Recommendations for physical activity and exercise in older adults: A scoping review mapping exercise actions and prescription information.

This scoping review aimed to map exercise actions within recommendations for older adults, and support implementation-oriented nursing and health practice, rather than to evaluate the quality of those recommendations. A comprehensive literature search was performed on 30 January 2026 to identify recommendations for older adults. Exercise type coverage across target populations was mapped using a heat map, and relationships between exercise types and specific actions were visualized using a knowledge map. Twenty-four publications were included. Of these, thirteen recommendation documents explicitly described exercise actions, yielding 135 action entries with corresponding FITT-based prescription details. Across the included recommendation documents, 66 of the 135 unique exercise actions (66/135, 48.9%) were reported under the strength/resistance exercise, followed by balance (31/135, 23.0%), flexibility (31/135, 23.0%), and aerobic (24/135, 17.8%) exercise. Regarding prescription information, frequency was reported for 115 actions (115/135, 85.2%), session time for 33 actions (33/135, 24.4%), intensity for 39 actions (39/135, 28.9%), and additional prescription details beyond FITT for 124 actions (124/135, 91.9%). Mapping action-level recommendations provides a practical resource for implementation in clinical, community, and home-based settings. Future recommendations should better address the needs of specific older populations, standardize exercise action terminology, and report prescription information in greater detail.