Why You Should Practice the President's Challenge Fitness Test

Remember that physical fitness test you had to complete in Phys Ed back in the day? Well there's a reason it is still used across the country today - it works. It requires body strength with little to no equipment.


Body weight exercises are great, what better way to test your strength than with your own body? Can you lift, hold. or move your own weight? To really test your body and what it is capable of, is where this will come in handy.

Back to Basics: 

Push Ups, Sit Ups, Crunches, Pull Ups (overhand grip), Chin Ups (underhand grip), Flexed Arm Hang, Sprints (time in seconds), Distance Running (1 Mile)

For children there are two types which you may recall, the National and Presidential. Well now there is an Adult version which aims to test just how fit one really is over the age of 18.

According to their website, the Adult version of the physical fitness test covers:

• Aerobic fitness—the ability of your heart and lungs to deliver blood to muscles
• Muscular strength and endurance—whether you are strong enough to do normal activities easily and protect your lower back
• Flexibility—the ability to move your joints through their proper range of motion
• Body composition—whether you have too much body fat, especially around the waist

For the Aerobic portion, a healthy adult should be able to complete either a 400 Meter Walk, One-Mile Walk, or 1.5 Mile Run.

For Muscular Strength and Endurance, a healthy adult should be able to as many Half Sit Ups in 1 minute and perform as many Push Ups as possible without rest.

For the Flexibility portion, the good ol' Sit And Reach you remember from gym class.

And as for Body Composition, you simply record your BMI and waist circumference.

If you go to the website https://www.adultfitnesstest.org/index.php you can see detailed instructions, along with a place to enter and track your data. There is also a PDF version of the instruction booklet which you can download and print for free.