Maintenance Phase Reality Check: "The President's Physical Fitness Test"

I am not at all a proponent of the Presidential Youth Fitness Test (PYFT). I took the test every year in elementary school and middle school, and I hated it! I do not believe it is a useful measure of physical fitness, but I also don’t know that there are ways to capture “physical fitness” in a global way. If you want to read a thoughtful, intelligent deliberation on physical fitness tests for youth, I highly suggest reading Seefeldt and Vogel’s 1989 article, Physical Fitness Testing of Children: A 30-Year History of Misguided Efforts. The article begins:

“The physical fitness of children and youth has been a primary concern of educators, physicians, and parents since the children's unsatisfactory performance on specific tests was called to the nation's attention in the mid-1950s. Since that time numerous test batteries have been developed and applied in local, state, and national surveys, all with the intention of determining levels of fitness in comparison to previous or contemporary populations. The underlying assumption was that levels of unacceptable fitness could be addressed through appropriate programs, primarily in the schools. Although the results have been uniformly disappointing because the assessments have shown negligible improvement, or even slight decreases over time in what are considered to be important parameters of physical fitness, the primary problem with the physical fitness testing of children resides in the inherently faulty assumptions that have influenced the definition of physical fitness and consequently the selection of test items and test batteries. The inability or unwillingness of proponents to operationally define the construct of physical fitness has prevented them from convincing an increasingly skeptical public that physical fitness is a worthy objective for school based programs. If physical fitness is to be assessed and promoted in K-12 school curricula, its components must be (a) clearly defined in operational terms, (b) defensible in light of what is known about the relationships between the kinds and amounts of activity for children and youth and the benefits to short- and long-term health and motor performance, and (c) measurable via field tests that have suitable psychometric properties. The present quandary in physical fitness testing is akin to the dilemmas of educators who sought operational definitions for such constructs as general intelligence, intelligence quotients, and perceptual motor abilities in the 1950s.”

In my review of this MP episode, I will point out things that Michael gets wrong, but I want to be clear that I would never argue that the PYFT is useful as a measure of overall fitness. That does not mean that it wasn’t developed intentionally (even if misguided), nor that, as Michael says, it was “specifically structured to be the most humiliating for the least well-performing kids.” Michael’s description of the history of the PYFT is full of factual inaccuracies and, more importantly, it reflects the common practice that MP employs of misrepresenting historical and scientific context such that things fit their ideology. Instead of engaging with the topic through a critical lens, MP chooses to dunk indiscriminately. The result, in combination with poor research and factual inaccuracies, is that they fall into the very trap that they disparage. 

Towards the beginning of this episode, Michael says, “I have never researched a podcast that was so difficult to find basic information,” and even says that he wrote to a “historian of fitness tests” who “basically said like, ‘Yeah, we don't do that in exercise studies’, because even in academia, everyone just accepted all of the precepts of fitness testing as gospel.” I was able to find a substantial amount of information on this topic, including many critical pieces about fitness testing in schools (I’ll include some great ones below). It is concerning that Michael, an investigative journalist, was unable to find this information that I was able to find relatively easily. This is another example of Michael making disparaging remarks about academia and painting it as a monolith. There is a whole swath of articles criticizing these tests. See, for example, this paper from 1975 that states, “From its initial development in 1957, the AAHPER test has been criticized by teachers, students, kinesiologists, exercise physiologists, measurement specialists, and many other definable groups.” This paper and another from 1971 are actually better critiques of the test than this MP episode is. 

Much of the content of this episode is predicated on the fact that these tests were totally made up without any rationale, with Michael even promoting some conspiracy theories (though Michael says the softball throw component was “linked to potentially throwing grenades,” the truth is the experts who developed the test wanted it to retain some connection to the skill of sports). The test itself was quite intentionally designed (this is not to say it was well designed) and was similar to many other fitness tests at the time. In addition, many changes were made to the original test (including how the scoring was done), as additional research was conducted. 

One really important thing to note about this episode is that there is no science to “debunk.” Michael and Aubrey present it as if this test was based on bad science, but there really wasn’t any science involved at all. This doesn’t mean that Michael and Aubrey don’t misinterpret some scientific studies in their discussion of the test, but it does mean that most of the content of this podcast is actually just alarmingly bad journalism. A true investigative journalist, as Michael calls himself, should be able to accurately research and report historical events. In this case, he is either intentionally misleading listeners or he is unable to be objective enough to discuss these topics in a factual manner. There are many MP listeners who don’t listen to the podcast for the science, and say that the non-science episodes are their favorites, but this really calls into question the validity of any of the content that MP covers, science or not. 

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For the sake of brevity, we tried to focus on the biggest issues here, but we added a “bonus” section at the end for those who are interested. Ok, on to the podcast:

I also think a really big thing that people remember about the President's Physical Fitness Test is that it was quantitative. At the end you got an actual score. And of course, kids started competing for it. Right. Like, you can only do three pull-ups, but like I can do 12. And why can't you do as many? I mean, it was just so perfectly designed for kids to rank each other and to make fun of each other, because there was a literal number right there on the paper.

Yes, the test was specifically designed to be scored. That is how most tests work! The President’s Physical Fitness Test is a competition. That is how it was designed. From the very beginning in 1958 when the first test was implemented, kids received prizes for performance. This is not that different from kids receiving prizes for academic achievements. 

It was specifically structured to be the most humiliating for the least well-performing kids.

Absolutely false. Pure rage-bait. No one was sitting in a room devising a fitness test simply to humiliate anyone. 

So the President's Physical Fitness Test at one point was used by 75% of schools. This was a massive nationwide program. And yet it's amazing. You look through the old historical accounts and there'll be like the 1950s, and then George W. Bush expanded the program. And you're like, wait, isn't there some information in between JFK and George W. Bush? I'm sorry.

The President’s Physical Fitness Test was established in 1966 by then-President Johnson. This is stated in multiple of the sources that Michael and Aubrey linked to on the episode page. It originated as the AAHPER Youth Fitness Test in 1958. I have not been able to find any source that states that it was ever used by 75% of schools. There are many sources about the history of the test between JFK and George W. Bush. See, for example, this report that MP linked to. 

So at one point I emailed one of the few researchers I found. It was a historian, literally a historian of fitness tests. I emailed him like, am I losing my mind? I cannot find any reports about this test or how it came about or what the debates were at the time. And he wrote back, and he basically said like, “Yeah, we don't do that in exercise studies”, because even in academia, everyone just accepted all of the precepts of fitness testing as gospel. Nobody really asked basic questions of like, is this helping? Should we be doing this? Are there other ways to achieve these goals?

I don’t know who Michael contacted or what was actually said, but this isn’t true. As I wrote above, there are many articles criticizing these tests (I’ll list some additional ones below). Michael’s comments also don’t make sense because these were tests - they were not intended to achieve any goals. This is also a good opportunity to say that even if it was true that the basis and purpose of these tests were never interrogated after the fact, it would not be unique to fitness tests. When did anyone stop and ask if standardized academic tests were useful or appropriate? Not until recently. And it’s still an uphill battle to do away with certain standardized academic tests. As Lloyd wrote in 2010, “Is the argument that physical education does little to impact the health and fitness of students because health and fitness are impacted by so many factors outside the control of physical education class reason enough to prevent assessment of curricular goals and outcomes? If so, why does this reasoning apply only to physical education outcomes?”

Here are several examples of people criticizing these tests:

1. On Learning Values Through Sport: Quest: Vol 1, No 1 (tandfonline.com)

“We must follow the leader, sweat profusely, walk fifty miles, do our push-ups, patronize Vic Tanney and Bonnie Prudden, and thus will our population be made strong. Morally? Psychologically? Ethically? Socially? Or just muscularly? What are the great needs for successful life in our society? What kind of man-power does our society need for its preservation? This is the compelling question from the standpoint of national need and people in physical education had better have an answer or they will be lost in the oceans of sweat recommended by the muscle-building anti-intellectual.”

