Makenzie Griffin, Sydney Kanuch, Daniel Bardgett

Dr. Brian Larouere

SER 310 01: Testing & Exercise Prescription

2 May 2023

Individual Exercise Prescription Project

Who is your client & detailed exercise history:

JR is a twenty-four-year-old white male and a recent college graduate. JR is six feet tall

and weighs approximately one hundred and fifty pounds. His body mass index level is roughly

twenty-point three after testing him. JR does not know his lipid levels or his fasting blood

glucose levels due to not going to the doctor recently. He has no family history of cardiovascular,

metabolic, pulmonary, or renal diseases. He does not smoke but drinks socially up to two times a

week. JR works out at his home performing different types of resistance training activities and

calisthenics. JR goes out hiking once a week along with rock climbing at least once a week.

These two activities are not on a consistent schedule for him. This is because of effects like

weather and if he has time in his day to fit it in. JR likes to perform these two types of activities

when it is not raining and when the temperature is not unbearably hot or unbearably cold.

Recently, he left a job as a bartender where he was on his feet and moving around throughout the

entire shift. If he did not have the time to fit exercise into his schedule, he always had his job to

fall back on to get his steps in for the day. In conclusion, JR had his resting blood pressure taken

by one of us on February 10th, 2023 which measured 128/80mmHG.

JR’s aerobic fitness currently consists of weekly hikes throughout various trails in

Pennsylvania. He stated that he usually hikes for about two hours. During the hikes, the intensity

can vary anywhere from six to twelve on the rate of perceived exertion scale due to the specific
trail he may be on. For example, if he is hiking through hilly or mountainous trails the rate of

perceived exertion scale value might increase to upwards of twelve. However, if he is hiking on

trails that have very little elevation change, the rate of perceived exertion scale value may be

closer to six. He also mentioned that if the weather conditions are extremely hot or extremely

cold then he will not hike that day along with it if it is raining. JR’s current predicted VO2 max is

twenty seven point forty six and fourty eight point thirty seven ml/kg/min tested through the

YMCA bike test and single-stage treadmill jog test respectively. The YMCA bike test was

completed on February 10th, 2023 and then the single-stage treadmill jog test was completed on .

This places him between the seventy to seventy fifth percentile and a classification of “good” for

twenty to twenty-nine -year-old males. JR had mentioned to us that he would like to start

sprinting a couple days of week to build up his endurance and increase his overall speed.

With musculoskeletal exercise, JR currently takes part in one to three days of strength

training and rock climbing for two hours a week. With strength training, he does basic exercises

because his education level is on a lower level with the topic as he would like to be. With rock

climbing, he takes part in this activity at an indoor gym called Ascend. It involves having a great

amount of overall strength and although JR has muscle, he would like to gain more muscle mass

and increase his overall strength. This is because he would like to rock climb for a longer period

of time, maybe more than one day a week. With rock climbing his value on the rated of

perceived exertion scale is around ten to twelve depending on the specific course he partakes in.

JR mentioned he is more or less enthusiastic about exercise, specifically his strength

training, when we asked him his preferences and attitudes. Strength training is not something that

he enjoys, but it is something that he wants to partake in to improve his overall muscle mass and

health. He said he is more enthusiastic about hiking or rock climbing and it helps him to relieve
stress when he is in a tough situation in life. When we asked JR what motivates him to exercise,

he said that his goals of improving on strength, gaining weight in a healthy way, and developing

upper body strength motivates him. JR enjoys doing sprints more than doing any other type of

cardio. He asked that we keep his barriers to three to four days a week, along with about one

hour to one and a half hours of exercise on those days. With those barriers, he still wants to

include his rock climbing and hiking. In the future, JR will be working Mondays to Fridays from

nine in the morning till five in the afternoon for a hybrid-remote job. Weekends and evenings

(except Wednesdays) are still available for us to assist him with exercise. Because his job is

remote, he may still workout during the day.

Explain Fitness Components:

We sat down on a different day to educate and define the five components of fitness to

JR. This is so he could get a better understanding of the components we want to incorporate into

his prescription of exercise. The definitions we provided him are as follows. Muscular strength is

the amount of force a muscle can apply to resistance and the maximum amount of weight that

you can lift once. Muscular endurance is the capacity to exercise voluntary muscles repeatedly

without becoming fatigued and how long you can lift the same weight before tiring out. Body

composition is the proportion of body weight made up of fat, muscle, and bone. Flexibility is a

joint's range of motion Cardiorespiratory fitness is the last component of fitness that expresses

how efficiently the heart, lungs, blood, and muscles use oxygen while exercising.

