Purpose: i) identify initial changes in physical activity behaviours due to the first UK Covid-19 lockdown; ii) identify participant characteristics which predicted changes in activity levels; iii) identify different trajectories (clusters) and cluster membership of activity change throughout the full three-month lockdown period.

Methods: A prospective cohort (N=1,044) of people recruited online, purposively targeting vulnerable populations. After a baseline survey (April 2020), participants completed 3 months of daily ecological momentary assessments (EMA). The number of days where >30 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and where resistance training was undertaken was collected retrospectively for the pre-COVID-19 period and compared with daily EMA surveys over the first 7 days of measurement during early lockdown. Predictors of activity change were assessed using multivariable regression models. K-means clustering was used to identify different clusters representing different MVPA trajectories from April to July 2020. Analyses were pre-registered on the Open Science Framework.

Results: 30% of the cohort had a COVID-19 at risk health condition, 37% were classed as deprived and 6% self-reported a mental health condition. Relative to pre-pandemic levels, participants spent half a day less per week doing ≥30 minutes of MVPA (-0.57, 95% CI -0.73, -0.40) but slightly increased days of strength training (0.21, 95% CI 0.09, 0.34). Worsening MVPA levels during early lockdown were associated with having a Covid-19 at risk health condition, higher deprivation, younger age, and higher body mass index. Reduced strength training was associated with not being a keyworker and higher BMI. Over the full three-month lockdown period, two stable clusters of MVPA levels were identified – a low MVPA cluster (81% of sample) and a high MVPA cluster (19%). Membership of the low MVPA cluster was more likely among those of lower age and higher BMI.

Conclusions: The cohort reported an overall reduction in physical activity during early lockdown relative to pre-pandemic levels and this remained throughout the lockdown period. Younger age and higher BMI were key predictors of lower levels of physical activity.

Purpose: Researchers often tacitly assume that people pursue – or should pursue – physical activity (PA) as a means to achieve health benefits. This assumption fails to acknowledge that PA, and sedentary behaviour (SB), are often by-products of pursuing higher-priority goals unrelated to health. From this perspective, many people fail to engage in recommended levels of PA because it lacks compatibility with personally valued goals. This talk proposes that the Covid-19 pandemic led to the general public prioritising goals and actions that were prohibitive of PA but highly compatible with sitting time.

Methods: A review is presented of key tenets from theories of action construal (e.g., Action Identification Theory), hierarchical accounts of action (e.g., Cooper-Shallice model), and goal-focused theories (e.g., Control Theory), and evidence from empirical studies applying such theories to PA and SB. These insights are subsequently applied as a framework for interpreting evidence around the priorities of the general public during the Covid pandemic in 2020, and how these relate to observed changes in PA during the pandemic.

Results: Together, theories and empirical evidence suggest that people often do not engage in PA or SB to be ‘active’ or ‘sedentary’ per se. Rather, PA and SB are incidentally incurred by pursuing higher-order, longer-term goals – for example, people sit in seated workplaces not because they are motivated to sit per se, but because sitting allows them to efficiently execute work tasks, which serves career goals. Health-related concerns voiced by the public during the pandemic point to the prioritisation of goals that precluded PA but were conducive to SB, such as minimising socialising to control infection risk. Government-imposed restrictions – e.g., stay-at-home orders – and their sequelae, such as home-working, also likely limited PA.

Conclusions: Whether people engage in PA will depend on whether PA serves prioritised goals. For many people, the 2020 Covid pandemic raised the salience of goals for which PA was not essential. Outside of the Covid context, interventions might fruitfully focus on promoting PA, and discouraging sitting, by emphasising how PA can fit with, and ideally facilitate, pursuit of personally valued goals.

Purpose: Covid-related restrictions, including national lockdowns, are known to have prompted decreases in physical activity and increases in sedentary behaviour for many people. Working practices are known to incidentally affect physical activity; for example, people accrue many of their daily steps on the daily commute, and computer-based work entails prolonged sitting. This qualitative study aimed to examine how changes in work practices among people working from home affected physical activity, sedentary behaviour and wellbeing during the UK national lockdown of Spring 2020.

 Methods:
Twenty-seven full-time, normally-office-based employees (19 female, 8 male; age range 23-57y) who were working from home due to the national lockdown, participated in individual semi-structured interviews during the lockdown (March-June 2020). Topics focused on experiences of home-working, adaptations of working routines, and changes in health behaviours including physical activity and sitting. Verbatim transcripts were analysed using Thematic Analysis procedures.

Results:
Four themes were extracted, each reflecting a form of modification to work practices that affected physical activity and sitting patterns: (1) social connectivity, (2) the work interface, (3) work-life balance, and (4) physical and psychological organisation of workspaces. For example, the predominance of computer-based interaction, and the removal of ad hoc in-person work-related interactions, reduced movement and prolonged sitting by removing potential cues to breaks from screen time. Additionally, discontinued exposure to settings or events that demarcate work and leisure activities – e.g., dedicated working spaces and daily commuting routines – not only removed opportunities to psychologically transition between work and leisure time, but also reduced the need for incidental activity. Participants thus reported a blurring of boundaries and difficulty ‘switching off’ from work tasks, as well as reduced activity. Homeworking also appeared to impact dietary behaviours via greater physical proximity to food, and incidental increases in flexibility and time available for preparing healthy meals.

 Conclusions:
Our results highlight the importance of identifying how the pursuit of achieving home-working goals incidentally impacts physical activity and other health-related behaviours, and so wellbeing. Employers might actively encourage work practices conducive to greater movement, such as walking meetings or regular breaks.