FRIDAY, May 3 (HealthDay News) -- In 2011, about 20 percent of U.S. adults met guidelines for both aerobic and muscle-strengthening physical activity, according to research published in the May 3 issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report.
Carmen D. Harris, M.P.H., from the CDC in Atlanta, and colleagues assessed participation in aerobic physical and muscle-strengthening activities among U.S. adults using 2011 survey data from 497,967 respondents to the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System from U.S. states and the District of Columbia.
The researchers found that 20.6 percent of adult respondents met both aerobic activity and muscle-strengthening guidelines. The prevalence of meeting both guidelines varied from 12.7 to 27.3 percent among U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Overall, 51.6 and 29.3 percent of U.S. adults met the guidelines for aerobic activity and muscle-strengthening, respectively.
"The results of this analysis indicate that approximately one in five U.S. adults met the 2008 guidelines for both aerobic and muscle-strengthening physical activity in 2011," write the authors of an accompanying editorial note. "Continued national, state, and local efforts to implement strategies can help improve the proportion of adults who meet physical activity guidelines."
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