Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: The Presidential Fitness Test

Episode Date: September 18, 2017

How many pull ups can you do? How fast can you run? How far can you jump? Most importantly: Why does the President of the United States care so much? These questions and more answered this week! Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saw bones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. I'm your co-host Justin McArroy. Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!

Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Thanks. You said you were going to talk to them. What is it, man? Aw, thank you.

That's fine. It's your time. I'm on your time. That's fine. Hey, jokes, his feelings are really heard about this. I'm going to hear about this all night. All right. I'm kidding.

I'm kidding. All right. That's about all the kidding, I'm kidding. All right. That's about all the yelling I think for tonight. I think we're about cool on that. Said what's the show about? This we I know I know what's about. This is our our post 200th episode. So yes, I do know what this shows, but I mean this specific episode tonight for DC.

What's up DC? So yes, I do know what the show is, but I mean this specific episode tonight for DC. What's up DC? Well, when we go on tour, we try to find topics that will relate somewhat to the area that we're in. And so, since we're in DC, we thought we should do something related to the government. I was thinking it was important since we have the show to discuss presidential fitness. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Whoa, okay. We've been in DC all of three hours. Let's just go ahead and start getting buck wild here. Very political, though. I'm in. Okay, come on. Who is fit to lead? Let's just go ahead and start getting buck wild here. Very political though. I'm in. Okay, come on. Who is fit to lead?

Let's do this. Come on. I'm heated up. I saw a picture in the back. Christiana and I'm in poor was on this stage once. I'm ready. No. Presential fitness.

Here she goes. No holds bar. Cindy McElroy. Let's lose. Justin. Yes. As much as I would love that, that's loose. Justin. Yes.

As much as I would love that, that's what the show. We're going to talk about the presidential fitness test. You know the one you had in gym class. OK. I know. It's still a medical show. OK, that's fine. Do you remember the presidential fitness test?

I faked sick on the day. That sounds like a whimsical vignette, but it's true. I didn't. They told me how far I would have to run, I think. And I'm the same guy who once asked a gym teacher will shooting on the shorter basketball rim in the gym impact my ability to make the basketball team. Which he told me no, but the answer is yes.

I mean, in the grand scheme of things, sure. This test, I think, for a lot of us, like you get these nightmares of Jim class, having to do these pull ups and things, and I started wondering, where did this come from? Why did we have to do this? Why did the president care if I could sit and reach very far on this board?

Where did this come from? So here's the story of the presidential fitness test. So in the 1950s, a series of studies began to come out that were very alarming to Americans that said, American kids are not fit. They're very unhealthy. All they do is sit around and watch TV all day and they're just unhealthy. Specifically, in 1953, Dr. Hans Kraus and Bonning Pruder published an article entitled Muscular Fitness and Health in the Journal of the American Association for Health,

Physical Education and Recreation. Snappy. Snappy title. I don't fret out of you. It's easily memorable. So they published this article that said, you know what, American youth, they need to get healthier. They're very unfit.

There's a huge problem. We've been watching gym classes. They're not really doing anything to make our kids fitter. And they followed this up with an article two years later in the New York State Journal of Medicine that said, we compared a bunch of American kids. They had like what, 4,400, six to 16-year-old American kids with 3,000 of their European counterparts on a very basic fitness test It was like this 90 second test that basically involved like do a leg lift do a sit-up Raise now do like like a leg lift backwards. We'll hold your legs down and raise the top of you up Anyway, it was it was very simple. There were like six down and raise the top of you up. Anyway, it was very simple. There were like six movements.

And on the test, like 60% of American kids couldn't do it. But only 8% of the European kids they tested couldn't do it. No. So I'd love to run those stats now, eh? So they published this and everybody kind of freaked out because they presented it to the president and they said, look, everybody here's unhealthy, we're all unfit. And this was very alarming to political leaders and specifically military officials who said, who's gonna be fit enough to, you know, generation of dough kids, a G-nuffings, unfit to defend our shores.

That was essentially the fear is that all these kids, that's what television has wrought. And so, Eisenhower formed the President's Council on Youth Fitness initially to try to research and figure out like how can we make kids healthier. And they had this pilot study of over 8,000 school kids, and that's where it began. Well, Kennedy picked this up and ran with it

because he was all about fitness. He actually published a couple different articles in sports illustrated, one specifically about the soft American. They just did Macarole story. I was, I was, you could, that was a good enough laughing. I think we all agree that about the first bit of the laughing was the good amount of laughing. Everybody went, that's spiraled from like, my husband is so funny. And they're like, my husband could do a setup.

