The Presidential Fitness Test is Back

The sound of my plodding footsteps across crushed gravel echoes in my mind like it was yesterday.

How could they do this to us? This was torture. This was a criminal mistreatment of children.

This…was the Presidential Fitness Test.

It’s ironic that a kid who felt like running a mile was tantamount to torture would grow up to become a lover of all things endurance.

Yet here we are. 

Like many an older endurance athlete, I disliked running. So much so that I dreaded the annual fitness test that some president I had never heard of cooked up to make me suffer.

I didn’t mind the other parts of the test. But the run…that was conducted on the scorching prison yard that was our middle school playground. No grass. No track. Just a few acres of crushed gravel with a blacktop and some basketball hoops in the middle. Running around that wasteland in the southern California heat would have made David Goggins blush.

Or, at least that’s how it felt to a particularly slow 12-year-old.

And now, after a 12-year reprieve, the Presidential Fitness Test is back. 

It’s Back

On July 31, 2025, President Donald Trump announced that the presidential youth fitness program would return to public schools around the country. The White House published an announcement titled the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition, and the Reestablishment of the Presidential Fitness Test.

The announcement states, “As the United States prepares to celebrate its semiquincentennial anniversary in 2026, we must address the threat to the vitality and longevity of our country that is posed by America’s declining health and physical fitness.  For far too long, the physical and mental health of the American people has been neglected. Rates of obesity, chronic disease, inactivity, and poor nutrition are at crisis levels, particularly among our children.” 

The Presidential Council will:

“(a) prioritize and expand children’s participation in youth sports and active play;

(b) promote the physical, mental, and civic benefits of daily movement, exercise, and good nutrition; and     

(c)  engage every sector — public and private, civilian and military — in creating a national culture of strength, vitality, and excellence.”

The History of the Presidential Fitness Test

The test originated in the late 1950s. American health scientists Hans Krause and Sonja Weber conducted a test (Kraus-Weber Test) of simple exercises on children from the US as well as several European countries. The researchers found that 58% of children from the US failed at least one aspect of the test compared to only 8% of European children.

The results prompted President Dwight D. Eisenhower to establish the President’s Council on Youth Fitness to address the issue.

The presidential fitness test was formalized ten years later by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

During President John F. Kennedy’s campaign, he published the article “Soft American” in Sports Illustrated, calling on the American public to rediscover its “vigor.” As president, Kennedy upheld the test and upped the ante by encouraging Americans to challenge themselves to a 50-mile hike. 

There has been a variety of health initiatives promoted by each president since. The Presidential Fitness Test, however, had more or less stayed the same.

The Obama administration ultimately discontinued it in 2013, to move away from “recognizing athletic performance to providing a barometer on student’s health.” Though the methods of promoting a healthy lifestyle and decreasing the rate of childhood obesity have changed from president to president, the health of American youth has remained a constant in each administration.

Who’s Helping?

Several of the last administrations have enlisted the support of professional athletes to bolster their youth fitness campaigns. George H. W. Bush hired Arnold Swarzenegger in 1990 to serve as the chairman of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. Other major athletes like Florence Griffith Joyner, Lee Haney, Drew Breeze, and Dominque Dawes have held the position since.

President Trump tapped professional golfer Bryson DeChambeau to chair the council with additional support from Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, former New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor, professional wrestling icon Triple H, and several others.

US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. applauded the initiative and mentioned the Presidential Physical Fitness Award as being a “huge point of pride” when he was growing up.

The move comes ahead of the Trump Administration overseeing the 2025 Ryder Cup, the FIFA World Cup in 2026, and the summer Olympics in 2028.

The exact details of what the Trump Administration’s physical fitness test will include have not been specified. So, until then, let’s take a look at what the original test includes.

What is the Presidential Fitness Test?

• one-mile run
• performing as many sit-ups as possible in 60 seconds;
• performing pull-ups or push-ups until failure (the choice of exercise being left to the proctor);
• a sit and reach test; and
• a variant shuttle run

Like the old version, the test will include the Presidential Physical Fitness Award for students who score in the top percentile.

The Presidential Physical Fitness Award

The Presidential Physical Fitness Award is given to students who reach the 85th percentile across the five events. Students who achieve the 50th percentile across the five events are awarded the National Physical Fitness Award. The current percentiles are based on the 1985 School Population Fitness Survey. It’s unclear if the percentiles will be updated.

​Conclusion

Though I hated running growing up, the test never really struck me as much of a burden. We regularly did push-ups, sit-ups, and other physical activities during physical education class. Some of it we loved, some of it we hated. That’s just how it was. Many have criticized the test for being an opportunity for bullying, exclusion, and anxiety. Others have praised it as an opportunity for kids to excel. 

For most kids who went through the test, it was just another day in P.E.

That same day, I trudged along the fence line of the prison yard playground, the new kid to our school zoomed past me. Zoomed past everyone. That boy finished the mile in just over 5 minutes – an absolutely mind-boggling pace for a 12-year-old kid.

Our gym class teacher was in disbelief. 

We all crowded around the kid, asking why he didn’t tell us he was that fast. He was as surprised as we were. No one had ever asked him to run a mile before.

Would he have gotten funneled into a top high school track program or a full ride to an Ivy League school if he hadn’t been “discovered” during that test?

Who knows?

For at least one kid from my childhood, the test ended up being a start to a better life and a free education. For others, it was a moment of dread, happily left in the past.

For the kids of 2025 and beyond, we’ll have to wait and see.

Outdoor Muscle

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