Physical Activity and Exercise Intensity Terminology: A Joint American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) Expert Statement and Exercise and Sport Science Australia (ESSA) Consensus Statement
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT: The evidence supporting the many beneficial effects of physical activity, including exercise, is overwhelming. This has led to numerous publications, statements, and position stands providing evidence-based recommendations to realize the performance-enhancing and therapeutic benefits of exercise. However, one factor hampering research and limiting the adoption of these recommendations is the inconsistent use of terminology associated with different exercise intensities. The goal of this international group of researchers and practitioners, therefore, was to propose standardized physical activity and exercise intensity terminology that has utility across all ages, sexes, genders, physical abilities, conditions, applications, and activities. After much discussion, we propose a standard terminology for physical activity, exercise, and sport and human performance comprising five exercise intensities: very low, low, moderate, high, and very high. We also propose five different descriptors for the perception of effort that align with the five intensities we have suggested: very easy, easy, somewhat hard, hard, and very hard. To enable consistent use of these descriptors with both cardiorespiratory and resistance exercise, we suggest not using descriptors such as light, heavy, weak, or strong (which might be perceived as only being applicable to describing load). We appreciate that some fields have long-established terminology and may be reluctant to change. Nonetheless, at a minimum, the terminology proposed here allows for more clarity when comparing the different exercise intensity descriptors currently used by different fields. Finally, we hope this will be an important "first step" in harmonizing the descriptions of exercise intensity across the fields of physical activity for public health, exercise science, and sport science.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.039 | 0.065 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.006 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.011 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.006 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".