UHS PE Department Develop Rigorous Fitness Standards

Urbana High school has recently changed their fitness standards. The reason behind their method is because the Presidential Fitness Testing Program was replaced with the FitnessGram.

Two of the physical education teachers (along with their department co-workers) at Urbana High School created the new fitness standards for the school. The students have to do certain exercises to get a good grade. They have to do the mile run, sit and reach, push-ups, curl-ups, and the trunk lift. With this method your age affects the number of each exercise you have to do, as you get older the more that has to be done. Also, you repeat this process because the teachers want to see progress along the way. In previous years at Urbana you would have one fitness test at the beginning of the semester and one at the end. So, now the new FitnessGram says we have to have four fitness tests throughout each semester. The new FitnessGram was created to improve on student’s exercise and lower the obesity rate.

From ages eight to fifteen 48% of boys are obese, and for girls it is 36% in America. Illinois is the only state in the United States that requires students to takedaily physical education classes in order to graduate. Also, the Illinois obesity rate is at 33.6%. So, for students in Illinois the effect is different because we have have to take a gym class all four years of high school.

I also asked Nathan Watson, a P.E teacher at UHS, some questions about the new P.E standards. His comments on the situation were, “in the discussion between Blackman and I we thought they weren’t hard enough so we took the Presidential Fitness Standards and combined them with FitnesssGram – then presented them to the department for approval.”