The health of Australia’s males

Low levels of physical activity are a major risk factor for chronic conditions. People who do not do sufficient physical activity have a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and osteoporosis. Being physically active improves mental and musculoskeletal health and reduces the risk of and helps control other risk factors such as overweight and obesity, high blood pressure and high blood cholesterol. Physical activity can also be helpful in the management and treatment of many chronic conditions—by improving symptoms, and/or delaying or halting progression of the condition or the onset of associated diseases and complications (Pedersen & Saltin 2015).

Australia’s Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour Guidelines outline the minimum amount of physical activity required for health benefits (Department of Health 2019). These recommend that adults aged 18–64:

1. accumulate 150 to 300 minutes (2.5 to 5 hours) of moderate intensity physical activity or 75 to 150 minutes (1.25 to 2.5 hours) of vigorous intensity physical activity or an equivalent combination of both moderate and vigorous activities, each week
2. do muscle-strengthening activities on at least 2 days each week.

For adults aged 65 and over, the Guidelines recommend that older people accumulate at least 30 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity on most, preferably all, days. The data presented in this section is for adults only. There are different guidelines for children. For information on physical activity for children and young people see Physical activity across the life stages.

Physical activity in this section is based on self-reported data from the ABS 2017-18 National Health Survey which collects data on time spent walking for fitness, recreation and sport, walking for transport, moderate exercise, vigorous exercise and workplace physical activity which is moderate to vigorous (ABS 2019b). ‘Sufficiently physically active’ refers to meeting the physical activity guideline and is operationalised here as:

• completing 150 minutes or more of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week (where vigorous activity is multiplied by 2), and
• being active on 5 or more days per week.

In 2017–18, 50% of men aged 18 and over were sufficiently physically active and 1 in 4 men (25%) did strength or toning activities on 2 or more days. Overall, just under 1 in 5 (17%) were sufficiently physically active and met the muscle strengthening guideline (Figure 1) (ABS 2019a).

Figure 1: Proportion of men aged 18 and over who met the physical activity guideline, strength guideline and both guidelines, 2017–18

Note: Includes workplace activity.
Chart: AIHW. Source: ABS 2019a (see Table S1 for footnotes).

In 2017-18, the proportion of men who were sufficiently physically active varied by age and for some population groups (ABS 2019a):  

• 3 in 5 (59%) men aged 18–24 were sufficiently physically active, compared with 3 in 10 (31%) aged 65 and over (Figure 2)
• after adjusting for age, around 3 in 5 men (56%) living in the highest socioeconomic areas were sufficiently physically active, compared with around 2 in 5 men (42%) living in the lowest socioeconomic areas.

Figure 2: Proportion of men aged 18 and over who were sufficiently physically active, by age group (years), 2017–18

Chart: AIHW. Source: ABS 2019a (see Table S1 for footnotes).

For more information, see Insufficient physical activity.