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Fitness Screening and Exercise Prescription
M15041A
Module Tutors: Denise Roche, Cristopher Potter
Using consensus guidelines and research literature, critically appraise the fitness screening protocols and exercise prescription guidelines for children.
Andrew Dowey
10041576
2987 words
In recent years, the government have been attempting to raise awareness concerning the benefits of exercise for health and fitness. The benefits of exercise have long been known to be extensive when compared to sedentary individuals. The main danger to future public health is the issue of child obesity, and as exercise behaviour during childhood has been found to increase the probability of exercise adherence throughout life, it is important to screen and exercise children for fitness and health. Most research has been focussed on exercise prescription among middle -aged individuals because that is the main problem age group in the present day.
There is however, an extensive body of research on the physiological responses in children to exercise. This body of research, alongside consensus guidelines from a range of European and American sources will be critically appraised and conclusions will be drawn as to the most effective and safest way to screen and prescribe fitness and exercise to children. ... The implications of this are that fitness screening and exercise prescription for children have to be very specific to the individual. The issue of biological age versus chronological age will be discussed with regard to developmental exercise physiology.
The essay will then move on to appraise protocols suggested by a range of books. ...
The third part of the essay looks at different types of exercise, such as cardiovascular training and resistance training and the effectiveness and safety of these methods will be analysed. ... This would suggest that physiological markers are not a satisfactory indication of a child’s biological and mental development and therefore should not be used in children’s fitness screening to prescribe exercise. ... For example, body composition may affect previous athletic participation and that would have an effect on motor skill development for exercise. ...
A common way of measuring morphologic maturation by exercise physiologists is the determination of physiologic variables relative to age and peak height velocity (PHV). ... Rowland (1996) goes on to comment that while children of the same chronological age are categorised by skeletal age, differences in fitness are observable. Children that mature early are typically stronger and faster and also have a higher maximal O2 uptake than late maturers, this difference is less noticeable in females. This goes to highlight the point made earlier about the complexity of the different maturational curves, that while these methods have a good level of validity, there are other complex considerations to be made before exercise is prescribed on morphological factors.
Fitness screening methodology has a wide variety of protocols for children and many of them are modified to fit the specific needs of an individual. Being a child is not a ‘condition’ as such but there are specific areas where caution should be addressed when screening or testing a child’s fitness. Children are very flexible in the range of physical activity modes they are able to engage in when compared to other specialist populations and so protocols exist for treadmill and cycle ergometer methods. There are also methods of screening that are less invasive and favour ethical guidelines, questionnaires are useful for their ease of administration but the validity of self report methods is often criticised. ... This part of the essay discusses and compares different types of protocols for a given mode e. ...
There are three main cycle protocols that have been used extensively in children.
Approximate Word count = 2931
Approximate Pages = 11.7
(250 words per page double spaced)
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