The Exercise Prescription Therapeutic Applications of Exercise and Physical Activity

Abstract

From the Latin “praescribere”, the American Heritage Dictionary defines prescribe as to “set down as a rule or order the use of a medicine or other treatment.” As strength and conditioning professionals advance forward challenging traditional boundaries of scope of practice, fund of knowledge and applications of exercise science, we bring true form to the concept of the exercise “prescription.” In 1999 the American Council on Exercise (ACE) published the Clinical Exercise Specialist Manual. It forecast the emerging impact of the obesity epidemic on America and the role the Department of Health and Human Services played in inspiring the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the American College of Sports Medicine to generate evidence based guidelines on the level of exercise and physical activity necessary to produce measurable results.