Individuals Underestimate Moderate and Vigorous Intensity Physical Activity

Karissa L Canning, Ruth E Brown, Veronica K Jamnik, Art Salmon, Chris I Ardern and Jennifer L Kuk

PLOS ONE, 2014, vol. 9, issue 5, 1-5

Abstract: Background: It is unclear whether the common physical activity (PA) intensity descriptors used in PA guidelines worldwide align with the associated percent heart rate maximum method used for prescribing relative PA intensities consistently between sexes, ethnicities, age categories and across body mass index (BMI) classifications. Objectives: The objectives of this study were to determine whether individuals properly select light, moderate and vigorous intensity PA using the intensity descriptions in PA guidelines and determine if there are differences in estimation across sex, ethnicity, age and BMI classifications. Methods: 129 adults were instructed to walk/jog at a “light,” “moderate” and “vigorous effort” in a randomized order. The PA intensities were categorized as being below, at or above the following %HRmax ranges of: 50–63% for light, 64–76% for moderate and 77–93% for vigorous effort. Results: On average, people correctly estimated light effort as 51.5±8.3%HRmax but underestimated moderate effort as 58.7±10.7%HRmax and vigorous effort as 69.9±11.9%HRmax. Participants walked at a light intensity (57.4±10.5%HRmax) when asked to walk at a pace that provided health benefits, wherein 52% of participants walked at a light effort pace, 19% walked at a moderate effort and 5% walked at a vigorous effort pace. These results did not differ by sex, ethnicity or BMI class. However, younger adults underestimated moderate and vigorous intensity more so than middle-aged adults (P

Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0097927 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 97927&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0097927

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0097927

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().