If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it.

But the human body is crying out for movement. When it comes to exercise, just let us move and cut out the taxes and regulations.

I just read two online articles that had contrasting messages. The information within these articles got me thinking and has led to me writing this blog post.

First of all, I read the British Heart Foundation (BHF) Physical Inactivity and Sedentary Behaviour Report 2017. A Line in the Foreword grabbed my attention, because it was a referring to an issue that I feel passionately about and which I highlight in Find Time for Exercise.

Here is that line: “Making physical activity easier and more accessible for all is of paramount importance if we are to reduce the burden of inactivity-related ill health and improve the future cardiovascular health of our population”.

After popping up on my Twitter feed, the second article I read was depressing and in stark contrast to that line from the BHF report. All parkrun events in France have been suspended due to the French authorities requiring everyone participating in sporting events to hold a medical certificate.

Here is one of the key sentences from the article on the parkrun France website: “parkrun has never requested a medical certificate, partly because we pride ourselves on being a community event, partly because operationally we cannot do so in a meaningful way and, most importantly because we believe that doing so creates an additional barrier for those wishing to take part in free, inclusive physical activity”.

For me, the word that leaps out of that statement is: “barrier”. A barrier is being placed in the way of people wishing to take more exercise and the result may well be that many of those people will end up taking less exercise. Far from making physical activity easier and more accessible for all, this news from France demonstrates what can happen when physical activity becomes harder and less accessible. The multiple dangers associated with physical inactivity and sedentary behaviours are once more able to sneak back into people’s lives.

I raised this point in my book because there have been high profile examples in the past where a Scottish politician once suggested charging for walking, and a community council in England wanted to charge participants at their local parkrun. These proposed charges struck me as being attempts to levy a tax on exercise.

In the midst of an inactivity crisis, with around 20 million adults in the UK being classified as insufficiently active and the impact of physical inactivity and sedentary lifestyles estimated to cost the UK healthcare system as much as £1.2 billion a year*, it just comes across as crass beyond belief that we should be placing any barriers, financial or otherwise, in the way of people looking to make a positive step forward in their physical activity levels.

I’m on the side of Dr Mike Knapton, Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation, who wrote that Foreword; let’s do everything we can to make physical activity easier and more accessible for all.

So, come on France, get this issue sorted and bring back parkrun to the French people, without the exercise-blocking barrier of requiring a medical certificate.

And every other country, including the UK, needs to be constantly on the look-out for the enemies of healthy lifestyles that will do whatever they can to throw a barrier in the way of people trying to do what’s best for them by taking some much-needed physical activity. Never ever let them tax us out of our regular, daily exercise, and be on guard and don’t let them put regulatory barriers in our way. The human body needs to move and the last thing we need right now are barriers between our sofas and the great outdoors.

*  British Heart Foundation (BHF) Physical Inactivity and Sedentary Behaviour Report 2017

parkrun events in France suspended