Everybody knows you're on that slow car bean kick now. You know, you've got it. So it's of any way. So he started involving community groups. There were all these educational films made. And they actually, they did another survey in, that showed in 1965 that kids were actually getting fitter. There were some improvements from that, but that

was not far enough. LBJ took it the next step in 1966 when he said we need an actual test. It's not enough just to teach the kids, we need to test them and see who is fit and who isn't, and then make them feel terrible about it. And so the Presidential Physical Fitness Award that you get for passing the Presidential Physical Fitness Test is born. And initially, it was supposed to reflect skills that you might need if you were in the military. So like on the original test, one of the things they would have you do is just curl a softball as far as you could. What? Wink.

If you follow. Ahead from an enemy that you defeated. To try to scare the bad guys. The origin of pull-ups, which I can't do, I'll talk about that, I can't do any. The origin of pull-ups comes from climbing ladders like in like a submarine or a ship or something. That was the thought, was like, then you can do it really fast.

Your arms are really strong. So do some pull-ups. Okay. And then just like general things for endurance and fitness. So they're like, I don't know, have them run a mile. They used to have them do a broad jump. Just stand there and jump as far as you can. That was part of the original test.

How do you think that you as a government official like decide the good amount that is for jumping? Like, at what point it's like, hmm, good jump. Good jump. good jump. Good jump. Good jump. You come to a half meter gap on the battlefield and the commanders are like,

who can jump over this? And you can look at me like, everybody. LAUGHTER So, and they also included the stuff that would endure like the setups and the push-ups and the sit and stretch. They called the V-Sit. It's that wooden board that you had to put your feet

against and then reach as far as you could. That thing. So those are all in the original test. And if you could do this better than 85% of American youth, that's what you had to get the award. You had to be in the 85th percentile or better. Then you got a certificate that said the award, you had to be in the 85th percentile or better, then you got a certificate that said the president thinks you're great.

And it's very proud of you. That's really nice of him. Yeah, you're very good fitness boy or girl. Yeah. Yeah. So, feel better already. And PE teachers were instructed to really focus on those kids for like school sports. So like if you're

looking for somebody to recruit for the football team who gets the presidential fitness award and they were actually there was one gym teacher who was talking about that time period and said you know and then they told us everybody in that kind of middle range like 85 down to the 50th percentile like maybe you encourage them to do intramural sports. And then everybody below the 50th percentile, and this was the quote, the ones below that would do best in French club. That's like official, it's like an official word. If you can't do pull-ups, you should learn French.

And if you can do pull-up, you could also learn French. Why not? It's a lovely language. Because apparently French kids were doing more pull-ups than us anyway. Right, yeah. Yeah. Cool time to take a dump on French. Apparently they're doing pull-ups like crazy over there.

So in 1972, Nixon expanded this with what was called the Presidential Sports Award because they felt like we're only giving awards to these kids who do this one test well. We need to recognize kids who are sporting really good too. So there were like 67 different categories that it eventually grew to and you had different specifications depending on what category You were in so for instance there was a taekwondo Nice And and there were like you had to keep like a log like you had to go for four months 50 bunches today very good

Sweet knife hand stride and There were there were actually criteria set up by people who were experts in each sport to justify whether or not you have mastered it. We're done it well enough to get the award. And you have to go to their dojo and beat them. And then you get, and then you send six dollars to the president. Personally, this is how much it cost. You send six6 in. And for that, they give you a certificate

as well as a blazer emblem. It just says, please beat me up. But then they try and they'd be like, actually, this kid is surprisingly fit. They also give you luggage tags. They also give you luggage tags. Because that's what you want your luggage to say. I got the Presidential Sports Award. That's what I want in an airport is people challenging me to test some strength.

Oh, so you can do push us real good, eh? Let's see some sport. Now, by the 70s, this whole program had started to come under some criticism. There were a lot of gym teachers and a lot of people who studied physical education who were saying, you know, basically all this test does is take the top 15% of kids who can pass the test, whether or not they're the fittest or the best athletes or whatever, and we focus on them, and everybody else we just say you're not fit by, and that's it, and great suffered. And of course, it was humiliating because your classmates like

counted the sit-ups for you. Do you remember that? They would pair you with somebody, and they would count them for you. And so then you had the personal humiliation of every time you came up looking this person in the eye and they're like, seven. I think you're going to get in eight. Like, that's it. And, I mean, it was humiliating. Or you had a cool friend who would lie, which is what everybody did. The presidential cool tests.

