Hot Off the Press: The New OMNI Faces Exertion Scale: Practical Application Across Practice Settings

With several variations of the OMNI Pictorial System of Perceived Exertion for children utilized by practitioners and researchers, we developed a more universal version to assess a child’s perceptual response to a broad variety physical tasks or physical activities. This modified version was designed for interpreting or prescribing intensity of workload for a more general range of physical activities or other lifestyle activities in youth. This universal version allows practitioners and researchers to use the same visual scale, regardless of the activity is aerobic or resistance, creating more commonality within clinics and research. This version aligns with the Heart Rate Reserve method of interpreting or prescribing the intensity of workload for a given physical activity. Determining exercise intensity for youth is important for safety, exercise prescription, and physical task analysis. A scale for youth that is universal, low risk, cost free, and does not require equipment or complex monitoring, is ideal for use in a variety of settings. RPE considerations are important to designing and progressing physical activity programs and physical task progression. It is recommended that practitioners prescribe frequency, duration, and intensity ranges that are consistent with guidelines by organizations such as the American College of Sports Medicine and Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans 2nd edition when determining initial training and progression. The OMNI Faces Exertion Scale is an important tool for monitoring response to physical tasks, therapeutic exercise, and reducing risk of injury when progressing youth of all abilities in various everyday activities.