The President’s Challenge Fitness Test.

by

The ADULT version.

Someday MizFit will regale you with stories about how she begged to get out of gym class.

How she would plead with her doctor to write some sort of note detailing her affliction with a debilitating disease which prevented her from donning shorts & a tee and exposing herself to group humiliation.

How she once spent ALL CLASS PERIOD attempting to serve a volleyball over the net because the gym instructor thought she was being silly (!) when she couldn’t quite make it across.

And no stories are better than the dreaded President’s Physical Fitness Day test ones.

Good times.

This morning? MizFit is encouraging all of you (us. the royal everyone.) to take the President’s Challenge for Adults.

Count it as your WOMAN CHALLENGE workout of the day.

Add it to your regular workout routine just because.

(Choose to ignore me because Im not standing over you in work out apparel blowing a whistle sharply in yer ear—-whatever you want. We’re grownups now.)

Take the test? How’d you do? hit us up in the comments.

(Yeah. Ill be participating. My doctor refused to write a note. again.)

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Comments

  1. Haha! I remember those challenges. I think I still have some of my certificates from grade school. I always hated the sit-ups and the stretching parts of those challenges….but that was back in the days where “exercise” meant, um, walking to and from the refrigerator to get some bagel bites so that I could make a quick snack in between watching after school cartoons.

    Well…what the heck…the possibility of getting a cheap-o medal for doing my regular workout routine sounds like fun. I signed up on the site.

  2. I “took” the test. Meaning I looked at my data from the last time I did a military fitness test and halved my numbers for push ups and sit ups. Halved the time on my last three miler for the run. Did the sitting reach but guessed as to how far it was.

    I must have not understood where the sit and reach starts, as I did really bad, even though I can extend way past my toes! Like, 5th percentile bad. I think I’ll actually read the directions and try that one again.

    I was in the 90th (run) 95 (push ups) and 100 (sit ups)!

  6. Yes! I love this. I have my certificates and badges around here somewhere. I need to find them to see which President’s signatures are on them. That will totally show my age!

  7. I’ll definitely have to do this hehe… Believe it or not, I won the “challenge” in grade school; however, I’m pretty sure that this seems much tougher! I’m going to do it tonight before spinning!

  8. Huh.

    Come one MizFits.

    Dont leave me flapping out here alone in the wind.

    I *know* some of you must have sucketh as I did in gym class.

    Please to normalize for your fearless leader 🙂

    M.

  9. i sucked as well. I HATED running and couldn’t do the arm hang to save my life.

    now I would love to have the opportunity to go to PE class everyday, minus the hideous uniform!

  10. Right, Workout Mommy, minus the uniform 🙂

    Because MizFit would never have been the moronic teem who rebelled by refusing to wear uniform white shorts (& instead inexplicably wore ones with with THIN RED PIPING down the sides) and, as a result, had her grade docked so much she ended up with an F (even before her lack of athletic prowess was figured in the mix).

    I think Im in trouble with the Toddler Tornado as everyone remarks that she’s a chip off the ole (tuna)block.

    M.

  11. OMG, the horror of those one piece gym outfits….do they still have those anywhere? Or am I older than anyone here. I do remember the President’s Challenge Fitness test, wasn’t able to get out of them either.
    Will definitely try the adult version…

  12. “Dear Mizfit:
    Please excuse the Bag Lady from the fitness challenge today as her one-piece gym outfit is at the cleaners.
    Signed
    Dr. BL”

    There’s my doctor’s note – just like I used to fake ’em in school!!! (Didn’t work there, either…)

  13. LOL…I hit puberty EARLY so I managed to always be on my period during the tests after age 10. 🙂 Amazing how that worked out…

    I hated exercise.

    I still do. But I do it. 🙂

    I’m taking the test tonight, I’ll update you when I’m done. I feel pretty optimistic though!

    V.

  14. Okay, I am in…but I am NOT running! Sorry, there are some things I just won’t do. (I know I should but I just can’t stand it).

  15. I sucked at gym. I faked stomach aches, menstrual cramps, and forged my mother’s signature to avoid class whenever I could, especially on days that I knew we’d be running. Attempts at running were mortifying, and usually resulted in me wheezing like an emphysema patient or sprawled over at the sidelines. And no, I didn’t have asthma.

    Sidenote-I believe if even one of the many gym teachers who tortured me over that decade had ever said, “slow down and you won’t wheeze, and will make it to the finish line”, I probably wouldn’t have done everything possible to avoid running over the course of the following decade. It was only when i read a beginners article saying to start running sloooow, that I felt I had permission to attempt running again.

    Also, I was finally allowed to get contacts in high school after my mom realized it would be cheaper than replacing my constantly mangled glasses from gym-class impacts (i.e.-face hitting floor, face hitting pole, ball hitting face).

