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The physical activity Readiness Questionnaire (Par-Q) determines if you should check with the doctor before becoming physically active. Par-Q is a readiness questionnaire for finding individuals physical ability before engaging in any physical activity.
Regular physical activity is fun and keeps you healthy, therefore, the self-assessment questionnaire should be done more often. It only takes a few minutes to fill up and provides convenient results to assess one’s fitness in doing intense exercise or whether they need a trip to the physician. Let’s look at the benefits of assessing oneself and its disadvantages.
Pros:
1. Determine weaknesses: The fitness appraisal will help you determine areas in which you’re weak and which physical activity programs are safe and helpful to you based on your condition.
2. Assess yourself: It helps you determine whether you’re fit for a particular physical activity at the moment. It determines your physical wealth being so that you can plan how to live an active life and avoid any health risks.
3. Voluntary method: It is a voluntary assessment process and users are encouraged to go through the questionnaire so that they can evaluate themselves before they participate in any activity.
4. Confidential assessment: After you fill out the questionnaire, you can keep it for yourself and you can decide to keep the information confidential or disclose it to your physician or fitness instructor.
5. Simple: Par-Q is a simple screening tool and it can be used by anyone who wants to start an intense exercise program to keep fit and healthy.
6. Helps create an ideal exercise prescription: The questionnaire helps the trainer to come up with an ideal exercise prescription program for a client based on their health history and current conditions.
7. Uncover potential health risk: The questions in the questionnaire are used to identify any potential health risks like heart attack, joint problems, blood circulation, and other risks which can be dangerous in case of intense exercise.
8. Improves the quality of life: The screening helps one to improve their quality of life by understanding the best program to follow or which exercise to do.
9. Determines one’s commitment: The Par-Q helps gym instructors to pinpoint the level of commitment and motivation on various clients. It determines your availability and goals.
10. Showcase credibility: Par-Q determines the credibility of the fitness professional because it shows them that you’re keen on assisting them to achieve their goals as well as considering their safety and well-being.
Cons:
1. Depends on the client’s honest: This medical form depends entirely on your honesty and telling a medical white lie is quite common. You should know that to achieve the fitness goals you should be transparent with the information provided.
2. Incomplete information: Depending on the type of Par-Q form given, you may not remember everything in your medical history and only record information that you can remember and deem relevant.
3. Perceived risks: As a client, there are certain risks or perceived risks you may not know due to lack of expertise and they may affect your progress on the exercise program especially if the fitness instructor doesn’t have your complete medical history.
4. Outdated information: If you have some lifestyle changes or other conditions, you need to carry out another Par-Q assessment to update your file and change your physical activity plan. Otherwise relying on outdated information will not do you good.
5. Different Par-Q for each physical activity: For every new physical activity you tend to engage on, you need to fill out a new par-q form to determine your current fitness in that physical activity.
6. Exercise risk: The traditional approach to exercise prescription has led to some problems with people suffering from chronic illness. They not only need par-q but also should use other exercise tests to reduce the risk.
7. QFEPs support: Even after screening to determine your physical wealth being, you still need a qualified fitness and exercise professional to guide you through the right exercise.