Muscular strength is important to JR because he wants to work with different exercises to

increase his strength and gain more muscle mass on top of the activities he already performs.

Muscular endurance is important to JR because sometimes he cannot go for long periods of time

with his strength routines so he wants to build and improve on his ability to perform better in a

positive direction. Body composition is important to JR because he is a very lean and light

individual and he wants to gain more weight hopefully with either the prescription we provide

him or with the activities he already takes part in. With gaining more weight, he wants this to

occur by gaining more lean muscle mass rather than fat mass. Flexibility is important to JR

because he is a frequent rock climber and hiker and he needs to be flexible while performing

these activities. Although he is already slightly flexible, he wants to develop more flexibility in

his overall fitness. Cardiorespiratory fitness is important to JR because the more oxygen his

blood can carry while exercising, the longer he can withstand an intense workout and perform
better. Like previously stated, he wants to perform his exercises and activities over a longer

period of time so developing a higher tolerance is beneficial and important to him.

Intended Outcomes and Behavioral Goals:

When talking with our client about what outcomes and intended outcomes he wanted to

achieve during this process, he was very prepared and already had these goals in mind. First, he

was adamant about gaining weight. He chose this intended outcome because he perceives

himself as “too skinny”. Our client does not eat many meals throughout the day, resulting in not

consuming enough calories. He wants to “bulk up” to change his personal image of himself. His

other intended outcome was to improve upper body strength. He chose this intended outcome

because our client believes performing 5 sets of 5 reps of his body weight is a good indication of

his muscular strength.

Working with the client, the following goals were developed to help them reach their

intended outcomes:

● In the next two months, our client will increase their body weight by two to five pounds

each month all while maintaining a body fat percentage of less than ten percent

○ For the next two months, he will eat at least three meals per day, preferably three

days a week (or more) until the end of June.

○ For the next two months, he will resistance train four days a week until the end of

June

● Our client would like to improve their upper body strength.

○ Increase bench press 1-RM to 135 lbs by the end of June.

○ Complete both upper body workouts per week for the entire 8 week program.
First week of the exercise prescription:

The program that was created for our client is a strength training and conditioning

program. The program will assist our client with his first IO which is increasing his body weight

by two to five pounds each month all while maintaining a body fat percentage of less than ten

percent. In order to do this, over the next two months, he will resistance train four days a week

until the end of June. By strength conditioning, he is slowly gaining muscle mass and therefore is

gaining more body weight. It will not happen instantaneously, but will over time and we

reiterated this to our client. Strength training and gaining that body weight will also help his self

image. He believes that he is “too skinny” and therefore, gaining more body weight will assist

with that self image of himself. For the next two months, he will also eat at least three meals per

day, preferably three days a week (or more) until the end of June. This is an aspect we cannot

help him with specifically and in detail because it is out of our scope of practice. The program

will also assist our client with his second IO which is improving his upper body strength. Like

previously stated, he will resistance train four days a week until the end of June. With this

training, he will gradually increase his bench press 1-RM to one hundred and thirty five pounds

by the end of June. This is a specific goal that he set for himself with our assistance. We

explained that a goal like this can be done with a gradual increase of more weight on the bench

press every week. He will also complete both upper body workouts per week for the entire eight

week program. By adding these specific goals and exercises to his prescription, gaining upper

body strength will be attainable for him by the end of those eight weeks. The specific work out

that we wrote to our client will be found in the following pages.

The FITT principle consists of “Frequency”, “Intensity”, “Time”, and “Type” of the

exercise given to the client. We took all of these aspects into consideration when coming up with
our client’s exercise prescription. The frequency portrays the amount of time the client has. JR

recently started a full time job, so our prescription had to work around his schedule. We decided

on two days/week dedicated to upper body and two days/week dedicated to lower body. He will

perform those exercises on his days off and/or after work. The intensity part of JR’s prescription

incorporates the last set of each exercise instructing to “progress until close to failure”. In other

words, we want him to try to get to approximately 85% of his max. We chose this because we

want the muscles exerted to go through a hypertrophy phase. However, we only chose 85% to

reduce the risk of injury if he were to go to his full max each set. As for time, we are having JR

go through 60 minute sessions each day he exercises. Our client preferred to have a “quick”, yet

efficient workout. Our client is only able to set aside 60 minutes for exercise, so that’s the time

period we had to work with. The type of JR’s exercise prescription mostly revolves around

resistance training. This is simply due to our client’s goals he is wishing to achieve, which is

building muscle. Of course, we incorporate warm-ups and cool-downs into the prescription.

When looking at the prescription overall, the abundance is resistance training. All in all, JR had a

large hand in building his own program, while we provided additional guidance working with his

availability and personal goals.