    I’m still not graceful nor coordinated, but I can run and lift heavy things. It’s a start.

  16. I have horrible memories of those presidential fitness tests. Our gym teacher was a sadist…and he was with us from 3rd grade through high school. He ridiculed the kids who couldn’t do things and doted on the athletes in our class. I used to feel so sick the day of the chin ups test. I hated that one most because it was the one I could never do. Girls just had to hang with their chin over the bar while boys had to do chin ups. The thing that always made me mad was we did the stupid thing every year but never once in all of those years did we do anything that would have built our upper body strength in order to improve our ability to do it. Somehow i don’t think dodge ball was going to help me hang from that bar.

  17. Okay, let me chime in about elementary school gym.

    We did not have uniforms, we sweat in our school clothes and stank the rest of the day. Fun!

    We mostly played games because our teacher was either in the middle of a risky pregnancy or just didn’t want to take us outside. So we played games on a *concrete* floor. I’m surprised I never broke a bone because I fell a lot.

    Then, when I got into 5th and 6th grades….my MOM was my gym teacher! There was no way I was getting out of anything! Of course, I loved gym, so I never tried anyway.

  18. Good grief I hated gym classes. the yellow gym “dress” with the bloomers? The klutziness. The awkwardness. The plantars warts. NOT fond memories.

    Ok, I’m taking the test. I’m not running, though. (heat warnings and air warnings so I’ll walk in the gym).

  19. Ooh this looks like fun! Thanks for the link!

    Your volleyball story sounds EXACTLY like me. Hated volleyball in school but it was THE sport at our school. Similarly there was this big love of baseball, which I also was terrible at.

    I was sad we could only do gym for one year in high school, though, because high school had cool activities like learning self defense and fencing and things like that. So much better than failing miserably at getting that frustrating volleyball over the net!

  20. Hated gym. It was my worst class and I dropped it as soon as I hit grade 10 and was not forced to take it any more. Never would have thought that one day I would exercise voluntarily. Still no interest in ever playing any team sports though.

    Being Canadian, we had the Canada Fitness tests. You could get a gold, silver or bronze badge. A few times I managed to scrape a bronze – not sure how. The only thing I remember not dreading was the sit ups.

  21. 1-we were also stinky kids who wore our school clothes for gym.
    2-I still have physical (and mental?) scars from the time my grade school gym teacher tried to do “scooter olympics.”
    3-I had asthma before my gym teacher believed it existed. I was teased, screamed at, and forced to run anyway until I literally collapsed and then was failed in PE for “faking it.”
    4-She later apologized after going to a conference on asthma.
    5-I HATED the president’s physical fitness test. HATED. So much so that I felt a little sick when I saw that subject line. But I might try it anyway for a little adult-self therapy.

  22. i loathed gym class! i was the chubby girl that hated changing in to gym clothes, sucked at group sports and couldn’t run to save her life. so i spent a lot of time in the nurse’s office playing sick or took the zero for the day for “forgetting” my gym clothes.
    I’ll never forget the fitness test we had to do in the 5th grade. We were partnered up boy-girl and i got the cute boy for the sit-up test. Cute boy held my feet and at number 7 I let it rip right in his face. it was smelly. and i was mortified!

  25. I was all over gym until

    puberty+middle school = 2fat4words.

    There was no one-piece gym suit for this fatty to wear, and I was humiliated. I could still throw and catch with the boys and I could wrestle, but tumbling and running – 4-get it!

    My 9 year old is very stocky, and just not built for speed. He lives in fear of the mile run and the whole President’s physical fitness thing is pure ugly humiliation for him. He feels like a failure before he even starts. H can’t run, he is too heavy to hang, and together the whole process crushes him. It makes me sick and sad that he has to endure the torture. It really is torture for the kid – his mental anguish is horrible to witness. Plus he has a bone-thin PE teacher who cannot imagine a boy not LOVING PE. (Sorry, my boy LOVES books! His school is having track and field day in 2 weeks. I gave him permission to NOT participate – it’s just not worth the anguish he goes thru because he is afraid to look stupid and/or be picked on by other kids when he can’t do the running and jumping.

    Don’t get me wrong – at 42 and 100+ pounds overweight, I get the importance of fitness and heatlhy eating…NOW. I just wish there was a way to help him get over his self-fulfilling prophecy of PE failure.

    PS – I don’t remember having to do the fitness gig when I was in school. When did that start? Okay, I can look it up, I guess…just wondering.

    PPS – This Fat-chick don’t run or hang. I didn’t look at the adult challenge, but I’ll do what my trainer says for however long it takes.