2. “The Horse Is Dead; Let’s Dismount” in: Pediatric Exercise Science Volume 7 Issue 2 (1995) (humankinetics.com)

3. A Critical Analysis of the AAPHER Youth Fitness Test (und.edu)

4. Youth Fitness Testing: Validation, Planning, and Politics: Quest: Vol 40, No 3 (tandfonline.com)

There were also several papers published on the validity and reliability of the AAHPER test (the test that came before the PYFT). Here are a couple:

1. Reliability of the multi-trial items of the AAHPER youth fitness test - PubMed (nih.gov)

2. Reliability of the AAHPER Youth Fitness Test Items and Relative Efficiency of the Performance Measures: Research Quarterly. American Association for Health, Physical Education and Recreation: Vol 39, No 3 (tandfonline.com)

As an example of how much information there is that Michael did not touch on, here is a screenshot of the AAHPER Youth Fitness Test Manual from 1976 that very explicitly explains how the original seven items for the AAHPER Youth Fitness Test (which preceded the PYFT) were chosen. The 1958 version of this test was the antecedent to the PYFT. I will explain more later, but it is very clear that these components came from an expert panel that was largely influenced by the Kraus-Weber test (which Michael incorrectly describes later). 

That there is this sort of very uncritical acceptance, and you have to be able to do these things. 

These tests are not saying “you have to be able to do these things.” They were designed to assess specific elements of fitness. Nothing is uncritical here, as I have described above. There was a LOT of criticism.

This is actually one of the few areas that we do know about. So the origins of this start with two doctors named Hans Kraus and Sonia Weber, who are, what was known at the time as ‘posture physicians’. This field eventually becomes basically physical therapy. There's, you know, if you have lower back pain, there's exercises that you can do and stretches that you can do. Or, you know, if your hips hurt.

This field does not eventually become physical therapy. Physical therapy is an entirely different field that predated these two researchers. Kraus was an orthopedic surgeon. Weber was an orthopedic doctor. Orthopedic medicine is distinct from physical therapy.

You're strengthening some muscles so that others can rest a little more, basically. 

No, you’re strengthening muscles that have become weak from disuse and learning to use your muscles in the correct way. 

Right. We had this sort of emerging physiology of like, why do so many Americans have back pain? This is something that had appeared after World War II. Basically it's like a lot of Americans were moving into sedentary jobs. And so the muscles that you're using to sort of move around and twist all these posture muscles were starting to atrophy. 

Back pain in the US workforce first became a concern in railway workers between 1860-1880, and continued to be a problem among industrial workers in the following decades, and by WWII it was already a big issue. 

Briefly diving into the comment about atrophy: there are quite a few studies that have tried to answer the question: is a sedentary lifestyle associated with increased risk of low back pain? The results are conflicting because, as you might imagine, the causes of low back pain are multifactorial, and pain is subjective. Many of the existing studies are cross-sectional (the researchers collected all of the information at one time), which means we can’t know whether the low back pain preceded the sedentary lifestyle or vice versa. That being said, prospective studies do provide evidence that physical activity in leisure time is associated with a lower risk of chronic or frequent low back pain.  We know from biomechanics research that spending too much time sitting or standing or in any single position increases the load on the back, which can be a cause of pain. Other potential mechanisms include disc degeneration and annular delamination. We also know that repetitive strain is associated with pain, but it's complicated and involves other factors as well. While muscle atrophy may, in some cases, contribute to someone experiencing pain, it certainly can't be stated to be the main or even one of the main causes of chronic pain in the population. Pain is the result of a complex interplay between biological, psychological, and social factors, including distress and trauma. For good measure, here's some more information on shoulder pain in the workforce. 

As an aside, looking at pain in an adult population after WWII while neglecting to account for the potential influence of social and psychological factors, and just picking “muscle atrophy” as the explanation is another example of their general lack of understanding of physiology, pain science, and bodies in general.

And so a huge number of Americans in their thirties and forties were showing up with back pain and shoulder pain and wrist pain. This was a new thing in the 1950s in America. And so these two doctors just started noticing that once they started doing these sort of sit up exercises and stretching the hamstrings and that kind of thing, oftentimes their pain would go away. And they became convinced that the real problem was that kids were not getting these skills in childhood. And so these two doctors come up with something called the Kraus Weber test, which is a six part test that is just measuring sort of your basic fitness, your basic like posture muscles. And so I'm about to tell you these six exercises, are you ready?

False. First of all, this was not a new thing in 1950s America. Missing a ton of context. Hans and Weber did a lot of research on this - they administered this test to thousands of patients in a handful of different studies and found that doing these exercises improved low back pain. This had nothing to do with shoulder pain or wrist pain. This 1999 paper from Kraus details all of the studies that were done - there was a scientific rationale for these movements. Contrary to what Michael says, the extension to children was because, “Under the assumptions that muscle deficiencies were due to general under-exercise, it was postulated that poor fitness in children might contribute to the development of low back pain in adults.” This isn’t an outlandish idea. An interesting study out of Norway (they have great cohort studies in Scandinavia!) found that individuals who exercised were less likely to report chronic musculoskeletal complaints at follow up, 11 years later. Educating children about how to keep their body healthy from a musculoskeletal perspective seems to me like a good thing. This is what Lloyd et al. argue for, as well. They advocate for promoting what they call “physical literacy”, defined as “the foundation of characteristics, attributes, behaviors, awareness, knowledge, and understanding related to healthy active living and the promotion of physical recreation opportunities, and positive health choices across the lifespan.” Importantly, that includes physical fitness. 

Michael also overly simplifies the components of the Kraus-Weber test and misses some details (i.e., certain positions must be held for 10 seconds). It looks like he might have relied on the Wikipedia page for this test. The actual documentation of the test is pretty detailed. Here is a good graphic from Bonnie Prudden’s website:

Aubrey: It's also really interesting because a lot of this has elements of sort of like yoga and pilates, both that is just sort of like, can your body move in these ways? Which is a very different approach than do a pull up in front of the classroom. 

Mike: Like, and it's also because it's a minimum test. There's really not a lot of ways to stratify kids from this because there's no difference between somebody who can do one sit up and somebody who can do a hundred sit-ups it's just, can you do one, yes or no? It's not designed to shame children as, as later tests will be. It's more a diagnostic tool, basically. 

As Michael will later mention, a lot of kids failed this test. So I’m not sure what he means by “there’s really not a lot of ways to stratify kids.” You fail or pass. And again, none of these tests are designed to shame children. 

The three of them start administering this test to thousands of school kids. And eventually in the early fifties, they go to Europe and they test 3000 kids in Switzerland, Italy, and Austria on these tests. And so the scientific result that really begins the panic that leads us to the president's physical fitness test is after these tests, they find out that 58% of U.S. kids fail at least one of these tests and only 8% of the European kids fail these tests. So Americans are failing at these like basic minimum standards of fitness, far more than the European kids.

Below are the actual results from Kraus’ paper. I know that Michael is trying to pass this off as a moral panic, but I don’t see how it would NOT be concerning that over 50% of children cannot do those movements, especially when the failure rates in the other 3 countries are so similar. 

Yeah. Yes. So the main hypothesis for this is American decadence. So this is an article from Hahn's Kraus interpreting the results. He says, “Europeans rely less on automobiles, school buses and elevators. European children walk miles to school, ride bicycles, hike, chop, and haul wood for home heating. In contrast, American children are largely driven in cars by their parents, confined to their own neighborhoods, and obligated to perform only easy chores such as making their own beds and setting the table. Nothing more strenuous than walking the dog or mowing the lawn.”

