The Presidential Fitness Test Returns

I have mixed feelings about the rebirth of the Presidential Fitness Test.

Here me out, this isn’t going to be political, but I hope my thoughts make you think about the implications of starting this program back up.

As a personal trainer, I strongly encourage parents to keep their children active, as schools often don’t prioritize Physical Education. However, gamifying fitness for children opens up a can of worms I cannot ignore. Creating a fitness assessment that is framed as ‘pass or fail’ sends the wrong message to children.

I remember taking these tests in grade school, and I recall the kids who failed being made fun of and subsequently ignored when it came time to pick teams for team activities. It created a hierarchy of haves and have-nots in gym class, and it carried over outside of gym class. At an age when children should be encouraged to be active, learn to play in teams, and given the space to improve, using fitness as a pass or fail metric doesn’t sound like a great idea when their minds and bodies aren’t even close to being fully developed enough to accurately judge fitness nor deal with the shame of ‘failing’ in front of their peers.

To bring this test back while we are seeing phys-ed programs nationwide being cut due to a lack of funding, the focus on standardized testing, and academic pressures is akin to telling a college student to write their PhD dissertation upon arriving on campus for the first time as a freshman.

It’s setting kids up to fail, and the ones who will pass will pass regardless of the lack of school-sanctioned physical education.

It is a poorly executed performative test that gives the illusion of fitness. It is a narrow view of a larger problem.

We should all be concerned about the lack of physical activity for children, especially in lower-income areas where budget woes reach beyond gym class and filter over into school sports, which often need to be funded almost entirely by parents and the community. Combine the lack of access to physical education with the internet culture, gaming, and other sedentary activities that isolate children, and the reality is harsh - kids are less active today than at any point in time in history.

Something needs to be done, and a test isn’t the answer.

Raising active children shouldn’t be solely up to the school, and it shouldn’t be about a test. Fitness isn’t about pass or fail; it is about activity, healthy eating, and encouraging children to find their active place in the world without the stigma of taking a physical test to determine if they passed or failed.

How do you fail fitness? We can debate back and forth what that means, but when it comes to children, the goal isn’t to discourage; it is to encourage.

We can’t fix the budget crisis that schools face, but we can do our part for the younger generation by taking a more active role in our children’s health and fitness.

Sign your kids up for an activity near you. If you have to help coach, do so. Spend a couple of days a week exercising with your children and make a game of it. If you know a little about nutrition, teach your children a little about why it’s important to eat healthy. Be an example.

It requires extra work on your part as a parent, and I know some of you are already time-crunched, but if I am going to be honest, children are the most important thing to spend time on.

Our schools aren’t currently equipped to take on this load, and even if they were, it is our job to raise our kids and show them why it’s critical to be active.

I want to see our children be active, healthy, and happy. I don’t want to see our children being told they failed a fitness test. I want to use fitness as a fun activity, not a task to win.

Several years ago, when I was living on Long Island, I was a personal training manager at a gym in Amityville. Yes, THAT Amityville - the house of legend was less than a half a mile away if you wanted to know. Four times a week, I trained a group of mothers at 7am. One day, one of the moms asked me, “You train athletes, right?”

Me: “Yes, I do.”

“Do you want to train our kids for football?”

Me: “How old are they?”

“Eight.”

Me: “At that age, they don’t need a trainer; they need to have fun.”

“But the other parents on the team hired a coach for their kids, and we don’t want ours to be left behind.”

I was honestly shocked to hear that parents hired personal coaches for eight-year-old kids. I gave her a high price that I honestly didn’t expect her to agree to, but she did.

For five Saturdays in a row, I met a group of 10 kids at the local park, and I didn’t teach them about the game. We had fun.

Instead of running drills, we played tag, touch football, and other games designed to improve quickness, reaction time, and just having fun with the process. I would do push-ups with them and lead by example. The kids had fun, and never once did I attempt to coach them as a football coach; it was about moving and having a good time doing it.

I remember playing sports as a kid, and some of those memories weren’t pleasant. When I was twelve years old, I played baseball for the Rising Sun Athletic Association. RSAA was a kids’ sports league in my hometown. Our rival was the Indians. The Indians were the stacked team, and their parents used to boo us and do the Indians war cry during the game.

We were 12.

Did you ever imagine a group of 12-year-old kids being booed?

It happened, and it still happens today, as parents and youth league coaches treat youth sport as a pecking order or push winning to the extreme, where they make the sport miserable for kids.

I have experienced the pressure of being an athletic kid. I have been a part of it. I have seen kids made fun of in team sports for not being very good, and I have seen coaches never put those kids in the game, and parents yell at coaches for daring to take their child out so the last kid on the bench can get some playing time in a blowout.

Those experiences taught me a lot about how I didn’t want to be as a coach.

That is the exact reason why I feel the Presidential Fitness Test misses the mark. I can appreciate the meaning behind bringing it back because physical education needs to be a part of every child’s life, but it needs to be done in a healthy way to encourage, rather than the potential trauma of feeling shame, being ridiculed, or pushed aside as more athletic children pass this test with flying colors.

We talk about fitness being inclusive, and it starts when they are young. It begins in the home with us adults as we lead our children to adulthood. It begins by setting an example, encouraging activity that builds them up, and participating with them.

It starts by reassuring your children that a one-day test doesn’t determine their capability. It doesn’t mean anything. It is merely a performative test that pretends to address a systemic problem.

There’s nothing we can do because that test is coming back to schools, but there is something we can do to teach our children to be more active.

Get involved with your school, help with a local sports league, and donate your time and money if you can do so.

Most importantly, talk to your kids about this test. Ask them how they feel about it, and reassure them that they are not failures if they don’t meet some arbitrary mark of what our government deems to be a fit child.

Some of the greatest athletes I ever knew were the kids who didn’t pass that test.

I was one of them. I failed because I couldn’t do many pull-ups as a kid, but I was fast, and I could play sports well.

Failing that test means nothing.

Children need to know they are not failures, and I loathe the idea of a fitness test being used in this way.