Mouv' en Santé: the CNRS assesses France's physical fitness

What is the state of physical fitness in France currently? 

Olivier Rey1 : We haven't got a barometer of commitment to physical activity yet – and Mouv' en Santé2  aims to provide just that – but we can draw on surveys which all highlight people stopping physical activity at around 14 years old, particularly girls who stop because they can't see any point to it. For example, sports clubs don't primarily promote social interaction which is something that particularly motivates teenage girls. Then there's the issue of families giving priority to studies over sport, the limited time secondary school pupils have for sport, the significant physical changes that take place in teenagers and so on.

Vincent Nougier3 : Mouv' en Santé will be the first large-scale national survey on this subject though a few figures on sedentary behaviour already give an initial idea of the situation. So, between 70% and 95% of the French population are sedentary which means they spend over eight hours a day sitting down. However, having a sedentary lifestyle doesn't rule out physical activity –  it's perfectly possible to work in an office then cycle home.

Actually, what's harmful is the combination of a sedentary lifestyle and physical inactivity which the WHO defines as less than 150 minutes of physical activity a week. This combination is made worse by a range of other factors like diet, sleep, time on screens, travel by car or active travel and Mouv' en Santé aims to explain how these interact.

Éric Journaux4 : Outside France, longitudinal studies of children in the West have found that young people's physical fitness has worsened by 20-30% in the last few decades. In more tangible terms, that means it takes 20-30% longer to run 800m. The decline in people's physical condition is now a civilisational issue. At this rate, we're heading right for a cataclysm in the next ten years or so with dramatic repercussions for the health of young adults. We can already see it happening with the increase in early-onset conditions like obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardio-respiratory issues in people under 40.

How did Mouv' en Santé come about? And why choose participatory science?

VN: During the Covid-19 crisis and lockdown, I noticed a number of my research colleagues starting to work on the subject. At the time, I was the CNRS's project leader for sport and I thought it important to federate these individual projects to make the most of their ideas. Once Covid-19 was over, the idea of Mouv' en Santé emerged, focusing on sport for health when most of the research in that field was concentrating on sports performances with the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in mind.

Currently the project has funding for three years – 90% from the CNRS and 10% as part of the 'national drive'5  towards more sport – but it's intended to last longer. We aim to repeat the survey regularly once we've stabilised our tools and run a battery of tests to monitor the French population's long-term physical condition. 

OR: We've seen this happen after all the previous Olympic Games but all that encouragement to move for thirty minutes a day doesn't last in the long term. Mouv' en Santé isn't just about people filling in questionnaires, it involves them getting tailored feedback and recommendations about their own physical conditions. Participants will also be able to meet up in thematic interest groups to exchange ideas and put forward innovative observations, programmes and how they're monitored. 

In this way, we hope to reach the entire French population, from the youngest to pensioners and from city dwellers to people in the country, with or without health issues. To get closer to people who don't always take daily physical activity, our plan is to reach out to medical centres, care homes, working-class neighbourhoods and rural areas so we can eventually offer people on-site tests and questionnaires.

EJ: Mouv' en Santé is part of the legacy of the Olympic Games which provided the opportunity to launch a major national drive on sport in 2024. We're hoping we can capitalise on all the excitement about the Games and participatory science (which makes citizens stakeholders in their own development) to drive a snowball effect. We aim to reach a million survey participants in the next three years which in turn will probably make three or four times as many people in their entourage aware of the issues involved.

We've already managed to gauge Mouv' en Santé's appeal when it was presented to the public with a few demonstration tests on the stand of the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, which is supporting this project, at Club France which was visited by over 15,000 people during the 27 days it was open during the Olympics.

Which scientific disciplines may be interested in the data collected?

VN: Mouv' en Santé is intended to be participatory, for the French population and the scientific community alike. It covers a lot of scientific questions and the data collected could well be of great interest to the scientific community. All scientists interested in the deterioration of physical condition are welcome! Insights from all of the disciplines involved will enable different points of view to be crossed to help solve this multifactorial problem and generate new research questions.

OR: The multidisciplinary aspect is at the core of the project because health consists of several different factors. It can only be understood holistically because it results from an interaction between the individual and the environment, and is thus the meeting of two complexities. Through this survey we hope to create links within this system to find out more about French people's state of health and the determinants involved.