Women winning the couch potato award, Gallup says

Despite all the commotion by companies catering to women’s fitness, men still got one over on the other sex, a Gallup poll showed last week. The poll of 1,001 adults (margin of error +/- 3 points) shows that women are less likely to exercise vigorously as well as less likely to exercise at any level as much. Even younger women are breaking a sweat for fitness less often than their younger male counterparts, although they are still doing it more than older men or older women. Only in lighter activities that cause only the slightest increase in heart rate, such as gardening and walking, are women nearly reaching equality. The numbers: among 18-49 year olds, 35 percent of men and 30 percent of women take part in vigorous workouts at least three times a week. That’s defined as anything that causes large increases in heart rate and breathing for at least 20 minutes. Of those older than 50, 24 percent of men and only 19 percent of woman are cracking as sweat vigorously.
SNEWS View: It seems many companies are catering to women–in designs, colors, clothing, accessories and the like. But what those same companies need to do is cater to a way to CONVINCE women to actually work out hard enough to get their heart rates up. Sadly, this lack we think comes down to cultural bias since boys were often taught in sports that “hurting” is good, while girls were often told to be careful and take it easy. Despite two decades of advancements, this seems to still hold true.