Physical_Activity_Guidelines

Guidance From Professionals or Peers
Groups led by professionals or peers can help improve physical activity levels. These groups usually incorporate
some form of counseling or guidance from a health professional or trainer to help participants set physical activity
goals, monitor their progress toward these goals, seek social support to maintain physical activity, and use selfreward
and positive self-talk to reinforce progress. They also use structured problem-solving to prevent relapse to
an inactive or low active lifestyle. To reduce staff burden and costs, groups can also be led by trained peers who
deliver the intervention in full or in part and often share similar characteristics or experiences as group members.
Youth, adults, and older adults can benefit from using these strategies to achieve an active lifestyle.
Support From Others
Participation in physical activity in a community setting with others, such as friends and family, can increase
physical activity levels. Adults are more likely to participate in physical activity when they are supported by
others. Buddy systems, contracts with others to complete specified levels of physical activity, and walking
groups are ways to provide individuals with friendship and support for physical activity.
Technology
Technology-based approaches can take many forms. They can be used to provide virtual coaching to help
people set and monitor physical activity goals. They can be used alone or combined with other strategies. Step
counters (pedometers) and other wearable activity monitors combined with behavioral strategies, such as
goal-setting and coaching, increase physical activity by providing physical activity feedback directly to the user.
Technology can also be used to provide guidance remotely to individuals through text messaging, by telephone,
or through the Internet. Telephone and Internet delivery strategies offer guidance to individuals from trained
peers or through interactive voice-response systems. For those with lower computer or technology literacy
or living in remote areas, computer-tailored mailings can increase physical activity. Use of smartphone
applications can increase regular physical activity in children and adolescents.
For Communities
Although individuals make the final choice about whether to be physically active, they can face challenges
that make this choice more difficult. For example, they may not know about or have access to safe places to be
physically active, may live in communities not designed for activity, or may have chronic conditions or physical
limitations that create additional barriers. Through programs, practices, and policies, communities can help
individuals overcome these challenges and make physical activity the easy choice.
Strategies at the community level generally have greater reach and can result in longer lasting change than
strategies focused on individual behavior. Actions can be taken across an entire community or within settings
in the community, such as schools. The following are five proven strategies to show how this can work.
96 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans