FIGURE IT OUT… Engagement in physical activity in later life largely rests on values and representations shaped during one’s professional career

Marie-Amélie LAUZANNE, a sociologist, has examined—together with the PrescAPP collective—the social determinants of engaging in physical activity among ageing individuals; such engagement often appears linked to socialization into sport during childhood or adolescence. Here, she explores how the medical prescription scheme for “adapted physical activity” (APA) may have encouraged participation among people who had previously remained distant from such practices.

Introduced in 2016, APA programs are secondary prevention schemes, generally short-term, designed to facilitate engagement in “ordinary” physical activity. As part of the PrescAPP collective, around fifty interviews were conducted with APA participants over the age of 55 across five regions. The majority of program participants had not previously engaged in physical or sporting activities. The interviews show that, for them, medical prescription facilitated participation, which no longer appeared so much as “sporting” but rather as “medical.” The interviews also reveal that, for some, their subjective commitment to the activity is shaped by representational and perceptual frameworks developed through their professional lives: former primary school teachers valuing the instructors’ pedagogical approach, a former construction site manager emphasizing strength-based work, and so on.

Far from calls for “active ageing” which seek to extend a notion of “usefulness” modeled on the world of work, and despite forms of disengagement from work that often precede retirement, the reactivation of subjective frameworks linked to professional experience appears to encourage engagement in new activities in later life.