The American College of Sports Medicine developed an opinion statement on the amount of physical activity needed for optimal functional capacity and health. They proposed that children and adolescents should obtain 20–30 min of vigorous exercise each day. In the beginning of the 1990s this recommendation was refined by the International Consensus Conference on Physical Activity Guidelines for Adolescents (Sallis & Patrick 1994), in which new physical activity guidelines for adolescents were developed.
The expert committee, with researchers from the USA, Canada, Europe and Australia, decided not to develop guidelines for children’s physical activity, because of a lack of scientific evidence in the younger age groups.
The guidelines for adolescent physical activity were twofold:
(1) all adolescents should be physically active daily or nearly every day as part of their lifestyle;
(2) adolescents should engage in three or more sessions per week of activities that last 20 min or more and that require moderate to vigorous levels of exertion.
In 1998, the Health Education Authority symposium ‘Young and Active’ proposed different recommendations for the physical activity of young people (Biddle et al 1998). Their primary recommendation was that all young people should participate in physical activity of at least moderate intensity for 1 hour per day and that young people who currently do little activity should participate in physical activity of at least moderate intensity for at least half an hour per day.
Their secondary recommendation was that at least twice a week, some of these activities should help to enhance and maintain muscular strength and flexibility, and bone health. Nowadays, this recommendation is still believed to be valid. Besides these international-based guidelines there are several national-based guidelines for physical activity in youth. In the USA, for instance, Healthy People 2010 proposed to increase the proportion of adolescents who engage in vigorous physical activity that promotes cardio respiratory fitness 3 or more days per week for 20 or more minutes per occasion (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion 2003).
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