Exercise Interventions for Healthy Populations

This unit discusses the design and delivery of exercise and physical activity services for apparently healthy individuals, including athletes. Students develop an understanding of client-centered exercise delivery, and the challenges of behaviour change that are often needed for lifelong participation in exercise and physical activity. The unit investigates how variables including the client's history of exercise, physical activity and injury, the client's goals, likes and dislikes, barriers and opportunities (eg. sociocultural, socioeconomic factors, socio-psychological, environmental), and the client's current exercise and functional capacities affect program prescription and uptake. Students learn the importance of cultural competence in the design and delivery of services, and how to use contextually appropriate communication strategies to obtain informed consent. Students also develop hands-on expertise to conduct needed, appropriate assessments within the physical health-domain comprising of the major components of health-related physical fitness, in addition to the neuromotor components of balance, agility and coordination of adults. Students develop critical thinking skills to analyse the collected base-line assessment results, based on the functional capacities of clients and how these capabilities compare with normative data that can be used to plan, design and compose individualised exercise interventions. Students are exposed to the importance of developing a safe and effective demonstration and leadership of appropriate exercises and training regimes.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:

1. Exhibit the ability to obtain informed consent and conduct pre-exercise screening using contextually appropriate communication strategies;
2. Devise appropriate, evidence-based exercise interventions that consider clients’ current level of physical activity, goals, preferences, needs, barriers and motives;
3. Justify, conduct and interpret results of exercise assessments appropriate to clients’ objectives and health status;
4. Monitor clients for adverse signs and symptoms, taking appropriate actions to manage them; and
5. Articulate the contraindications for exercise and apply this knowledge to select exercise testing and design exercise interventions that ensure client safety.