So, and to top that off, in 1975, they did another youth fitness survey, and they didn't really see a lot of improvements. So then they started a question, is any of this working? So they started to try to make some changes, under-carter that whole division of health and human services kind of changed to like why don't we focus on

disease prevention? Why are we doing all these weird military style exercises all the time like let's stop the jumping jacks And so in the 80s like the tests still continued But they started to look at like other percentiles like maybe we should just judge you against yourself Like how'd you do last time? How are you doing this time? Have you done any activity in between? So these ideas started to take root, but then under Reagan, the whole thing kind of went back old school, because under the Reagan administration they said, listen, let's just

give an award to everybody. So if you're in that 50th, 85th percentile, we'll give you something called the National Physical Fitness Award. It's not as good as presidential, but it's an award. And then we'll move on, and then we'll also make May National Fitness Month, and also Sports Month, and also we'll make a fitness postage stamp, because we love fitness. Right. So that'll encourage everybody. And then instead of replacing the test, they really just kind of codified it into the test

that if any of you took it, you probably remember. This dates back to 1985. This is when they set in stone the presidential fitness test. And they did not get rid of it at all. And it involved the sit ups. It involved the endurance fitness test, and they did not get rid of it at all. It had involved the sit-ups, it involved the endurance runner walk, which is usually like a mile. It involved the pull-ups, or, and this is the thing I remember the most, you could do the flexed arm hang.

Now, Sidney, I've heard this story, but maybe you should share with the class. Sydney, I've heard this story, but maybe you should share with the class. So in my gym class in middle school, they made all the girls do the flexed arm hang, assuming we couldn't do pull-ups, which for me was a fair assumption. I couldn't. But then they also, based on that, I assumed like, well, I guess I should be able to hang from this bar. They're saying I should, so they put me up on like the chair and like got me in position over the chin up bar,

and like, all you do is hang there. That's the whole thing. And they put me up there, and then they move the chair. And I instantly just straight down, like, instantly, like split second, and they're timing you, and it's like, oh, well. You weren't ready, let's try it again. This was like five times.

I can't hang for a second, at all. As somebody's hung for you for like 11 years, I can say that's not true. You're a total great hang. But upper body strength is not Sidney's force. I mean, as some of it, no, it's not. We've done like, you ever have those things that Kosoa, I've got a Kosoa, but like you probably have your own

science museum, kids' science museum where it's like, they have ones like Tisha's Strength, like pull these two iron bars apart, we're measure, and I would literally like, sitting, are you doing it? Sitting. No, sweetie, just pull it. Sit? I was worried about you for a grip.

I have floppy noodle arms, they don't have no strength. Madison, Madison, that escalates my car before the mountains. So you would do that, and it was traumatizing. They would make you do like a shuttle run, where you would run 30 feet, pick something up, run back, lay it down, pick something else up, run back, lay it back down, and it was exhausting. And then of course the V-sit or the sit and reach

to see how flexible you were. And then they had like percentiles. Like if you're 16, you should be able to do it this much of your boy and all that stuff. So throughout the early 80s and the night, or throughout the late 80s and the early 90s, this continues and they add things like, if anybody remembers like the great American workouts

on the White House lawn, just like a bunch of people out there like working out. Like, we love fitness. There was a family fitness award. They added a participant, physical fitness award, which was just, if you did the test at all, here's the certificate. Okay, I can get out of that. Which is nice, at least if we're going to have this stupid test, at least everybody gets

a certificate. And then they named Arnold Schwarzenegger in charge of the Council on Youth Fitness. And everybody got really excited, because it's fun. Yeah, it's inspiring. There's Arnold Schwarzenegger. I could be like him if I do this visa. Right. Right.

And they continued with this focus on, let's take this weird test and this idea and expand it to adults. So they even came up with this silver eagle award. Oh my God. For seniors who could pass a fitness test. Stop, slow down, tell me everything. And that's it.

Oh. This is a reward. They published, this is one of my favorite things to see at this time. I don't remember. I feel like I was of the right age, or I could have gotten a copy of this maybe in school. There was something called the Nolan Ryan Fitness Guide

that was released by the Secretary of Health and Human Services and distributed for free to any American who wanted it. Like, they just hundreds of thousands of copies were sent out to schools and families, and all you had to do was like, request one and they mailed it to you. Now it's like a PDF.

You can go find it, you can read the whole thing. You too can be like Nolan Ryan. It's so weird that America just like picked their paragraph on a fitness. It's like, well, that's it. Nolan Ryan. Well, we want is a leech of Nolan Ryan's ready to beat back the hood.

