Development of an exercise program for older adults: pre-exercise testing, exercise prescription and program maintenance.

Health care practitioners have the technical skills, frequency of contact and credibility with older adults to use exercise as a health-promoting and disease-preventing intervention. This article acquaints the clinician with how to develop an exercise program specifically for older adults. The health-promotion and disease-prevention outcomes of exercise in older adults, including an explanation of the three stages of exercise programming for older adults, are also reviewed. Stage one is labeled pre-exercise testing and discusses assessment protocols for aerobic capacity, body composition, flexibility and strength. Guidelines for who should and should not exercise are also explored. The second stage of exercise programming is exercise prescription. An explanation of how to develop a beginning level of training and guidelines for how to set goals based on the initial pre-exercise testing are presented. Program maintenance is the third stage; this includes suggestions for designing an exercise program that increases program compliance, reduces attrition and prevents relapses to non-exercise behaviors.