The PAR-Q+ explained: the health questions before you start training

2026-09-27, Training

The PAR-Q+ is a short health questionnaire you answer before you become much more physically active. It asks seven yes or no questions about your heart, chest pain, dizziness, chronic conditions, medication, joints and any doctor's advice to exercise only under supervision. If every answer is no, you are generally ready to start. If any answer is yes, the questionnaire sends you to a follow-up, and often to a doctor or a qualified exercise professional, before you step up your training.

Where the PAR-Q+ comes from

PAR-Q stands for Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire. The original PAR-Q was a Canadian screening form. The PAR-Q+ ("for everyone") is its successor, built by an international group of experts, and is kept up to date by the PAR-Q+ Collaboration. The current version and its online follow-up live at eparmedx.com, which is the only place to get the real thing. The form is copyrighted, so below we describe what it covers in our own words.

The site puts its starting point plainly: physical activity is very safe for most people, and some people should check with their doctor, another licensed health care practitioner or a qualified exercise professional before becoming much more active. The questionnaire is how you find out which group you are in.

The seven general questions, in plain words

Page one of the PAR-Q+ has seven general health questions. In short, they ask whether:

1. A doctor has ever told you that you have a heart condition or high blood pressure.
2. You feel chest pain at rest, in daily life, or when you are active.
3. You lose your balance from dizziness, or have lost consciousness in the past year.
4. You have been diagnosed with another chronic medical condition.
5. You take prescribed medication for a chronic condition.
6. You have a bone, joint or soft tissue problem, now or in the past year, that more activity could make worse.
7. A doctor has said you should only be active under medical supervision.

Each one looks for something that changes how a person should start. A heart condition, unexplained chest pain or fainting are reasons to have a clinician look first. A chronic condition or regular medication can change how your body responds to effort. A sore knee or shoulder shapes which exercises a plan should use and how fast it should progress.

What a yes means

A yes is information. It does not mean you cannot train. Most people who answer yes to something go on to be active, often with a few adjustments.

On the PAR-Q+ itself, a yes leads to follow-up questions on pages two and three about the specific condition. Depending on those answers, the form may say you are fine to go ahead, or it may point you to the online ePARmed-X+ and to a doctor or a qualified exercise professional. The ePARmed-X+ is an interactive self-screening built for people who answered yes, or who were referred by a professional.

What a yes should never mean is guessing. If you are unsure whether your blood pressure or your medication matters for training, a doctor can tell you in one conversation. That conversation is worth having before a new plan, and it is what the questionnaire is designed to prompt. We are not able to give that advice, and neither is a personal trainer.

Why a trainer asks for it

A certified personal trainer writes a plan for a healthy adult. To do that responsibly they need to know whether you are one, and what they should plan around. The PAR-Q+ gives them that in a standard form, in a few minutes, with no guesswork about what to ask. It is widely used by trainers and gyms for exactly this reason.

It also protects you from a plan that looks fine on paper and ignores something important. An AI assistant can write a good-looking program in seconds, and it only knows what you told it. Our article on what a certified trainer checks in an AI workout plan goes through this in more detail.

How Care MCP uses the PAR-Q+

When your AI assistant orders a plan from a certified trainer or nutrition coach through Care MCP, the brief it sends includes a health declaration built on the seven PAR-Q+ questions. We add two of our own: whether you are pregnant, and whether you have or have had an eating disorder. You answer them yourself, and your assistant passes on what you said with the date you answered.

The rules are applied in code before any professional sees the order:

• All no. The order goes ahead. Anything else you told your assistant, such as an old injury, is context the professional plans around.
• A yes, and no clinician has cleared you yet. The order waits. It goes on once a doctor or another clinician has said you may be physically active, and you confirm that. This is stricter than the PAR-Q+ itself, on purpose: we would rather wait than guess.
• Things we do not take on. An eating disorder, or a goal aimed at treating a condition, puts the order outside what a trainer or coach should do. We refuse it, and the refusal says why and who the right person is, for example a doctor or a licensed dietitian.

In every case you are told why. A refused order costs nothing, since you are only charged when a document is delivered. See pricing for how credit works.

Our professionals are certified personal trainers and nutrition coaches. They are not doctors, physiotherapists or dietitians, and the service is wellness and performance for healthy adults. Every document ends with a Referral section that points you to health care when something in your brief calls for it. Your health answers are health data, which we only handle with your explicit consent; the health data notice says what that covers.

Your next step

Before you start a new plan, answer the PAR-Q+ honestly at eparmedx.com, and talk to your doctor about any yes. If you want a plan written by a certified trainer who reads your answers and your goals, connect Care MCP to your assistant. It takes a couple of minutes and costs nothing until a document is delivered.