Aubrey:  There is a really fascinating book, I think it's called, Diet and the Disease of Civilization. The idea that this author is sort of positing is that the way that we think about diet and exercise and weight loss and all that sort of stuff is as we were in the Garden of Eden and we have fallen. And the reason we have fallen is because of civilization, is because of cars and buses and industrialization and all of that kind of stuff. And that the solution to that is to get quote unquote, get back to something that is like, preindustrial is almost the idea with a lot of fitness stuff. Where I'm like, cool. We could get back to pre-industrial times, but also you want to think about what life expectancy was in those days. 

Mike: Right? Exactly. Yeah. They were just like eating raw meat off the ground. Like this is not necessarily a recipe for life. 

This is a straw man argument. No one is arguing for that. Even people who follow the Paleo diet don’t think we should revert modern medicine to the paleolithic era. This is just a silly thing to posit. But you know what we DID have back in the preindustrial era? And what many other countries STILL have? More physical activity as part of daily living. To suggest that introducing more physical activity into our lives wouldn’t be a good thing is just anti-science. Beyond the well-established benefits of physical activity when it comes to cardiovascular and metabolic health, there is a substantial body of evidence demonstrating the benefit of regular exercise on cognition and risk of dementia. In addition, physical activity is well-documented to have positive effects on symptoms of anxiety and depression. 

This also feels like just such a classic example of adult anxiety is getting projected onto kids. Right. That's like, okay, everything's gotten industrialized. Women are in the workplace to some degree or have been, right. We've got all these factories that were producing munitions that are now producing like dishwashers and shit like that. Like what's the human cost of not having to do this work. What's the human cost of living in cities and suburbs, right. Like I could imagine given the rate of change during that sort of post-war time that there would be a lot of anxiety to go around, and this seems like a weird place to put it. 

It’s very strange to link concerns about the very real health impacts of not moving as much in our day-to-day lives with changes to women being in the workplace. This makes no sense. Michael has already stated that the anxiety was about physical fitness and low back pain. I’m not sure why they are reaching to make this a bigger issue. 

But then, what's really interesting about the Krauss Weber test is as Kraus and Weber themselves say, this is a test that can improve with practice. So American kids who take this test and fail it and then practice at it for six weeks, will then get the same results as Europeans. There's also the question of whether this is actually measuring fitness or is it just measuring, I mean, are you somebody who does sit ups on a regular basis? European kids, the PE that they get in school is much more like calisthenics, where it's one gym teacher standing at the front of the class and they'll do 50 jumping jacks together. And then they'll stand with their arms out and the kids have to kick up their left leg and kick up the right leg. And then they'll all do 50 sit-ups together. It's very regimented and sort of militaristic. Whereas what happened with this form of physical education, because this was actually very popular in America from around the 1890s until the 1950s, Americans did this too. 

This is not unique to the Kraus-Weber test. Every physical test and physical activity can improve with practice. Performance on academic standardized tests like the SATs also improves with practice. This does not invalidate the test. An otherwise able-bodied child not being able to do a single sit up is problematic. As Aubrey said, these are just “can your body move in these ways” types of exercises. Somehow they pivoted from, “oh this test is so reasonable and so different from the PYFT” to “you have to do sit ups on the regular to be able to pass this test.” But again, there is nothing wrong with the test being such that people get better at it with practice. That is true of running, walking, crosswords, piano, etc. Of all the objections one could have to this test, this one makes no sense.

But then what they found out was that this kind of exercise was really popular with the Nazis. This was a huge thing for Hitler, was this idea of sort of physical superiority, right? That it's not just enough to be white and blondes, you also have to be white and blonde and fit. And so the Nazis in Austria and Germany were doing a lot of these group exercise programs. So Americans got kind of uncomfortable with this stuff, and American schools in the 1940s started shifting over to sports. So instead of doing these calisthenics, we're going to play baseball. We're going to play football. The culture of sports shifted very quickly because we were all watching like the triumph of the will and it just got kind of creepy and weird. 

I have been unable to find any evidence that suggests that this shift in physical education occurred, or that it was due to Nazis doing calisthenics. If anyone is able to find this, I would be very interested to read it!

And so it's understandable that for American kids who have grown up playing baseball and doing these other things, they can't do sit-ups because they haven't been doing sit ups at school. And once you get them doing sit-ups at school everyday, they can do sit-ups. So there's nothing magical going on here. And the fact that, you know, kids that are playing soccer every day, you know, a couple of days a week with kids in their neighborhood, maybe they can't do a sit-up, but that doesn't mean that they're out of shape. It just means that they can't do this one specific thing. 

I have already established that this is true of every physical activity (and a lot of academic activities). However, with the Kraus-Weber test, we are talking about doing a SINGLE sit-up. This test isn’t about being “out of shape” (Michael already said this when he said it’s a minimum strength test), it’s about having some basic strength and flexibility. If you can’t do those things, you practice them! This test is for very very basic flexibility and strength. We are not talking about cartwheels. Kids who are getting adequate physical activity should be able to do one sit-up. 

Well, and based on a thing that was like, do you have back pain, adult? How do we treat your back pain, adult, right. Today like we got to get in there early so these kids don't have back pain 20 years later, I guess. Like, I just, like, there's some missing connections here, so.

The missing connections are because Michael left out a lot of the details that I provided above. 

Okay. Yeah. And also, I don't know if this is apocryphal, but Bonnie Prudden, this later exercise guru, she gets invited to the white house and she gives Dwight Eisenhower the Kraus Weber test, and he passes and then she tells him, you know, 60% of American kids don't pass these tests.

Seems somewhat problematic to be sharing something potentially apocryphal on a podcast that is supposed to be debunking things. 

Mike: And so in July of 1956, Eisenhower creates the president's council on youth fitness. And one of the reasons that he wants to do this is because he wants it to be separate from all of these other government agencies. He doesn't want it to get bogged down in all of this bureaucracy…

Aubrey: Right? Why wouldn't you use like health departments? Why wouldn't you use like education departments, why wouldn't you use, like, there are vehicles that are better positioned and have more infrastructure to do this kind of thing. 

Executive Order 10673 actually explicitly states that it “shall promote the efficacy of existing programs and the launching of additional programs which will enhance the fitness of American youth. The Council shall seek to coordinate, stimulate, and improve the functions of Federal agencies with respect to the fitness of youth.” It seems clear if you read the Order that Eisenhower intended this Council to have a bird’s eye view of the existing mechanisms. I don’t see that this is problematic. 

And there's also policies that you could pass. 

Again, I’m not sure what the issue is here. The Council did engage in creating legislation. You can see all the things it has done here. 

One of the things that I think is actually really important and this really sets the template for the issue of youth fitness for the next 50 years, is that it is always conceived throughout every future president that touches this issue. It is always conceived as a) so important that we have to do something about it. We have to rally parents. We have to rally schools b) it's not important enough to change any actual laws or make any sacrifices. 

Again, they did change laws, and they did make sacrifices. I’m not sure what Michael is getting at here. 

This is what Eisenhower says, “I believe you and I share the feeling that more and better coordinated attention should be given to this most precious asset of our youth. By this, I do not mean that we should have an overriding federal program. The fitness of our young people is essentially a home and local community problem. Your deliberations also reveal a need for a rousing in the American people, a new awareness. Of the importance of physical and recreational activity.” 

