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Presidential Fitness Test: Not just for kids anymore

Many of you may have taken the Presidential Fitness Test in elementary school. As memory serves, the test included sit-ups, pull-ups or flexed arm hang, sit-and-reach flexibility test, the shuttle run, and the mile run. Test week was a time to put data behind schoolyard claims about who was strongest, fastest and most flexible. (If you witnessed throwdowns about flexibility in your schoolyard, tell me. I want to know where you grow up and move there to raise children.)

Now, governmental fitness folks have created a test for adults. Framed as a response to repeated calls from Baby Boomer’s looking for a fitness test like the ones they took in school, the President’s Challenge Adult Fitness Test is a scaled down version of the children’s test we knew. The adult test consists of a one-mile walk or 1.5-mile run, push-ups, half sit-ups, and the good ol’ sit-and-reach. Adults also enter state of residence, gender, age, height, weight and waist measurement in the simple, usable online form. The result is an assessment in each fitness category on a percentile basis, so that you can judge your performance against those of other adults in the nationwide schoolyard. Having entered some numbers into the form and seen the results, it seems to me that our peers are setting the bar reasonably high. Completing the mile-and-a-half run in 12 minutes, an eight-minute mile pace, is good only for a 50th-percentile mark.

At any rate, the test gives you some benchmarks against which your progress toward—or away from—better fitness can be judged.