Objective Means of Monitoring Children’s Physical Activity and Health-Related Recommendations for Its Implementation

The objective of the chapter is to describe the basic objective means for long-term, as well as short-term field-based monitoring of physical activity in children and adolescents and to formulate education and health-related recommendations to promote an active lifestyle. The first part of the chapter introduces and describes the selected objective means for field-based monitoring of physical activity in children and youth with an emphasis on their accuracy, advantages and limitations. The introduction of different instruments together with recommendations for practical application should help the reader choose the correct instrument and use it to its full potential. The second part of the chapter presents specific suggestions and recommendations for physical activity to promote an active lifestyle based on the conclusions of foreign publications, as well as the results of the authors’ own research. The proposed recommendations are of an educational and health-preventive nature. Applying these recommendations does not ‘automatically’ prevent ‘lifestyle diseases’ but substantially reduces the probability of their outbreak or worsening.

Keywords: Actigraph accelerometer, Actitrainer device, Adolescents, Energy expenditure, Environment, Heart-rate monitor, Intervention programme, Leisure time, Moderate intensity, Overweight, Obesity, Physical activity, Preschool children, Recommendation, Reliability, School, School-aged children, Steps, Validity, Yamax pedometer.