{"id":116121,"date":"2025-08-03T17:22:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-03T17:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/116121\/"},"modified":"2025-08-03T17:22:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-03T17:22:09","slug":"trump-revives-the-presidential-fitness-test-in-american-public-schools-what-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/116121\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump revives the Presidential Fitness Test in American public schools. What to know."},"content":{"rendered":"

Everyone knows that American kids \u2014 and adults \u2014 need more exercise<\/a>. If President Donald Trump\u2019s recent decision to reinvigorate the federal Presidential Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition and reinstate the Presidential Fitness Test<\/a> helps get more kids moving, as he promises, it would be a welcome step in the right direction. But what we know so far about this reboot \u2014 and Trump\u2019s record on fitness<\/a> \u2014 should make us wary of its ability to actually combat the epidemic of sedentariness that contributes to all kinds of health conditions, from obesity to mental illness.<\/p>\n

The executive order<\/a> re-establishes the council, which Trump had renamed during his first term to place \u201csports\u201d before \u201cfitness,\u201d a subtle choice that apparently prioritizes competitive athletics over recreational exercise. Much of the language of the new order echoes the initiatives of earlier administrations, highlighting issues of obesity and insufficient military preparedness. Most notably, though, the order hits a competitive note, aiming to \u201creward excellence in physical education\u201d and to develop criteria for a Presidential Fitness Award, an initiative in keeping with maintaining \u201cAmerica\u2019s global dominance in sports.\u201d<\/p>\n

During his first term, Trump famously disdained exercise as a dangerous waste of our \u2018nonrechargeable battery\u2019 \u2014 invoking a discredited 19th-century theory.<\/p>\n

It is worth considering what an unlikely ambassador for fitness Trump is. During his first term, he famously disdained exercise as a dangerous waste of our \u201cnonrechargeable battery\u201d \u2014 invoking a discredited 19th-century theory \u2014 and is well known for his decidedly unhealthy habits. Back in 2017, I wrote about <\/a>how Trump was a rare exception in a culture increasingly embracing \u201cwellness\u201d across the political aisle, especially as a sign of personal discipline, success and refinement.<\/p>\n

Presidents in both parties had regularly touted their workout routines since the 1960s, after all: think Jimmy Carter jogging<\/a>, or Ronald Reagan on a Nautilus machine<\/a>. Wealthy people in the 2010s were increasingly showing off their expensive technical running gear and posting about their boutique fitness classes on new social media sites. But Trump trashed exercise itself as stuck-up and silly, while flaunting an older archetype of affluence: the \u201cfat cat,\u201d eating steak and double servings of dessert, and choosing leisure over exercise except for traditionally masculine sports like football or as a way for women to stay slim.<\/p>\n

As a passion for exercise was uncontroversially spreading across American culture, regardless of political affiliation, on a policy level, it was most associated with two Democratic administrations: those of John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama. During the first Trump administration, obliterating everything Obama-adjacent was a core objective of Trump\u2019s, and shuttering the Let\u2019s Move program, a linchpin of first lady Michelle Obama\u2019s platform, was a natural place to start. Trump officially ended the nutrition program on her birthday,<\/a> and right-wing supporters crowed that the federal government would no longer be slapping their hands from the cookie jar or moralizing about exercise. (JFK was then so far in the rearview mirror that few people besides historians like me and a few diehards<\/a> trying to keep his dream alive were talking about the president who had advocated for physical fitness in every school, recreation in public spaces, and the need to emphasize inclusive fitness over exclusive, competitive sport.)<\/p>\n

But Americans have a short memory, and by the 2024 election cycle, prioritizing fitness became a natural GOP priority. During the pandemic, gym owners whose businesses were shuttered by Covid policies were at the forefront of the anti-lockdown resistance<\/a>. Wellness influencers whose all-natural lifestyles had once appeared apolitical, or even left wing, <\/a>railed against vaccine mandates and Big Pharma. Body positivity embraced by progressives led conservative critics<\/a> to denounce them as promoting unhealthy behaviors. And liberals like me who dared to point out that some strands of American fitness culture really had been about strengthening white bodies were an easy target for shock jocks who gleefully denounced the libs for claiming even something as innocuous as exercise was racist. (When Donald Jr. came after me with this <\/a>line of attack after an ill-conceived headline<\/a>, I received a barrage of messages, including death threats, that the gym was better off without woke feminists anyway.)<\/p>\n

