationship between movement, exercise and the mind. In order to do that we needed robust research, we needed robust data and we needed robust measurements so that was the idea behind all of this.

If we are going to go out and make a difference we need to understand what the state of the mind is in terms of movement and mental health. ASICS committed to doing this two years ago and identified this model survey with some important areas to focus on, recently focusing on the gender exercise gap and really taking this forward to this being a standard that we can continue to come back to, and to understand our relationship between movement and the mind.

Thats the inspiration of all of is, is data to understand and data to provide actual insights into what will make a difference.

Are you concerned about the low numbers of the younger generation taking part in exercise?

The younger generation is a real concern for us. We consistently see that those who continue to engage in exercise continue to experience better latter life wellbeing.

Every year we can keep people engaged is critical, so this critical window between 15-17 is when we really need to allow young people to have fun, the enjoyment, experience the mental health and physical health of engaging with exercise.

We see this overall concerning relationship that Gen Z and younger generations are doing much less exercise with 19% on a daily exercise basis [globally] compared to Silent generations where they are engaging with 57% so there is this growing disparity in what younger people are doing vs older people and we really need to address that gap.

How do elite athletes play a part in this study?

Elite athletes play a really important role because they are role models for many people. We all look up to elite athletes in a sport that we find particularly inspiring so I think it is really important.

I think what is particularly interesting from some of the work that we have done with a project called the Move Every Mind study is we asked lots of women who are your key models? and who inspires you to engage in exercise? and of course elite athletes did play a key role in that but what was really identified is that it was everyday athletes around them as well. Their friends and family members really inspired them and really motivated them to engage in exercise.

I really encourage people to look up to athletes but then to also find those every day athletes in your life who can join you on this journey to having fun and enjoying it through sport and exercise too.

What does the future for this study look like?

This has been done so we can measure differences from two years ago and so we can identify groups of people who can really go and make a difference. We can remeasure and test this in a period again of two years time.

ASICS has done this for two time periods now and we have identified groups where we need action so I am expecting, although I cant speak on ASICS behalf, that there will be projects going to address those needed areas and that we can measure this in the future to say what we are doing has made a difference.