Any activity is better than none: what the UK physical activity guidelines really mean if you are disabled

Any activity is better than none: what the UK physical activity guidelines really mean if you are disabled

Have you ever read health advice about exercise and thought, well, that clearly was not written for someone like me?

Most people living with a disability or a long-term condition have had that moment. The poster in the GP waiting room. The leaflet after a hospital appointment. The cheerful advice to get 150 minutes a week, delivered by someone who has never had to think about whether the front door of the gym has a step.

So it is worth saying plainly: the guidelines were written for you. And they say something rather more encouraging than most people realise.

What the guidelines say

In July 2026, the UK's four Chief Medical Officers published an update to their physical activity guidelines. For adults aged 19 to 64, the advice comes down to three things:

• Around 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity across the week, or 75 minutes of something more vigorous, or a combination of the two

• Activity that builds or keeps muscle strength on at least two days a week

• Some movement every day where possible, and breaking up long stretches of sitting or lying still with lighter activity

Written down like that, 150 minutes can feel like a wall. Two and a half hours. Every week. When getting dressed already takes real effort, or fatigue decides how your afternoon goes, it is easy to read that number and quietly decide it is not for you.

But the report is clear that those 150 minutes do not have to arrive in neat blocks.

They can be built up in short bursts of any length, spread across the week, or gathered into one or two longer sessions. And the message the Chief Medical Officers repeatedly return to is that some is good, and more is better. There is no minimum you have to reach before your body starts to benefit. In fact, the health gains are greatest for people starting from the lowest levels of activity, because every additional minute counts for proportionately more.

If you currently do very little, you are not at the back of the queue. You are the person with the most to gain.

The part almost nobody quotes

There is a passage in the guidance that deserves far more attention than it gets.

The Chief Medical Officers state that the idea of exercise being unsafe for disabled people or people with long term conditions is a perception that should be challenged. They point to a review of the evidence on physical activity for disabled adults which found no indication that appropriate activity carries a meaningful risk, and which concluded that myths about exercise being inherently harmful to disabled people should be dispelled.

They go further. They acknowledge that a target such as 150 minutes can itself become an obstacle, putting people off before they have started. They recognise that everyday movement counts, including wheeling a wheelchair, climbing stairs, and lifting and carrying children. And they note that lighter activity, done for longer, can deliver benefits that compare well with moderate activity, which matters enormously if moderate or vigorous intensity is not realistic for you at the moment.

Read as a whole, it is not a set of instructions. It is closer to permission.

So why does it still feel out of reach?

Because the guidelines describe what your body needs. They do not describe the room you have to walk, wheel or be hoisted into to get it.

The barrier is rarely the disability. It is the equipment you cannot transfer onto. The instructor who is kind, means well, and has no idea how to adapt a movement for someone with cerebral palsy or a spinal injury. The row of mirrors. The feeling of being watched, or worse, being carefully not looked at. It is being told to take it easy so many times, by so many well-meaning people, that you stop believing your body is capable of anything else.

Confidence does not disappear all at once. It leaks away slowly, one closed door at a time. And once it has gone, the 150 minutes is not the hard part. Walking in is the hard part.

What starting actually looks like

At Able2B, sessions are built around what a person can do and what they want to be able to do, not around a diagnosis on a referral letter.

That approach comes from an unusual combination. Rachael Hutchinson is an orthopaedic surgeon and a medical classifier for British Para Sport, so she assesses function properly rather than guessing at it. Jon Thaxton is a former British and European boxing champion with more than 35 years of coaching behind him, and he has spent that time adapting training to whoever is in front of him. You can read more about the team behind Able2B and how they work together.

In practice, that looks like:

Short sessions, repeated often. For people with a neurological disability in particular, little and often works better than long and occasional. Bad movement patterns and injuries tend to appear when someone is tired and focus has gone. So sessions are kept short and purposeful, which also happens to fit neatly with the guidance on building activity up in small amounts.

One to one gym sessions in a space designed for accessibility from the start, with a programme written around your goals rather than a generic plan handed out to everyone.

Frame Running for people who have always wanted to run but whose balance has stood in the way. A running frame takes care of the balance so you can do the rest.

Mixed ability group sessions where nobody is the odd one out, and where the company is very often the thing people say they came back for. That matters more than it sounds. The guidance itself notes that being active is linked to less loneliness and better social connection, and for a lot of people that is the benefit they feel first.

Start where you are

You do not need a fitness level, a plan, or a target. You need one session that does not make you feel like a problem to be managed.

Some is good. More is better. Both of those are true, and the second one only matters after the first.

If you are wondering whether any of this would work for you, or for someone you care about, book an assessment today. No commitment, no assessment to pass. Just a conversation about where you are now and what you would like to be able to do.

Are you a GP, physiotherapist, occupational therapist or consultant? 

If you have patients who would benefit from supervised, medically informed activity but you have nowhere confident to send them, get in touch. Referrals are welcome and we are happy to talk you through how sessions are structured before you send anyone our way.