This quote is presented entirely out of context and is incomplete. It comes from a letter to the participants of the President’s Conference on the Fitness of American Youth. In the full quote, the following sentences are between the sentence ending in “...community problem” and the sentence beginning with “Your deliberations…”: 

“The task of the Federal Government is to assist the educators and the many fine organizations, now dealing with the problem, that they may improve and advance projects which are already underway. Therefore, I will soon issue an Executive Order which will establish a President's Council on Youth Fitness. I will ask members of my Cabinet who head departments having activities in this area to serve on this Council. Thereby, we can be assured that top level attention will be directed constantly to this most important field, and the activities of some 35 Federal agencies will be better coordinated.”

It’s important to present the quote accurately, because it does not support what Michael goes on to say. This isn't the first time that he has massaged information in a way that misrepresents the original intent: in the “Trouble with Calories” episode, the hosts state that ‘thermodynamics doesn't apply to human bodies’ and that ‘calories have been debunked’, using a quote from an article by Marion Nestle to ridicule FDA calorie labels. Their choice to use that article as a resource for the episode is questionable, given the closing paragraph located directly under the FDA section (see below). 

This is the Republican approach to so many things where it's like, it's really, really, really important, but not important to actually do anything about it. We're going to leave it to local communities. We're going to leave it to parents. And you know, my, my rule of thumb on this is whenever somebody says, we need a culture of X in America, we need a culture of exercise in America. That means they don't want to do anything about it. That means they want things to change spontaneously. 

So yes, if you leave out the section of the quote above that Michael excluded, I could see how someone could see this as, “we’re leaving this to the parents.” However, with the full quote, you can see that’s absolutely not the case. It is also perplexing that Mike took issue with the fact that Eisenhower issued an Executive Order but now he is saying that Eisenhower didn’t do anything. Which is it? It’s actually kind of incredible, but in his concluding remarks at the President’s Conference on the Fitness of American Youth, Nixon said, “I think all of us realize that the appointing of a Cabinet committee and the appointing of a citizens’ committee can mean either the solution of a problem or the shunning of a problem.” 

One of the things that's amazing, I actually found a really fascinating article about the systemic visitation of children's play. What they find is that in the early years of this council, so right after Eisenhower sets it up, it's actually really cute and really lovely. So the first wave of this organization, what they start putting out is all these recommendations that are really about, we need to give children open-ended forms of play. And it's really important for kids to have hobbies, but it's not important what those hobbies are. So one of their, one of their first recommendations that they put out in one of these reports that comes out in 1956, it says schools should have more time equipment and personnel for physical education and should focus increased attention on children who are not athletically gifted rather than on stars. So it's already saying like, let's, let's look at the kids that need a little bit more help and let's focus on them because like the buff football jock, who's doing 24 pull-ups he really doesn't need us. It also mentioned specifically, and this is dope for 1956. It says, make sure that girls have equal opportunities for physical fitness.

This is from the, um, terrific article on this that I found, it says in the conference's final report to the president, the conferees offered a definition of fitness that encompasses the total person, spiritual, mental, emotional, social, cultural, as well as physical. 

I have no idea what the first part of this means - systemic visitation of children’s play? Anyway, for those who are interested in reading the actual report from the Advisory Council meeting, it’s quite fascinating! I think that if Michael had read the actual report instead of just an article about it, he’d have found quite a few things objectionable, because a lot of the things it says are counter to the argument(s) that MP makes on the regular about physical activity. But I think it’s mostly a really great report that emphasizes the importance of access to resources for physical activity and the positive impacts of physical activity on the rest of a kid’s life. 

So what happens is, and the way that we get to the president's physical fitness test that we know today is the sort of academic expert community starts to coalesce around a new way of thinking about fitness that becomes really popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s. There's a guy called Charles McCloy who becomes really famous by writing a bunch of magazine articles. One of his most famous articles is called, How About Some Muscle? She essentially makes the same argument that Krauss was making in 1953, kids are too soft. And the problem is we don't have any measurable goals for these kids and what the hell are these president's council, whatever, whatever people are doing that, you know, they'd been doing this for a couple years and we don't even have baselines of what kids should be able well to do. 

This is wild, and I’m not sure exactly how Michael got here, but Charles McCloy published that article in 1936 and is entirely unrelated to the PYFT. In fact, he died in 1959. He was a professor of physical education and anthropometry at the State University of Iowa. McCloy’s 1936 article, “How About Some Muscle?” is about the importance of building muscle for overall physical health and has nothing to do with Kraus’ research 15+ years later. I’m not sure how Michael got the idea that this was part of this series of events.

And so in 1958, the president's council gives in to this changing paradigm of fitness and this increasing quantification of fitness and produces the first official U.S. government fitness tests. I'm going to read you the activities that are on it…. So it has eight fitness tests. So first straight legs sit ups, standing broad jump. They're measuring how far you can jump pull-ups for boys or modified pull-ups for girls. That's the flex arm hang. The 50 yard dash. The shuttle run. That's the thing where you pick up an eraser and then you run back and then you pick up another eraser and you basically run back and forth for a couple of minutes. There's the 600 yard run. There's a softball throw where they measure how far you can throw a softball. And then there are three aquatic tests. 

Here is the original test pamphlet. There are seven test items (they don’t count the aquatic tests as part of the battery). The first is the pull up or the modified pull up, which is not the same as the “flex arm hang”, as Michael purports. The graphic below shows what a modified pull up is. Next come sit ups, shuttle run, broad jump, 50-yard dash, 600 yard run-walk, and finally, the softball throw for distance. The shuttle run is not “running back and forth for a couple of minutes,” but I’m assuming Michael knows that is an oversimplification.  

Aubrey: What are the aquatic tests?

Mike:  I could not, I could not find this out. The test says that they're optional. I've seen no literature on schools actually implementing these because like you'd have to go to a different building.

I don’t know how Michael couldn’t find this, as it took me a single Google search. Here are the aquatic tests:

Mike: So what's interesting about these tests is that nobody knows how they were put together. We don't have clear literature on sort of who proposed them specifically, but the theory that academics have come up with over the years is that all of them are linked to military prowess. So things like the long jump, the shuttle run, all of that is, you know, running through the jungles when you're invading another country. Like these are skills that you need for doing military maneuvers. Also I signed one article, they said that the soft ball throw, how far can you throw a softball? That's linked to potentially throwing grenades.

Aubrey: Do you know? I don't, I don't know why this is what just popped into my head, but this is such a bizarre thing that's like, we don't think of our children as soldiers, right? Like we're against child soldiers, but we are for child military readiness. Like if push came to shove, we do know how far that kid can throw a grenade or-

False. See above for all of this information (the original 1958 manual includes details, as well) and the reason for the softball throw which is not, as they keep intimating, about throwing grenades.

Mike: We want to know what is his willingness to kill? So it's the late fifties, this test has been developed, but it's not really being used in that many schools. Like there's still not a national PE program. So this obscure government body has created this test, but it's not in all of the schools yet. But then what happens is JFK comes into office. And apparently this is one of the first times this has ever been done, that right after he was elected. But before he took office, he wrote an editorial in Sports Illustrated called the Soft American, which basically lays out exactly the same argument as Krauss and Weber had made in 1953, the American kids are soft. Their fitness is bad. The fitness of kids is actually worse in 1961 than it is in 1953. So he starts out his essay by saying, “The first indication of a decline in the physical strength and ability of young Americans became apparent among U.S. soldiers in the early stages of the Korean war. Almost one out of every two young Americans was being rejected by selective service as mentally, morally, or physically unfit.”

Aubrey: Sorry, was it physically, mentally, or morally unfit? He's going to throw in the mentally and morally and not really unpack that at all my dude?

The quote from JFK is missing a piece. The second sentence starts with, “The second came when figures were released showing that…” In this context, “morally unfit” means felons. Felons were not allowed to serve. This is not about exercising. 

