Fitness or Fun?

· WE BRITISH as a nation do all kinds of things in our spare time: we go shopping or jogging, we play darts or football, we collect records or stamps, we go to church or to the pub. The average working person has 40 hours of free time a week, sleeps for 49 hours, spends 45 hours at work or traveling to and from work. The remaining hours are spent on 'essential activities' (food shop ping, housework, childcare, cooking, etc.). Of course, some of our free time activities, like visiting relatives or taking driving lessons, may not be fun, but whatever we do, the way we spend our free time is probably providing other people with work. Leisure is our fastest growing industry.

· ACCORDING TO the latest figures, during the past year, the most popular activity of all was walking: 35 million British people regularly walked two miles or more. More energetically, ten million people went to keep fit classes or took part in aerobics or yoga and half as many did some kind of weight training in a gym. Not only did nine million people go cycling but four million went jogging and the same number played football and played golf. Other popular sports were bowling (six million), badminton (five million), tennis (four million) and squash (three million). Less actively, twelve million people played snooker or pool, seven million played darts and three million went fishing.

· WATCHING OTHER people playing is also a popular leisure activity: the favourite sports among TV viewers are football, horse-racing, snooker, cricket and tennis. But although millions watch the matches on TV, not so many regularly go to watch football matches. 'New' television sports like American football, basketball and even darts are attracting loyal armchair experts.

■ THE FITNESS boom of the eighties led to a big rise in the numbers of people participating in sports. To cater for this boom and provide the up-to-date facilities people want, over 1,500 private health and fitness clubs and the same number of public leisure centers have been built during the past twenty years. These modern centers, with their swimming pools (22 million people went swimming last year), squash courts, gyms and indoor courts for tennis and other sports, are competing with clubs, pubs and cinemas as places for people to go to spend their leisure time - and their money. Now practically every town has a leisure pool, often with a wavemachine, water slides and tropical plants. Families can even spend their holidays at huge indoor water parks, where they can play or relax all day long in warmth and comfort without worrying about the weather outside. But this may not be helping us to get fitter: we may be becoming a nation of splashers, but not a nation of swimmers. The big question fitness experts are asking is: should sport be taken seriously or should it just be fun?

7 Look at the statements about Fitness or Fun? Decide if each statement is correct or incorrect. If it is correct, mark A, if not, mark B.

1 Hobbies and interests of British people are varied a lot.

2 Some of spare time activities are not very preferable.

3 Fishing is very popular among British.

4 The number of people who watch matches on TV is less than that who go to watch them to the stadiums.

5 A great number of leisure centers have been built because of increasing demand.

6 Outdoor centers are as popular as indoor centers.

<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
Now scan the text and make up a list of hobbies that are mentioned there.	\|	A Complete the expressions from the text to make up collocations.

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