In our first annual 'running, resilience and wellbeing' report, we surveyed 125 of our Rokman members to discover the current state wellbeing amongst the group and investigate the relationship between running and fitness challenges and their impact on health, resilience and wellbeing.
The majority of the participants in the resilient wellbeing survey were men at 81%, with females just making up 19%. Participants were largely aged between 30 and 59 (87%).
Most Rokman members described themselves as either a recreational (47%) or fitness (41%) runner. Only 10% described themselves as a competitive runner and 2% said they didn't run.
At Rokman, we believe mental resilience is the cornerstone to improving our health and wellbeing. We also believe that the best way to increase your mental resilience is by undertaking activities that push your physical limits.
It would appear that our beliefs are based on solid evidence as the survey unveiled that running and fitness challenges play a major part in improving our member's resilience and wellbeing. 90% of members stated that challenges directly improve their mental resilience and 98% stated that they improved their mental wellbeing.
Mindfulness activities can help individuals learn to be present in the moment, which helps them take a moment to pause, notice their own thoughts, emotions and actions, helping to reduce stress and anxiety.
The most popular mindfulness activities (other than running) that members liked to partake in were walking (72%), listening to music (63%), healthy eating (53%) and sleeping (40%).
Stress is the body's reaction to feeling threatened or under pressure. It's very common, can be motivating to help us achieve things in our daily life, and can help us meet the demands of home, work and family life. But too much stress can affect our mood, our body and our relationships – especially when it feels out of our control. It can make us feel anxious and irritable, and affect our self-esteem.
The top causes of stress to our members managing a work/life balance (59%), pressure at work (46%) and financial worries (46%).
To keep health risks from alcohol to a low level if you drink most weeks, men and women are advised not to drink more than 14 units a week on a regular basis and to spread their drinking over 3 or more days. For example, a pint of strong lager contains 3 units of alcohol, whereas the same volume of low-strength lager has just over 2 units.
Our survey results revealed that 83% of members kept their drinking under the recommended weekly unit allowance, whereas, 17% of members consumed more than the recommended 14 units a week.
Up to 400 milligrams (mg) of caffeine a day appears to be safe for most healthy adults. That's roughly the amount of caffeine in four cups of brewed coffee, 10 cans of cola or two "energy shot" drinks.
74% of members kept their daily caffeine to the recommended health range of 4 drinks or less, however, 26% consumed more than the recommend daily amount.
Sitting for long periods of time poses a number of health concerns including increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat, and can actually increase the risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer.
The data shows that 30% of our members sit for 3 or hour or less, posing a low risk to their health. 62% sit between 4 and 8 hours, posing a medium risk to health and 9% sit for more than 8 hours a day, posing a high risk their health.
Regular poor sleep puts you at risk of serious medical conditions, including obesity, coronary heart disease and diabetes – and it shortens your life expectancy. It is recommend that you achieve 7-9 hours of sleep a night.
A huge 46% of our members slept for less than 7 hours a night, whereas, only 54% managed to achieve the recommend 7-9 hours.
The main motivation for starting to train was to improve physical fitness, 82%. The second motivation was needing a challenge, 53%. Interestingly, the third and fourth motivations were to do with mental health, with 46% wanting to improve wellbeing and 44% wanting to relieve stress.
Running 3 times a week was the most popular frequency of running at 31%, followed by 4 days a week at 21%.
Most members preferred to either run first thing in the morning (58%) or early evening (40%). The least popular time to run was early afternoon (10%).
Long and slow runs seem to be the most popular type of running workout for our members with 72% regularly performing easy runs and 60% performing long runs. Hill training and tempo runs were the third and fourth regular workouts with 43% and 34% respectively.
Trail running seemed to be the most popular surfaces to run on for our members, with 60% preferring to run dirt tracks and 49% running hills and/or mountains. The least popular running surfaces were sports tracks (12%) and the beach (10%).
When it comes to racing, our member's favourite race distances are clearly 10K (61%), 5K (51%) and half marathons (50%). The least popular race distances were 100 miles (5%) or more (3%). We wonder why...
Running and fitness challenges have a clear and undeniable positive impact on Rokman member's mental health and wellbeing.
The survey result have clearly shown that running is used by our members as a way to keep fit, challenge themselves and improve mental health and wellbeing, with 90% saying it was directly responsible for improving their mental resilience and 98% said it directly improve their mental wellbeing.
The biggest causes of stress for our members came from the pressure they experienced from work and trying to manage a work/life balance.
In terms of health, most managed to maintain a healthy consumption of alcohol and caffeine, however, time spent sitting a day and hours slept per night highlighted some clear areas of improvement for our members.
Rokman is mental-resilience focussed running movement for those with a deep desire to test their limits, forge unbreakable resilience and improve wellbeing.
We provide the apparel, challenges and community to inspire action and build resilience in order to overcome the most intimidating challenges possible in endurance running, fitness and life.