    😀 Hughsmom a.k.a. Linda

  26. Man, I love you guys.

    You’ve perked my rainy-post-storm-cleaning-morning right up!

    So glad to see I have more than a few SistersFromAnotherMother who hath grown into their fitnessitude as well.

    M.

  27. Holy crap, uniforms? We brought our own shorts and tops. Okay, then there were those boys that for an entire school year never took theirs home to wash.

    I loved gym (now here is what is between the lines) I loved it, I excelled at it, and IT GOT ME OUT OF OTHER CLASSES! I was a terrible student. C-, except gym or PE, as we called it back in the day, straight A’s. I even joined the gymnastics, softball, vollyball and track teams. We had meets during the day.

    Dare I admit…I made the Boys track team in Jr. High, but was kicked off because there were no shower facilities for girls.

  28. Everybody feel sad for me: My mother always told me that I had a truck butt and looked stupid when I ran, so I never do anything remotely physical in front of people. And I always took weird things like fencing and square dancing in gym, stuff where you stayed dressed. But by the time I got to high school I weighed only 99 pounds and gym was more of a social thing. Anyone remember the Chicken Fat song (yeah, I’m THAT old)?

  29. haha I’d like to chime in and ask…who the hell decided that it was a good idea to have WHITE gym uniforms…those kids that didn’t take theirs home till the end of the year?! ewww, by May all you have are a group of kids in slightly off brown shades of white!

    Oh man, don’t even get me started on gym class…we had it mandatory till 10th grade and pretty sure it was the bane of my high school existence. I’m STILL not sure I can run a 10 min mile so I sure as heck couldn’t do it then…oh the embarrassment! Turned me off running for YEARS!

  30. Boy did I ever suck at gym! I distinctly remember running a 16 minute mile in middle school during this test. To think that I was supposed to be young and full of energy back then! I can easily cut that time by more than half at 31. I’m so doing this test one Saturday! Interesting to see that the flexibility test is still basically the same. I remember they used to pull this box out and you’d put your feet up against it and stretch as far as you could. They would take the best of three.

  31. Yay a test! Pick me! Pick me!! (Yes, I was *that* kid in school. I got my butt kicked a lot). I too hated PE but this time around I did pretty well on the test! Over 95th percentile on everything with 100 on the sit-ups. Do you think I could get my middle school gym teacher to change my grade now??

  32. I hated gym so much that even though I like to workout now, I still hate going to the gym because it has that same smell. Old, moldy, basement sweat.

    My other beef with gym class is the different standards for girls and boys. Hormones do indeed kick in at puberty that make certain things easier for boys and other things easier for girls, but in elementary school it is silly to expect less out of girls. It sets a precedent that girls are weaker and is a self-fulfilling prophecy, because girls are not challenged to be strong and fast, so they often don’t develop those skills fully.

    *steps off soapbox and goes to see if chocolate-coffee protein shake has thawed from its day in the freezer…whoops

  33. I didn’t have time to do the fitness challenge, because I was fencing, weeding my flowerbed, sanding the rails on my deck, checking cows, chasing calves, cleaning my motorhome, and then this afternoon,…….

  34. Oh, those one-piece gym suits… I was trying to FORGET about them and you’ve brought it all back… [shudder]

  35. Even now I won’t try chin ups because of the Canada Fitness Test. I would get “gold” on everything and suck at that one!
    The schools my kids go to just started the testing this year. Apparently they are testing to prove that kids are out of shape and need P.E. everyday.

  36. I detested gym and could never, ever climb that rope. Those physical fitness tests were the worst. I am still traumatized!

  37. Wow, this post brought back a LOT of bad memories. But I’ve really enjoyed reading all the comments. I’m sad to hear (from hughsmom specifically) that not a lot has changed since I was a kid. Gym class is still devastating for many kids. And these comments just go to show that we live with it for the rest of our lives. Why is this so hard for PE teachers and school officials to GET?

  39. So.

    Shall we mail this to the President?

    To the president of the national gym teachers association of america? canada?

    I am *confident* they’d appreciate our remarks.

    M.

  40. To whom it may concern:

    Please excuse Mizfit from any exercise or physical exertion until she fully recovers from her recent severely incapacitating broken nail.

    Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter!
    Dr. J

  42. Pass as in SKIP IT, Nitmos?

    I have faith in you.

    I know you can!

    M., who commands all those who come here to read her doctor’s note and know that she’s gloating as she doesnt run.

  43. Ironically back in school I couldn’t run for doo-doo, now I could probably blast on that 1.5 mile test. Still to this day I cannot do one pull up. That has been life long goal. Just ONE pull up. Alas…Ok, I’ll try the test and see what happens. I’m a little eh-scared.

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