Physical Activity for Children: In Pursuit of Appropriate Guidelines

In 1994 two important documents were published regarding appropriate physical activity for children and youth. The first (Corbin and Pangrazi 1994) suggested guidelines for preadolescent children and the second (Sallis, Patrick, and Long, 1994) suggested guidelines for adolescents. Prior to these statements discourses about whether youth were considered to be physically active were based primarily on guidelines for adults. In their paper proposing specific guidelines for children, Corbin and Pangrazi (1994) noted that children were often considered to be inactive if their heart rates did not exceed relatively high levels for relatively long periods of time. They suggested that these heart rate standards were likely to result in classifying many active children as inactive. This, it was suggested, was because children are intermittent in their activity patterns and a standard of continuous high heart rate was inappropriate. Application of the adult exercise prescription model (EPM) was not best for childre...