How active is your metro? The CDC's numbers for 48 big metros

How much the people around you move shapes what a normal week looks like where you live. The CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, the survey behind its state numbers, also publishes estimates for large metro areas, and two of its questions are about training: during the past month, did you do any physical activity or exercise, and do you do muscle-strengthening exercises two or more times a week?¹

The table below is the CDC's most recent answer to both for 48 large U.S. metro areas, with the 95% confidence interval for each figure. Eight of the 48 have no recent metro figure and four more have none for the strength question, and the table says so instead of filling the gap.

The table

Lower is "better" in the first column (fewer adults doing nothing); higher is "better" in the second (more adults lifting). The range in brackets is the CDC's 95% confidence interval. Metro samples are smaller than state samples, so the ranges are wide: two metros whose ranges overlap are not meaningfully different. Each metro with a page on this site links to it, and the postal codes link to each state's page.

Download this table (CSV). Free to reuse with a link back to this page.

Why some rows are empty. For Boston, Dallas–Fort Worth, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia and Seattle, the CDC's metro dataset has no published value for the metro's adults overall on either question, and for Cleveland and Washington it has none for the strength question. For San Diego and San Francisco the most recent published values are from 2011 or 2012, and for Louisville and Pittsburgh the most recent strength value is from 2019, too old to print beside 2023 and 2024. An empty cell stays empty: it is never filled with the state's figure, a figure for part of the metro, or an estimate.

What stands out

• The ends are clearly apart; the middle is not. Raleigh–Cary (14.4%), Denver (14.9%) and Minneapolis–St. Paul (16.0%) sit at the low end for adults reporting no activity, Riverside–San Bernardino (29.1%) and Houston (26.7%) at the high end. Denver's range (13.8 to 15.9) and Riverside–San Bernardino's (24.8 to 33.5) are far apart, so that gap is real. But each end overlaps its neighbors, so the table has no single clear "least active" or "most active" metro.
• No metro's estimate reaches half of adults lifting. The share doing muscle-strengthening exercises two or more times a week runs from 35.3% (Raleigh–Cary) to 46.7% (Denver), and the top of every range but one is under 50%: Jacksonville's runs to 51.2. The World Health Organization's guideline for adults includes muscle-strengthening on two or more days a week,² so in every other metro with a figure, most adults don't report meeting that part of it.
• Moving and lifting don't always go together. Minneapolis–St. Paul is at the low end for no activity but mid-table for lifting (41.5%); Phoenix is mid-table for no activity (21.2%) but near the top for lifting (45.3%). A metro where most people move can still be a metro where most people don't train for strength.
• The ranges vary a lot. Some are under 2 points wide (Minneapolis–St. Paul's activity figure, 15.0 to 16.9); others are more than 13 (San Jose's strength figure, 32.6 to 46.0). Read the range before you read the order.
• The years differ, on purpose. The activity question is from 2024 for 37 of the 40 metros with a figure and from 2023 for Memphis, Nashville and San Jose, the most recent year the CDC publishes for those three; the strength question is from 2023, the most recent year it publishes for these metros. The table prints the year beside each column.

Metro and state numbers don't mix

The state table looks similar, but it is a different CDC data product: state-level rows with their own question wording ("no leisure-time physical activity"), their own years and their own estimates. This table uses the CDC's metro-area product, SMART, whose activity question asks about any physical activity or exercise in the past month. Different wording, different years, different estimates: don't set a metro's figure next to its state's figure and read the gap as a difference in how people train. If your metro has no figure here, your state's row is context, not your metro's number.

How to read your own metro

Find your row and read the range, not just the number. If your metro's range overlaps another metro's, the two are the same as far as this survey can tell. Then read it as a backdrop, not a verdict: it describes what adults around you say about themselves, and it says nothing about what you do or can do.

What it does tell you is what your week is up against. Where a lot of adults report no activity at all, a plan has to survive a routine where moving is optional. Where more people lift, it has to survive the urge to copy someone else's program. Either way the plan is the same shape: two or three sessions a week built around the big movements, a floor for the bad weeks, and someone who reads your numbers. How often to train covers the first part; how to start lifting weights covers the first month if you've never lifted.

Related tables: how active is your state (the state-level companion), summer heat and winter cold at weather stations in these same 48 metros, and commute times by state. For cities, how active is your city prints the CDC's PLACES estimates, a different product again; for 40 metros, see rain and commute times by metro.

Where the numbers come from

Both columns come from one CDC dataset, Behavioral Risk Factors: Selected Metropolitan Area Risk Trends (SMART) MMSA Prevalence Data, 2011 to present (data.cdc.gov dataset j32a-sa6u), published by the CDC's Division of Population Health. The first column is the "No" answer to "During the past month, did you participate in any physical activities?" (variable _TOTINDA); the second is the "Yes" answer to muscle-strengthening exercises two or more times per week (_PASTRNG). Both are the overall-adult figures for the metropolitan statistical area as a whole: weighted survey estimates, not age-adjusted, with the CDC's 95% confidence intervals, rounded to one decimal. Only rows from 2023 or later are used.¹

The 48 metros are the 25 largest metropolitan statistical areas by the Census Bureau's 2024 population estimates and the 23 other metros among the 50 largest that have a page on this site; the other two of the 50, Las Vegas and Fresno, have no recent figure in this survey. Each metro's figures were requested from the CDC's open-data interface on October 22, 2026, one metro at a time, and checked the same day by a second, independent re-fetch: every value and interval matched, and every empty row was confirmed empty.

If you reuse the table, cite the CDC, not this site; a link back here is appreciated, but the data are theirs. The CDC's notice, as its reuse terms ask: Source: CDC. Materials developed by CDC; the data are available on the agency website (data.cdc.gov) at no charge. Use of this material does not imply endorsement by CDC, ATSDR, HHS or the United States Government of Diogo Fitness or its services. Reference to specific commercial products, manufacturers, companies, or trademarks does not constitute its endorsement or recommendation by the U.S. Government, Department of Health and Human Services, or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Whatever your metro's row says, it is not a reason to wait. If you want help turning it into a week you can keep, apply.