In a study of US adults, walking was, by far, the most popular leisure-time physical activity, while rural residents also enjoyed gardening, hunting and fishing, and urban residents more commonly reported running, weightlifting and dance. This study examined urban versus rural preferences for leisure-time physical activities, and how they related to meeting US national physical activity guidelines.

Researchers analyzed telephone survey data collected from a national sample of 396,261 US adults in 2019. Out of 75 survey options for leisure-time physical activities, walking was the most popular among both urban and rural adults, with 44.1% reporting walking as the activity they spent the most time doing. This finding echoes a similar study of US data collected in 2011, which also found walking to be the top activity.

However, further analysis of the 2019 data showed that even among walkers, only 1 in 4 (25%) met combined guidelines for aerobic and muscle-strengthening physical activity, and about 22% did not meet either guideline. And, in general, rural adults were more likely to be inactive than urban adults and less likely to meet guidelines for aerobic or muscle-strengthening physical activity.

 “We expected to see that walking would continue to be the most common physical activity," lead author Christiaan Abildso, PhD, of West Virginia University School of Public Health, Morgantown, commented. "However, it was surprising to see that nearly 1 in 4 adults who walk as their main activity did not meet either of the physical activity guidelines. That is, they reported less than the recommended 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity aerobic activity and less than the recommended two days per week of muscle strengthening activity, such as yoga or exercises with resistance bands.”

The researchers speculated that rural-urban differences in activity preferences and engagement may reflect what people have access to or what is culturally supported. Therefore, they concluded, the  findings could help inform efforts to boost physical activity by tailoring solutions to be more culturally and demographically appropriate. They call for a similar analysis of more recently collected data, as habits may have shifted during the COVID-19 pandemic

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