Here's what we need to do to solve this problem. I'm going to read these to you, “First establish a White House committee on health and fitness. Make the physical fitness of our youth, the direct responsibility of the department of health, education, and welfare. The governor of each state must be invited to attend the annual national youth fitness Congress.” So it's like establish a fucking committee, invite governors to a meeting? It's so important and this is the only way we're going to beat the Soviets, but you just want to hold a bunch of meetings and bring the president's council into a different government department. 

Michael is, again, misreporting the quote. The full context is below. You can see that Michael skipped a bunch of content to make it seem like the part about the governors was tantamount. I think this is pretty irresponsible journalism. And again, I would ask why it seems so absurd to Michael to have meetings about this. How else would you make any changes? 

FIRST: We must establish a White House Committee on Health and Fitness to formulate and carry out a program to improve the physical condition of the nation. This committee will include the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare and the Secretary of the Interior. The executive order creating the committee will clearly state its purpose, and coordinate its activities with the many federal programs which bear a direct relation to the problem of physical fitness. 

SECOND: The physical fitness of our youth should be made the direct responsibility of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. This department should conduct—through its Office of Education and the National Institutes of Health—research into the development of a physical fitness program for the nation's public schools. The results of this research shall be made freely available to all who are interested. In addition, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare should use all its existing facilities to attack the lack of youth fitness as a major health problem. 

THIRD: The governor of each state will be invited to attend an annual National Youth Fitness Congress. This congress will examine the progress which has been made in physical fitness during the preceding year, exchange suggestions for improving existing programs and provide an opportunity to encourage the states to implement the physical fitness program drawn up by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Our states are anxious to participate in such programs, to make sure that their youth have the opportunity for full development of their bodies as well as their minds.

And so another really important thing that he does is he establishes an award. 

False. The award was established in 1966, under President Johnson. See below for an announcement about it. Interestingly, students also had to be in good academic standing, in addition to scoring at or above the 85th percentile on all 7 items of the test. The prize was literally just “an attractive certificate.”

And so in the midst of all of these swirling anxieties, states start passing laws that every kid needs to get a fitness test once per year. So this is when we get the huge explosion of the president's physical fitness test being launched into schools. We also get, in 1986, a new version of the test. This is the version that you and me remember is the 1986 version. It consists of the one mile run slash walk, curl ups, basically sit ups, pull ups, the shuttle run. The V sit reach, which is this thing where you're sitting down with your legs spread and you see how far you can reach your hands forward. And then the sit and reach, which is the same thing, but your feet are together.

Two things are false here. First, the ‘state laws’ piece. Even today, only 16 states have mandated fitness testing (and very few of those are annual). Most of these were passed in the past 30 years. For example, California’s mandatory testing law was passed in 1996, Connecticut’s was passed in 1990, Georgia’s testing began in 2011, Illinois didn’t pass their law requiring testing until 2014, etc. I won’t list all of them here but suffice it to say, Michael’s history is wrong. 

The next thing is that we actually got a new iteration of the AAHPER test in 1976 not 1986. In the 1965 iteration, they changed the modified pull-up to the flexed arm hang. In the 1976 iteration, they got rid of the softball throw and replaced the straight-leg sit-up with a flexed-leg sit-up. In 1986, we got a “new and revised Presidential Physical Fitness Award Program” which included 5 items: the one-mile run/walk, the v-sit reach, curl-ups, the shuttle run, and pull-ups. The sit and reach that Michael mentioned is an optional alternative to the v-sit reach. 

So this is also the time in the late eighties and the early nineties when schools start doing what they call body composition tests. 

Again, the historical context here is incorrect. As of 2010, only 20 states require BMI testing in schools (and none on an annual basis). A more recent paper from 2014 put that number at 25, but a 2016 report put it at 5. I’m not saying that no schools were doing body composition tests in the late eighties and nineties, because I can’t prove that. But I can say that it wasn’t until 1998 that the US Government declared the “epidemic of childhood obesity” and Arkansas was the first state to pass a law requiring schools to measure BMI in students and that wasn’t until 2003. 

As part of the president's physical fitness test, they started measuring kids' BMI's and they started doing skin fold tests. So there's something called the fitness gram, where they take a measurement of your skin fold on the back of your right arm and on your right calf. And they measure how thick the skin is. And that's a measurement of your body fat percentage, basically. 

Very few (if any) of the states that mandate BMI testing use skinfold tests. They almost all use the FitnessGram which uses weight and height to calculate it (as does the PYFT, if that optional component is done). 

There's also some schools that are weighing all the kids, but they only have one scale. So they have to do it in front of everybody else. And they read out the number, which is just, again, designed to shame the fattest kids.

All of this is just anecdotal and I have no idea how Michael knows this. It sounds to me like it’s made up to make people angry.

This actually gets into the next section that we're going to dwell on for a while, which is the problems with the president's physical fitness test. So even on this, there's not as much academic literature as I would like, but there's actually much more on the challenges of the test and the deficiencies of the test than there is on its actual history. So as the test becomes much more popular, much more widespread, kids are being now required by law to get it every single year, studies started coming out about the fact that it's really not achieving any of its goals. And one of the reasons is that kids are not practicing the president's physical fitness test. I mean, this is something that really like made an audible click in my head when I was reading it that in middle school, we would just have gym class. And, you know, we'd play volleyball and whatever. And then one day a year we would do this dumb physical fitness test. And then we would just go back to what we were doing.

As previously noted, there is actually a ton of literature on the history of this test (see all of the links I’ve provided, and here is another!). Kids are not required (by law) to take this test every year (see links above). Michael earlier said that there was no literature questioning this test but now he’s admitting that there are studies about it, which is confusing. It is worth noting that, as conceived, this test was supposed to be practiced. The 1985 revised test pamphlet says, “The class curriculum should reinforce the concepts addressed in the testing program and class time should be devoted to helping students attain a higher level of fitness.” I think we can agree that most physical education classes were not very rigorous. This isn’t a flaw of the test, but the curriculum. This is like when a teacher doesn’t teach well and all their students fail the test and they blame the students for not paying attention. 

Mike: But like this is to me is completely ridiculous that no one ever did anything with the results, the primary thing that was done with the actual numbers that were produced by millions of kids taking this test every year was they would just identify kids to get awards. So all that stuff about like percentile rankings, all of that is based on other academic studies that were done, the actual numbers that were produced by all of the surveillance of all these kids, no public health departments were plugged into that, that wasn't going to principals to like track kids over time. All of these numbers that we produced, they didn't do anything. They were just there to make us feel shitty. And then they just went into the recycling.

Aubrey: Yeah. So they weren't even like aggregated? There wasn't even like a report?

Mike: No!

False, there were annual reports. It is very clear that no one ever intended to do anything with these data other than create reports and provide awards. The point of the test was to encourage physical activity - that’s literally what all of the original sources say. Here are a couple of examples of researchers using the data:

1. Comparison of Physical Fitness Scores of White and Black Seventh Grade Boys of Similar Socioeconomic Level: Research Quarterly. American Association for Health, Physical Education and Recreation: Vol 40, No 4 (tandfonline.com)

2.  FITNESSGRAM® Friday: A Middle School Physical Activity and Fitness Intervention - PMC (nih.gov)

And another thing that comes up in the studies on this is that none of the actual fitness tests measured fitness. So I found a really good meta-analysis of all of the individual tasks that were the components of the president's physical fitness tests. And there's literally no evidence that the ability to do pull-ups is related to overall upper body strength. 

