By: Snigdha Chakravarti
On July 31st, 2025, President Donald Trump released an executive order to revive the ‘Presidential Fitness Test,’ an assessment of physical fitness for students from ages 10 to 17. Deeming it a “wonderful tradition” and a “big deal,” the President seeks to lessen “rates of obesity, chronic disease, inactivity, and poor nutrition [that] are at crisis levels, particularly among our children.”
Furthermore, the President is also bringing back the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition with the help of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy, who released the “Make America Healthy” campaign in May 2025, shares some of the same beliefs as the President, believing that rates of obesity and other childhood chronic diseases are on the rise. The test assesses cardiovascular fitness through the time to run a mile, upper body strength through the number of pull-ups/push-ups, speed and agility through the PACER test, and flexibility through sit-and-reach exercises. Despite this, several Americans have expressed concern about the re-implementation of the test, citing the negative effects on both mental health and holistic approaches to fitness.
Joanna Farber, a PE teacher in Louisiana, mentioned the split responses among her colleagues regarding the president’s decision. However, Farber explained how all of them admitted that physical activity in physical education classes is “limited,” but “measuring it” is what left many of her colleagues questioning the reinstatement of a test to determine physical fitness levels. In essence, simply measuring the amount/intensity of specific exercises a given student could do in order to determine how fit they are is debatable, considering the different health backgrounds of students. In fact, one of the reasons why former President Obama phased out the test in 2013 was due to the focus of the test on athleticism rather than helping schools provide a platform for creating long-term health goals. On the other hand, President Trump still sees the test as combating the “threat to the vitality and longevity of our country” and “trends [obesity and chronic childhood diseases that result from poor physical fitness]” that “weaken our economy, military readiness, academic performance, and national morale.” The president referenced the history of the test to support his decision to reinstate the test.
Originally called the ‘Kraus-Weber Test,’ the test was first created by doctors Sonja Weber and Hans Kraus to assess fitness through core strength, flexibility, and strength. In the 1950s, Kraus, along with a fitness advocate friend, Bonnie Pruden, traveled all around the world to administer the test; in the US, 58% of kids failed at least one element of the test, while this was only the case for 8.7% of European children. They put their findings in a report that was later titled ‘The Report That Shocked the President’; this title was given because then-President Eisenhower, upon reading the report, created the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition and started a national fitness test. Later, President Kennedy added onto Eisenhower’s actions and wrote an impactful essay about physical fitness in Sports Illustrated, an essay that President Trump referenced in his executive order. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also expressed, of his uncle, that President Kennedy “was lamenting the fact that America had prided itself on a beef jerky toughness, and that … we were falling behind Europeans, we were falling behind other nations.” An award for the top performers of the test was later created by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966.
In 2013, the Presidential Fitness Test became no longer mandatory due to the detrimental effects of it on students’ mental health, especially with regard to body image through embarrassment of doing the test in front of their peers. One parent wrote how, growing up, he recalls “how hurtful this program was when we were in school. Traumatic and bullying. Hopeless.” Physical education expert Judy LoBianco, moreover, explained how the test may humiliate students who are not as athletic, hindering them from even pursuing fitness goals in the future. LoBianco believes that the test should not be of a competitive nature but rather a way through which students can develop fitness goals for their future.
When the test will begin to be administered has yet to be determined, but the president’s decision has spurred a variety of reactions that debate the effectiveness of the test in truly accomplishing its goal of promoting physical fitness in children.