And it's not like, it's all kind of baseball femy, so it's like a chapter like you mean grenade. I'm onto your game Uncle Sam. It's all like on deck for physical fitness or hitting a grand slam, which is not about hitting a grand slam at all. And then there's advice for like, how do you find time to work or hitting a grand slam, which is not about hitting a grand slam at all. And then there's advice for like, how do you find time to work out with your busy baseball schedule?

Useful advice we can all take something from. Has baseball just been an advanced grenade training ground? I'm thinking like, have we used to been trying to train our best and brightest to catch grenades, hit grenades away with sticks, throw grenades to their friends while their other friends run catch grenades that are coming from a long distance away. The metaphor breaks down, as you can see. So, and all throughout, there's even a whole section in this fitness guide that taught you how to treat.

It was like medical advice from Nolan Ryan on how to treat. Like, common injuries. And I mean, I'm sure he's not- Spaceball schedule's busy, but it's not so busy. He can't take the time to give some unqualified medical advice. So at this point, it was kind of like everybody was really excited about this whole idea of what the president of youth council on fitness was and the tested it employed. And now we've got awards for everybody.

So we're good. That seems to be enough. Everybody's happy because parents are happy because everybody gets certificate. So we're all fine. And then by WS administration, we're holding fitness festivals on the National Mall. And we're giving out national fitness

awards to whole states. Like Alaska won the first National Fitness Award. Go Alaska. West Virginia hangin' in there. I didn't look to see if we've ever won one, but... No. Hey, listen, I'm playin' my part, you know? I'm tryin' to go to Tac-1-Dow-Class two times a week

when I can make it, and I'm doin. I go to the Taekwondo class two times a week when I can make it and doing my best. This was also the beginning of the official adult fitness test, which was basically the same idea as the kids fitness test. Obviously, there's just different thresholds. If you're a kid, you're only expected to do like, I don't know, 44 setups. That's kind of a lot. Yeah. I was about to say, you're just going to do like, I don't know, 44 set-ups. That's kind of a lot. Yeah. I was about to say, you just kind of threw that out there,

44. No, that's really what it is. It was like 44 set-ups. Could you do that? No. I don't think I could. I could get 10 and feel like, mm, good, yes.

Very fit. Mm, excellent job. No, I mean, it was pretty like the, like if you were a 16 year old boy, you had to run a mile in six minutes and eight seconds. What? That's intense. Yeah, Sid.

That's really fast. For a long time. What is this test? What are we giving up for? What are we giving up for? What are we giving up for? What are we giving up for? What are we giving up for?

What are we giving up for? What are we giving up for? What are we giving up for? What are we giving up for? What are we giving up for? What are we giving up for? What are we giving up for? What are we giving up for?

What are we giving up for? What are we giving up for? What are we giving up for? What are we giving up for? What are we giving up for? What are we giving up for? What are we giving up for? What are we giving up for? back at me as fast as you can. I think what's also hard about that is like, if you're gonna do an adult fitness test, I'm gonna assume it's like, it'll go back down. Like, all right, like all these numbers will go back down, like there's no way we're expected.

Like, now I'm 34. I can't do that many sit-ups. Yeah, yeah, I try to remember my peak set up years So they launched the adult fitness test and with the help of the biggest loser contestant Bernardo Bernie Salazar Which of course brought a lot of attention and excitement everybody remembers that right? Yeah, I miss that I missed that one season So as we've talked about this I mean mean, this is great. Like the idea of everybody getting excited about getting active and moving more and getting healthy, that's great. I have no problem with that. Of course, I'm a doctor. I'd be weird if I did. But, but nobody still is saying, you know what, we've got a lot of research

and evidence at this point. There are a lot of angry gym teachers and physical education, like people who study this who are saying, we're still doing it wrong. Could somebody please fix this? I'm glad you're also excited. It's great that Arnold Schwarzenegger is involved. We're all very happy. Nolan Ryan, that's cool guys, but seriously,

could somebody get with the times. And then we finally see that under the, under the last administration under President Obama. Um, I, he's here. That's so cool. Thank you so much. You, you did put Joe Biden on the list again, right? Joe Biden's always on the list. Okay. Oh, my God.

He told us he wasn't gonna make it out. He's not gonna make the opener. He's waiting for the big show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're saying sorry. So fitness was of course still a priority. But then the focus of the council started to shift more towards instead of just the specific test

Why don't we one talk about nutrition and two why don't we talk about like personal health and fitness personal fitness goals How can you kind of set like what do you want to achieve for you and for your health and get everybody into that healthy zone That general area that we kind of accept as a healthy zone, as opposed to just focusing on like, pitting all these school children against each other, and these battles of humiliation and gym class, why don't we just get everybody healthy?