As I hit upon at the beginning, there is no agreed upon definition of “physical fitness.” This is what makes these tests difficult to design. It’s also not that different from an academic test that is attempting to capture intelligence. I have no idea what meta-analysis Michael is referring to (if anyone knows, please send it to me), but I would guess it is not actually a meta-analysis, both because what he is describing doesn’t sound like a meta-analysis and because in other episodes he has erroneously labeled articles as meta-analyses when they are not. I did find an article that I suspect is what he is referring to, and it actually shows the opposite of what he is saying here. I suspect that Michael is referring to a very poorly done study from 1993 (not a review, not a meta-analysis, just a normal stand-alone study) in which 9 and 10 year-olds were did pull-ups, flexed arm hang, push-ups, Vermont modified pull-ups (VMPU), and New York modified pull-ups (on separate days). They then had these kids do lat pull-downs, bench presses, and forearm curls and they assessed their 1 rep max weight and their endurance (highest number of reps with 50% of the 1 rep max weight). The idea was to see if the scores on the first set of exercises correlated with 1 rep max weights and the endurance tests. The correlation between number of pull-ups and 1 rep max adjusted for bodyweight was statistically significant for both lat pull-downs and bench presses. This suggests that doing a pull-up is absolutely “related to overall upper body strength”.  

Anyway, his point is moot, because the test pamphlet very clearly states that the pull-up is intended to measure “arm and shoulder strength/endurance”, not “overall upper body strength.”  Below is a graphic of the muscles used during a pull-up. As you can see, this exercise primarily targets back muscles and some shoulder muscles (which also suggests the designers of this test may not have really known what muscles pull-ups require, since they said it was for arms and shoulders). The muscles involved in pulling movements are different from the muscles involved in pushing motions, but as a rule of thumb it's safe to say that not all people with greater than average upper body strength can do pull-ups, but all people who can do pull-ups have greater than average upper body strength.

This actually comes up in this review that it's extremely strange to pick a measure of fitness that most children cannot do. You can have a lot of different kids that cannot do a pull-up and some of those kids are extremely fit and some of those kids are extremely unfit, but because all of them are putting up the numbers zero, you're not catching any of those gradations. And so what this review finds is that pull-ups are a much better measure of body fat percentage than anything else because your body weight is inversely correlated to how many pull-ups you can do. So you're basically just measuring how fat the kids are. It's not actually useful as anything else. 

I don’t know what definition Michael is using for “fitness”, but we’ve already established it’s a pretty arbitrary term. We can agree it was misguided to choose pull-ups for a youth fitness test, but again, the purpose of the pull-up component was to measure “arm and shoulder strength/endurance”, not overall fitness. And again, the study Michael is referring to is not a review, and it actually showed the opposite of what Michael is saying. As the authors stated, “performance on all five field tests was correlated significantly with strength expressed relative to body weight. This observation was not unexpected because each of the tests involve moving the body mass or some fraction thereof.” They further conclude that the tests “manifest construct validity as measures of weight-relative muscular strength.” (As a side note, I have read all of the papers cited by this paper and none of them conclude anything close to what Michael is saying.)

Aubrey: This is always sort of a fascinating thing when people talk about fitness where they're like, I don't know that fat guy gets winded real fast and I'm like, yeah, he's carrying 200 more pounds than you are. 

Mike: Yes. And working harder. Yes. 

Aubrey: And he's working harder every day to do everything right. I don't understand how this doesn't translate for folks, but okay.

I’m genuinely confused about this statement from Aubrey, because I thought that she would agree that you can be fat and fit. But this sounds like she’s saying fatness precludes fitness? Carrying more weight often means having more muscle, too. It is pretty well-documented that strength is proportionate to body size. Skeletal muscle is stimulated to increase in strength in response to excess weight (similar to weight-lifting).

Basically, if we were designing a fitness test from scratch, now we would not be using any of these things because they don't actually test fitness. The studies actually mention that there's no good test for fitness of kids, generally, because when we talk about, you know, how fit should kids be? It's really difficult because what we're basically trying to do is predict things far in the future, right? Which kids are going to get heart disease, which kids are going to get lower back pain, et cetera. And so it's really difficult to tell what should kids be able to do at 12? That's going to predict what happens to them when they're 50. 

First, yes, these things do test some aspects of fitness. Fitness is a very broad category, as has been previously explained. Second, the point of these tests is not to predict future health, but fitness in adolescence actually DOES predict future health (not to mention that muscular fitness in adolescence is associated with metabolic syndrome factors in adolescence, as well). Here are just three cool studies:

1. A study out of Denmark measured baseline muscular strength (via maximal voluntary contraction of abdominal and back muscles) and cardiorespiratory fitness (via progressive maximal ergometer bicycle test) in successive cohorts of 15 year olds and then followed them up for either 6 or 12 years (depending on the cohort start year). They found that isometric muscle strength at age 15 (baselines) was significantly associated with BMI, waist circumference, triglycerides, HDL-C, diastolic blood pressure and composite CVD risk factor score. These associations remained statistically significant even when adjusted for cardiorespiratory fitness. In other words, the effect of muscle strength on those factors is independent of cardiorespiratory fitness. 

2. An Australian cohort study that started following children at birth found that participation in sports as a child was associated with improved cardiovascular fitness in adulthood, independent of physical activity in adulthood. 

3. A group of researchers in Puerto Rico and Spain did a study to assess cut-points for muscular fitness tests (specifically, hand grip and the long-jump) that predict cardiovascular health 2 years later (pretty crazy!). 

Anyway, none of this is to say that the PYFT is predictive of future health. Just that it’s not impossible that fitness in childhood and adolescence would impact health status in adulthood. It’s kind of a moot point, though, because this test was not designed to be predictive. It was very clearly designed just to encourage physical fitness in youth. 

Aubrey:  Yeah. Right. It also feels like we don't have a test once a year to see how well you can draw a still life and then defund art education. Right. Like it's like, hey man, there's a pretty clear connection here from one to the other. And the episode with this really fascinating article by Michael Gard, who's the academic who I emailed about the lack of history on the President's Physical Fitness Test. So he wrote a fascinating article called, Why is There So Little Critical Physical Education Scholarship in the United States? And it's basically about this problem, that the same articles with the same panic statistics keep getting published. And yet nobody seems to come to the obvious conclusion that fitness testing is not working. That there's an entire body of researchers that are looking at the data that is being produced by this and the experiences that kids are having and have been having as a result of these tests for almost 40 years now. And they're just like, well, it has to still be good. So what he says is, “The remarkable point here is that despite these findings widespread inaccuracies, negative student and teacher perceptions, and potentially harmful practices, the authors remain apparently unshakeable in their support for fitness testing. An interesting feature of papers such as this is the way the distaste or disinterest of people toward fitness testing is almost uniformly interpreted as a matter of communication rather than substance. Indeed, despite the widely reported resistance of parents, children, and teachers in the fitness testing literature, fitness testing is presented as a settled and unassailable practice that is inherently beneficial for individuals, families, and society.” 

This may be a long tangent, but I want to address the article that Aubrey is citing and Michael Gard’s work, in general. It is worth noting that Michael Gard has a PhD in the sociology and history of dance. He is not an exercise physiologist, a public policy expert, or even a public health scientist. He is a social scientist, which is awesome! Social scientists are incredible. But they don’t have the requisite knowledge of physiology and health necessary to critically assess things like the importance of physical activity for youth. Gard has an agenda, as many scientists do, and that agenda means that he misrepresents facts (similar to what MP does), and presents innocuous things as problematic. Gard’s body of work reminds me of a pattern I recognized in my own college courses, that was eloquently articulated by Nathan Heller in a New Yorker article from March 2023:

Some scholars observe that, in classrooms today, the initial gesture of criticism can seem to carry more prestige than the long pursuit of understanding. One literature professor and critic at Harvard — not old or white or male — noticed that it had become more publicly rewarding for students to critique something as “problematic” than to grapple with what the problems might be; they seemed to have found that merely naming concerns had more value, in today’s cultural marketplace, than curiosity about what underlay them.

