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Written by Miss Farmer, Director of Sports
With over a billion of us using Facebook, more than 9,000 Tweets posted per second, and an average of 500 million photos and stories uploaded via Instagram every day, it’s hard to escape the ever-changing social media bubble.
We can waste hours scrolling through friends’ status updates and the latest celebrity posts, forgetting the majority of what we read within a few minutes. However, if we choose to be selective in the pages we ‘follow’ and ‘like’, we may just discover a new and inspirational world that will get us up and active while being confined to our homes.
Indeed, for those interested in diet, fitness, and exercise, social media can be a truly useful resource. By social networking-out, ‘fitness-style’, you can explore topics such as nutrition and exercise tracking, and even take part in exercise classes for free via live streaming and photo and video sharing on Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook. The fitness-minded now have tools to train their entire body in just the palm of their hand.
Research by activity tracker Fitbit in 2014 found that Facebook is one of the top motivators when it comes to getting the nation in shape, encouraging 64% of users to exercise after reading a Facebook friend’s sporty boast-post. Furthermore, scientists at South California University revealed that dieters lost an average of 0.05% of body weight for every 10 Instagram posts they read and/or posted about weight loss on their profile or story, dropping more pounds than those who were not on the site (Business Insider, 2015). Just search #fitnessmotivation on Instagram and you will find 79.1 million photos and videos to help get you moving in your own home.
To get yourself on ‘The Social Net-Workout’ bandwagon, join people like Joe Wicks by jumping on Instagram and watching his live stories and fitness videos. At 9am every day, Joe will be doing a PE lesson for all children who will not be going to school.
Top 3 accounts to get you started…
- @thebodycoach – Joe Wicks – exercises and food plans (Instagram)
- @Sports_HQ – Sports Quotes & Fitness Motivation (Twitter)
- @LV_Sports – Athlete Motivation from the best Sports People (Twitter)