Put on your sparkling shoes, dance like a gazelle and become #activesoles

Last week I was reminded about the degree of self confidence one might need to wear whatever you want wherever you happen to be. I habitually wear black. My entire wardrobe contains nothing but black clothes. I do, however, like to wear brightly coloured clogs, and I have a large collection to choose from each day. I wear them whatever the event and I never cease to be amused as I watch people’s eyes travel down to my feet when I walk into a room. I nearly always get comments from people who say they ‘love my shoes’, although such comments tend to come from women in the main. Men are much more likely to say something along the lines of ‘you must be brave to wear those’.

I’m not particularly brave, but I am usually very self-confident and if truth were told, I don’t really care what others may think; I’m literally very comfortable in my shoes. I met someone else last week who seemed just as comfortable in his shoes. It was the Greater Manchester (GM) Mayor, Andy Burnham. Like me, he was attending the October Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Board (GMHSC), which this time was being held in the gorgeous Council Chamber of the City of Salford Council. We had been advised that during the meeting there would be a signing of a refreshed Memorandum of Understanding with Sports England, and we were invited to wear our ‘active soles’ such as trainers or comfortable shoes that might allow us easy movement and we should consider ‘active travel’ to get to and from the meeting.

Andy appeared proudly wearing his trainers, as well as his ubiquitous dark suit, white shirt and tie. He is always well turned out. I strongly suspect his eyebrows are actually painted on, they are so perfect, but I digress. The point was that not only was he actively supporting our GM Moving initiative, more of which in a moment, but he seemed perfectly comfortable wearing his trainers, despite their incongruous juxtaposition amidst a sea of men in grey suits and women in their formal business attire. Strangely, I was reminded of that great tennis player Serena Williams, who famously wore Swarovski-encrusted Nike Cortex trainers under her wedding dress (other trainers are available). She did the same at her attendance at the ball for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s wedding (although these were a different pair). When the world’s media spotlight is shining firmly in your direction, it takes a great deal of confidence to literally put on your dancing shoes instead of the perhaps expected high heels in order to dance the night away!

Dancing featured in last week’s discussion around progress on the getting GM Moving Plan. Apparently, the TV programme Strictly Come Dancing has an average weekly audience of around 8.5 million viewers. It was suggested that instead of sitting on their couches watching the programme each week, people would be better off getting up and perhaps having a dance themselves. Surprisingly (at least to me) Sport England actually support a range of dance-based activities for people to get involved in. So there really is no excuse; it’s not all about park runs and 10k's, there will be an activity to suit everyone’s taste and lifestyle.

And we need to find ways to get folk more active, particularly in Greater Manchester. The region is sadly significantly worse than the England average for inactivity, and is so across almost all age groups. It was noted that 27.9% of women and 25.5% of men are doing fewer than 30 minutes of physical activity a week, and six out of every ten young people are not reaching the 60 minutes of recommended activity a day. A third of adults and more than a quarter of children across GM were classified as overweight or obese, much higher than the national average. People who are inactive and subsequently become patients spend 38% more days in hospital, have 5.5% more GP visits and 12% more nurse visits. These worrying statistics sit against research in GM, which suggests that a significant proposition of the population want to be healthier and more active.

Hayley Lever, the inspirational lead and Strategic Manager for getting GM Moving was the lady who persuaded Andy Burnham to put on his walking shoes (his are Adidas Gazelles). Her philosophy is simple, ‘moving in any way will make a difference… … you don’t need to run a marathon, and you are never to old to start’. She writes a fabulous blog, which you can find here (definitely worth a look) and is enthusiastic about finding ways of encouraging others to get moving. Her colleague Rachel Allen wrote a blog that looked at the notion of ‘enclothed cognition’ (see here), which explored the notion that what we wear changes the way we think, and can change our behaviour. So if one is wearing flat shoes or trainers while at work, it’s more likely that we would walk more often. I wonder how many women commute to their place of work in comfortable shoes only to change when they reach their office, I know J habitually does. Hayley and Rachel, in persuading Andy Burnham to put on his trainers, also persuaded him to make it official policy across all public services in GM that it was Ok to wear trainers to work as long as folk use them!

Of course, simply encouraging others to become more active is only part of the solution to increasing people’s health and well-being. Greater Manchester has a series of programmes aimed at ensuring clean air; developing healthy workplaces; sustainable transport systems; liveable and healthy communities and encouraging current health care providers to draw upon such approaches as social prescribing, and actively addressing health inequalities across those communities they serve. At the personal level, I will continue to #WalkEveryDay and to encourage others to do likewise, through supporting the #NHS1000mile initiative. And if you keep telling yourself you don’t have the time to follow suit, have a look at this blog posted last week, which advocates the need to move from mindfulness to mindlessness in changing our behaviours – at the very least it will make you think!