This quote perfectly encapsulates Gard’s work. Not once does he suggest any sort of solution or try to understand the state of things. His criticisms are surface level and, as is true of most of the content of this MP episode, not specific to the thing he is dunking on. There seems to be some willful ignorance on the part of both Gard and Aubrey and Michael about the fact that the problems they highlight with respect to fitness testing in schools apply just the same to academic testing. But of course, acknowledging that would undermine their arguments here. 

I’ll skip pointing out all the typos and grammatical errors because that’s beside the point, but it is pretty indicative. Anyway, the thesis that underlies this paper is that it is inappropriate to use schools as venues for public health intervention/implementation. He goes so far as to imply a conspiracy theory when he says, “All educational endeavours seek to change young people in some way, but health and physical education scholars often make little secret of the fact that their intention is to re-shape bodies, minds and desires.” His examples of this? "For example, the Society of Health and Physical Educators (SHAPE) America, the country’s largest professional organization for health and physical educators and publisher of scholarly journals, describes itself as ‘committed to ensuring all children have the opportunity to lead healthy, physically active lives’(SHAPE America,n.d.-a., our emphasis). The mission of one of its publications, the Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, claims that is ‘committed to improving the quality of life through the movement arts and sciences, sport, and leisure’ (SHAPE America, n.d.-b, our emphasis). Another of its publications, theAmerican Journal of Health Education, describes its mission as publishing ‘research manuscripts that focus on Health Education and Health Promotion interventions designed to prevent or delay the onset of the major chronic diseases and illnesses that impact populations of interest today’ (SHAPE America, n.d.-c., our emphasis).” Maybe I’m obtuse, but I simply don’t see how any of the italicized language that Gard chose to highlight here is evidence of any underlying scheme to “re-shape bodies, minds and desires.” I don’t want to get too off track here, but suffice it to say that this article is more ideological than fact-based (for some additional context, Gard has multiple papers in which he posits that rates of obesity have plateaued over the past decade - a verifiably false statement).

Mike: Yeah, let me walk you through one of these. So one of the main sorts of literature reviews of the debate surrounding fitness testing, the data surrounding fitness testing, it lists at the end of the article, the pros and the cons. What are the good, what are the bad? What do various people say? They've read all of the literature. The first benefit that he lists is tracking the fitness of youth, “Information concerning the distribution of scores can be used to track youth fitness over time.” Well, they're not doing that right. 

Aubrey: In order to do that, you would have to aggregate your data somewhere.

I don’t know what article Michael is referring to, but it’s moot because, as I demonstrated before, there were regularly published reports containing these data.  There are also many academics who do research with these data that can influence policy. Take a look at Dr. Hannah Thompson’s body of work for examples.

Aubrey: If you want to foment a sort of commitment to fitness, a) you need a class and b) you need a class where instructors are aware of, you know, what makes kids take things in and what makes kids change their behaviors and that kind of thing. You're not going to do it by hiring a bunch of football coaches and then being like anyway, now care about fat kids.

This is a straw man argument and this whole section of the podcast is perpetuating some harmful stereotypes about physical education teachers. I get that Aubrey and Michael had traumatic experiences in their PE classes, but that does not make it ok to be so dismissive of PE teachers as a whole. There is a whole body of literature about the perceived marginalization of physical education teachers, because so many of them report feeling like they don’t matter. Let’s not perpetuate that. Physical education is important, and physical education teachers are not a monolith of dumb jocks like Aubrey is suggesting here.  

Mike: I mean, maybe there's a school district in America that has done fitness testing as part of an integrated program in a way that doesn't make kids feel shitty about themselves. But as far as a nationwide program and legal requirements, it's clear that this is not working. So after listing all of these potential benefits of fitness tests, things that could come to pass, but have not, they start listing the drawbacks. First one is teacher motivation and support. Teachers are not being motivated. Teachers are not supported. Teachers fucking hate this. That's a real, like, that's not a potential, that's a real thing. Teachers have disliked this test for 70 years. Right? 

First, I repeat that there was no nationwide program in terms of legal requirements. Very few states require fitness testing. As to the piece about teachers, there is a quite a lot of literature on how teachers perceive the FitnessGram, and none of them suggest that “teachers fucking hate this.” In fact, it seems like it’s pretty split. For example, a 2016 study of physical education teachers in West Virginia found that teachers had an overall “slightly positive” attitude towards the FitnessGram (mean of 4.5 out of 7 on the Likert scale). Additionally, 91.3% of teachers expressed caring about the fitness test results. This same finding was reported by another 2016 study of physical education teachers in New York, New Jersey, and New Hampshire. The results section reads, “Teachers had somewhat positive attitudes toward fitness testing. On a 7 point Likert-type scale, a mean score of 4 would indicate a neutral attitude.” There are many similar papers you can read that show the same thing. In other words, there is no robust evidence that “teachers fucking hate this.”

Mike: We'd have to ask teachers what they need. This one is amazing. The second bullet point on the cons of fitness testing is student motivation and self-esteem. Of concern or the percentage of elementary school teachers reporting that students cried during testing and the reports of high school students who had negative test experiences. So, uh, kids are fucking crying and you're like, ooh, the potential of the test is still there. 

Mike: Fucking crying taking this test, teachers fucking hate it. And we're like, well, you know, it could work, but you know, we're taking no steps to make sure that it works right. 

Aubrey: And also, how else are we going to know how far a child can throw a grenade? There is essential information embedded in your mind.

Again this isn’t about grenades. I’ve already demonstrated that statement is false and a conspiracy theory. Second, this is not a feature of the test, but the testing environment. There are ways to administer fitness tests that do not result in students crying (anecdotally, I never once saw a student cry during fitness tests, so I do know it is possible). As an aside, there are many news stories about students crying during academic standardized tests. It’s not uncommon for kids to cry in high pressure settings when they don’t feel supported or when they are scared or self-conscious. 

Mike: Right? So this is from yet another literature review of this debate over fitness testing that says in the fucking abstract, “There is currently no consensus on the importance, need, or impact of fitness tests on student experiences in physical education. Several studies highlight the negative impact fitness testing has on students' experiences in physical education, such as the formation of negative attitudes toward PE, decreased motivation toward PE following poor test scores, and feelings of humiliation when failing in front of peers. These findings provide compelling evidence that fitness test experiences do little to promote positive feelings about lifelong physical activity and fitness.” So even on its own terms, even if you're using fitness testing as a way of quote unquote, raising awareness about the need for kids to move and the badness of the obesity epidemic, et cetera, even on those terms, it's not fulfilling its mission, because people are doing this and they're feeling discouraged from doing physical activity because their experience was so bad.

I cannot find a paper with that quote. If anyone can find it, please let me know! But it is confusing that Michael returns to the idea that these tests were intended to “rais[e] awareness about the need for kids to move and the badness of the obesity epidemic,” because the first part of that seems like a good thing, and there is no evidence that the second half is true. I think we can all agree that there are much more effective ways to raise awareness of obesity. That was certainly something that was covered in my health classes, not in PE. And also, decreased motivation towards PE is not the same as being discouraged from doing physical activity in general. 

Aubrey: I would say for me personally, not only did these fitness tests not incentivize physical fitness, they attach trauma to it. So like deeply increased my, like, I was like a pretty active kid until this kind of shit kicked in where it was, became the sort of social rankings stuff. So like now when I am active, which I like I'm relatively active, right. I have to do it in ways that don't remind me of gym class, right? There's a reason I've never done another fucking pull up in my life. There's a reason I don't like stand around my house doing wall sits. Right. The reason that all of these things are like, I don't engage with them remotely anymore.

We can simultaneously hold that Aubrey has some trauma from these fitness tests and acknowledge that it was not the fault of the tests. These tests are benign, except for in cases where students are getting hurt because the teacher is not adequately prepared to administer the test. The settings in which the tests are administered are to blame for the traumatic experiences, not the tests. 

