Joe Wicks helping Government move away from ‘boring’ fitness videos – Streeting

Fitness coach Joe Wicks is helping the Government move away from “boring” video campaigns aimed at improving health, the Health Secretary has said.

Wes Streeting mocked his own suit and tie appearance as he spoke on ITV’s This Morning to help promote a new animated series for children, known as Activate.

Created by Wicks and backed by Government funding, the series contains five-minute workouts to get children moving.

Mr Streeting said: “It’s really bite size. You can do it in your living room, you can do it in your bedroom, you can get your family involved.

“And look, the truth is that if the Government was trying to produce something like this on our own, it probably would have been like, sorry to say, but a boring Government video.

“I mean, I’ve just turned up looking like this this morning.

“It’s kind of a really good, kind of physical manifestation of how boring Government can be.

“And the great thing about this partnership we’ve got is we’re putting some resource behind it so we can make more of these videos and they can be more freely available.

“You’ve got Joe’s passion, energy, dynamism – all that comes through…

“We want to be part of this, because we’ve got one in five children leaving primary school with obesity, so getting children active, getting them out and about, and also meeting kids where they are…Lots of them are on YouTube.

“They’re doom-scrolling like the rest of us…so we’re meeting these kids where they are, and giving them something fun and easy to engage with and motivational.”

Mr Streeting said his own experience of kidney cancer had made him focus on his health, “but the nature of my job means my exercise has suffered”.

He joked that he was “not going to be on the front of Men’s Health (magazine)” like ITV host Ben Shephard, but every time he managed to get to the gym it was good for his body and his mental health.

Wicks added: “This isn’t just about the body. We have kids with serious anxiety, depression, getting pulled out of school, they’re really struggling.

“So this is about holistic process, about improvising movement for the mind.

“Because when you when you get the mind right, the body will follow, the transformation will come, and food choices will improve.

“The family’s energy lifts up. This is so much more than just about body image and weight loss.”

The Activate episodes are being shown on Wicks’ Body Coach TV channel on YouTube.