Yeah, it's like, I mean, the test is already, like, horrifically ableist. Like, also, like, do we really need to reinforce that, like, oh, you can't do that many pull-ups, you're not a real American. Like, get banned. That sucks. Well, and that was actually also a big part of it was, how do we, like, let's have fitness programs for everybody, because not everybody can follow the exact same fitness program.

But also, while we're at it, government, I don't exactly chose to talk about nutrition. I saw the pyramid. That's a lot of bread, my dude. Are you sure? Like, did you see the base, like that tan behemoth at the bottom? That's like all Cheerios. And it always shows a whole loaf of bread, which is no accident.

Because it's like the base of everything like that we're built on is like, oh, first off, 11 breads. What? You're tribal sucks. Mine's just means. It's fine. It's fine.

It's fine. It's fine. So, and you're right, like the focus on what kind of nutrition and what we think of as healthy eating, that was all part of it as well. But, but a big feature of this was in 2012, they finally got rid of the presidential physical fitness test. The actual test. That, yes. It was done away with. It was replaced with what was called the presidential youth fitness program.

And this does involve trying to, I mean, like running and doing pushups and things like that, but it's not a percentile test. You're not pitted against your classmates. There's something called a fitness gram. I had to ask Riley about this because I know myself. So many times, some may say, as a big deal, I'm like, well, I guess you should do push the better. I'm going to think down.

The idea is that you're more measured against, like, first of all, the question is, are you doing activity? And if, yes, you're kind of going to pass. Because none of its link to grades, you're not going to get graded based on how well you do any of these things. It's a lot more about encouraging everybody to do something to stay active. Or to why. And again, the goals are based on their own performance and they're supposed to work

slowly to meet them over time and nobody's counting your setups and I don't think you have to do, well, no Riley told me you still have to do pull-ups, the pull-ups are still there. But you're not, you don't get an award. Yeah, that's nice. Now that's great, but you can still find the remnants of this. As I was reading, I found there are multiple different schools that still publish the old presidential fitness test that still give the old presidential fitness test. They just didn't get them in.

No, because I even saw like I was looking at the website for all the new information on it, and they like had requests from gym teachers like, where do I find the website for all the new information on it. And they like had requests from gym teachers like, where do I find the certificates for the Presidential Fitness Award? And they're like, we don't do this anymore. You can't, you can't. But I'm guessing there are probably like stashes of them in desks somewhere.

Just around them through the copier and hand them out again. Now you just get a handy bird sure that tells you how your body's like a battery. And if you do too much exercise, you'll wear it out. It's helpful. I would love to do a whole episode on that, but I think, I mean, the whole thing is your body isn't like a battery. It doesn't.

They're episode over. It doesn't wear out when you do exercise. Please, if you feel so inclined to do some exercise, thanks. So anyway, you'll still find schools like at their schools that still help like multi-school fitness competitions where they bring in students from all over like the Tri-State area and they all compete in the presidential fitness. Okay, I'm sorry. The idea that there are presidential fitness contests going on that the president no longer sanctions is so wild to me.

It's like, that's like some dystopian stuff. Like, no, the president says that they, no, he doesn't. He literally said like, the last president said, like, stop, no more tests in my name. And there still goes like, no, the president demands our test. That's wild. And they hang up like records goes like, no, the president demands our death. That's wild. And they hang up like records of like, who did the most, you know, sit-ups on the wall in the gym still,

to the side. Well. I don't know, but I mean, I will say all of this was done away with under the Obama administration as I looked for updated info on like, well, what is happening now? What is the future of the, you know, president's, you know, youth council on fitness happening now? What is the future of the, you know, President's, you know, youth council on fitness

and nutrition? What is the next step? There was nothing, so I don't. Well, that's gonna do it for us this week on cell phones. Thank you so much to the taxpayers for the use of our song, Medicines is the Internation of our program. That's the MaximumFund.org website that is the home of MaximumFund.org, the podcast network that we are a proud member of. And thanks to Riley for introducing us. And thank you to you, thank you to this beautiful auditorium. And that is going to do it for us.

We're going to brief intermission. So get some posters or use the bathroom or whatever, and we'll be right back. And what? Yeah, the posters, right? There's posters. There are posters? You said tell them about them. No, you can buy posters.

You can buy posters. You can buy posters. Cracked team, my God, buying a scene. Cracked team. They're good. That is going to do it for us. For solbons, my name is Justin McElroy. And...

Cheers! Too late. And I'm Cindy McElroy. And as always... No, that's it. Don't you hold your head in the show. Alright! Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Artistone, Listener Supported. or comedy and culture, artist owned.

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