Mike: And also, I mean, Michael Gard, this researcher, one of the only skeptical researchers on this entire field. He has an entire book about how we have tried for decades to use schools as public health promotion devices. D.A.R.E is a good example. We've done alcohol education in schools. We've done physical education. We, we keep trying to use schools as a way to solve public health problems. And the fact is you can't solve public health problems without public health approaches. That if we actually want kids to get moving, we need to just make it easier for them to do that, right. Again, we need to close streets and give them a place to play. We need to make it safe for them to walk and bike to school. We need to build  playgrounds and parks near them so they can use them. We need to give parents decent working schedules so they can go on walks with their kids and throw frisbees around. It's these things that will actually encourage the outcomes that we want rather than just fucking raising awareness of like exercise is good and fatness is bad, right?

Michael Gard is not a public health expert. Nor is Michael Hobbes. Neither of them is qualified to speak on this topic. It’s preposterous to suggest that schools should be agnostic to public health promotion. This is an incredibly dangerous line of thinking. It works for Michael in this setting, because he is opposed to fitness testing. Should we also not teach kids to wash their hands in preschool and kindergarten? Should we not include information about sexually transmitted infections and prevention methods? Should we not provide kids from low-income families with free meals at school? These are all public health problems, and you can see the “slippery slope” here. How far until we end up banning books with LGBTQIA content? 

Also, you know what makes it easier for kids to move? Providing time for them to move during the school day!  

Aubrey: We also don't need to tell people that smoking is bad at this point. If you are smoking at this point, it is for other reasons than not knowing, like you don't need to worry that fat people don't know that it's like bad to be fat or that it's seen as bad to be fat. Like you don't need to worry about that. That box is checked, team.

These tests have nothing to do with telling people it is bad to be fat. 

Mike:  So the closest thing to a happy ending that we're going to get is it appears a lot of states are actually starting to finally get rid of these absurd laws requiring fitness tests. So California is at the Vanguard of this. There's a big debate in California right now about whether to get rid of this requirement. And interestingly it is being led by the parents of nonbinary kids. 

Actually, most states don’t even have laws to get rid of. 

Yes. There was no evidence to do it in the first place. The evidence that it works is non-existent and the evidence that getting rid of it is good is there, so just on every level, like, yes, let's do this.

It was never intended to be, nor posited to be, evidence-based. 

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Concluding thoughts:

It’s totally legitimate to argue that these tests didn’t measure “physical fitness” very well, but Michael’s arguments about that are incorrect, both in his interpretations of the scientific studies (despite repeating again in this episode that he is a “methodology queen”) and his misunderstanding of human physiology. This episode brushes aside the real negative impacts of the shift to a largely sedentary populace and retrospectively attributes a very normal thing (standardized tests) to a non-existent moral panic somehow connected to diet culture. MP has been criticized in the past for its very US-centric view, and this is true here, as well. Many other countries have similar standardized youth fitness tests (see EuroFit started in 1987, China’s CNFPT started in 1975); Michael’s arguments fall apart not only when you start fact-checking them, but also when you consider that almost all of the issues he has with the PYFT are also true of the SATs or MCATs or another standardized academic test (and those have a host of other issues, too!). 

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Bonus Wrong Content!

Totally. And another, I mean, another problem with this, and I think this is really key to almost all of these sorts of national, overall projects that we have about PE in schools is that schools, teachers were never really given very much instruction or extra resources for this. Again, it's not like this was like a six week fun program that all the kids are going to do together. And we're all going to become stronger in these specific ways. It was like, hey, PE teachers, you're required by law to give this test once a year. But we’re not really going to give you guidelines on how to do it.

False. There is a substantial amount of instruction that comes along with these tests - please refer to the manual to see examples. And again, this was not required by law in most states, and not annually. 

Oh yeah. I mean, this is one of the central criticisms of the fitness test that starts showing up in the literature around 2000, especially after the implementation of no child left behind. When a lot of schools start cutting PE programs and some schools even start cutting recess because everything becomes built around standardized test scores. And so a lot of schools cut their PE programs because they have to focus on STEM or whatever, but they still have this legal requirement to do the fitness test. So a lot of schools that don't even have PE will sort of one day a year, pull all the kids aside and make them do these humiliating fitness tests and weigh them and then just send them back into school. So it's not even like this is being contextualized in a PE class. It's literally just, you're sitting all the time and then we test you and we're like, why are you so unhealthy? And then you just go back to sitting the next day.

Again, the fitness tests were not legally required. Also, should we not instead be focusing on how problematic it is to cut PE programs? It sounds like the real problem here is not the test, but the lack of infrastructure around the test, no?

This shit is fire emojis. He's really mad about this. And I found a bunch of articles in the literature that illustrate exactly the point that he is making. It's amazing. There's all of these papers about sort of the ongoing debate about fitness testing. And should we keep fitness testing and it's a controversial subject and what are the pros and cons? And what is amazing about them is that when they present the pros and cons of fitness testing, all of the pros are potential things of fitness testing and all of the cons are actual drawbacks.

This is another place where it would be helpful if Aubrey and Michael would cite their sources. However, I looked at the “examples” that Michael Gard cited and they do not reflect what Michael said, nor what Aubrey is saying here. Also, earlier in the episode, Michael said there was no literature on this topic, so this is a reversal of his earlier stance.

Mike: In order to do that, you would have to do that. This paper also does something that I think is very typical, where people substitute the benefits of fitness testing for the benefits of fitness. So they say like, well, you know, fitness is really good for kids. And it's like, yeah, fitness is really good for kids, but that doesn't mean fitness testing is good for kids, right? That's not an argument to tell kids to do pull-ups and then make them feel shitty for not being able to do a pull-up once a year. That's very distinct from like, let's all play volleyball on Wednesdays.

None of the papers I read conflated testing with physical activity, so I would love to see what papers Michael is talking about. However, the same point could be made about  standardized academic tests. I don’t personally think that physical education classes need testing mechanisms, but this does raise an interesting question - what is a good way to do tests in physical education? I think this could make a really interesting podcast, rather than dunking on testing in general.

Mike: Another one of the main arguments for fitness testing is that we need to raise awareness of the obesity epidemic. Like this is something you see in so many articles, it's like, oh, we need to make kids aware that the obesity epidemic is a problem. And that physical fitness is good. And it's like, again, testing them and making them feel shitty is not a good approach to this.

I’ve read a LOT of papers on this for this fact check and I’ve yet to see one single paper that says the purpose of these tests was to educate kids on the obesity epidemic. 

Aubrey: Right. I mean, it's the same reason that like, ideally if you have a math test and you have kids who have a hard time with math, you don't call them up to the front of the class and be like, Hey, look at these dummies. That's not a way that people learn, nor is it a way that people get invested.

This is not how the fitness tests work, either. If this was Aubrey or Michael’s experience, that’s awful. But that’s about having a terrible teacher, not about the test. 

Mike:  Yes. It's like, I think all kids should learn to read, but instead of actually giving them time to read and dedicating teachers to teaching them how to read, I'm just going to test them once a year and be like, why the fuck can't you read? That's my way of raising awareness of the importance of reading. And then this is from this literature review. It says when tests are properly administered, fitness testing provides useful information for students to determine their needs, setting goals and plan programs for improvement. Well, again, they're not doing that. So yes, if they were properly administered, sure they have the potential to do that, but that's been true since the 1950s and that potential has never been reached. So I don't see why that's really relevant. Like yeah, a lot of things have potential to be good. 

Again, very difficult to know what Michael is talking about since he did not cite his sources. But his argument here is also irrelevant given all of the factual inaccuracies I have already pointed out.