In 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., emerged as the perfect person to crystallize these dynamics into a movement \u2014 and to soften their harder edges with a backward-looking nostalgia for his uncle\u2019s physical fitness programs, grainy black-and-white footage of which figured in his promotional campaigns and MAHA messaging. In the clip of his announcement of the new initiative he shared to Instagram<\/a>, Kennedy directly invoked his uncle\u2019s 1960 Sports Illustrated article, \u201cThe Soft American,\u201d and thanked Trump for revitalizing this legacy. Correctly, Kennedy has long claimed that exercise is a crucial part of preventive health, but he melds it with an often conspiratorial hostility to government, experts and industry alike. This he has connected to a throwback (and not entirely accurate<\/a>) vision of a world in which American children were much healthier.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the driving message behind Trump\u2019s reboot, but he\u2019s missing some key context from the JFK days, as well as innovations that we\u2019ve seen since \u2014 especially made by Obama. Gone is JFK\u2019s emphasis on inclusive, publicly funded recreation. And, crucially, JFK supported vaccines and Medicare.<\/p>\n

Many took to social media to express how traumatizing they found the Presidential Fitness Test. That is, how the test Trump is resurrecting undermined the council\u2019s goals, in that it celebrated the best athletes and alienated others.<\/p>\n

Upon this week\u2019s announcement, many took to social media to express how traumatizing they found<\/a> the Presidential Fitness Test. That is, how the test Trump is resurrecting undermined the council\u2019s goals, in that it celebrated the best athletes and alienated others, turning off many from a future of movement. For this reason, the Obamas retired the Presidential Fitness Test in favor of the Fitnessgram, which was less hierarchical and more focused on holistic lifestyle. And Trump apparently didn\u2019t learn from one of JFK\u2019s key mistakes: While the PCF\u2019s campaigns encouraged citizens to lobby their local communities to spend on these programs, they were not funded with significant federal appropriations, meaning they were never more than an advisory and marketing campaign, albeit a very effective one at shifting Americans\u2019 association with regular exercise in a positive direction.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s right: JFK was roundly mocked by his conservative opponents for celebrating weak, inclusive fitness over manly, elite sport. JFK\u2019s \u201cfits of fitness,\u201d one critic wrote, revealed his silliness, and seemed to promote mediocrity. But just as he defended Medicare against charges of promoting \u201csocialized medicine,\u201d JFK insisted that the nation\u2019s \u201cvigor\u201d could only be recaptured by a national fitness program that included not only children, but men and women (he dropped the \u201cYouth\u201d from Dwight D. Eisenhower\u2019s Presidential Council on Youth Fitness to make this universalism clear, and was also regularly photographed swimming, playing catch and hiking to embody the ideal himself).<\/p>\n

In any historical moment, it seems, getting Americans to exercise is an uphill battle. Like his predecessors, Trump has enlisted celebrities to promote the cause, and his picks are revealing. Announcing the initiative alongside the president was former professional wrestler Paul Levesque, aka Triple H, the latest member of the embattled WWE empire to join the presidential administration (he is Secretary of Education Linda McMahon\u2019s son-in-law). On the White House\u2019s Instagram, Triple H emerges from the White House doors like he\u2019s entering a ring and sprays water from his mouth like he\u2019s ready to whip American children into shape, whether they like it or not.<\/p>\n

The swaggering, solo, white machismo is obvious \u2014 and about as far a cry as it gets from Beyonc\u00e9 dancing with a cafeteria full of New York City schoolkids to promote the Obamas\u2019 program. And of course, the WWE is primarily an entertainment franchise, not an athletic one, a fact that is both perfectly on brand for the Trump administration and further suggests this effort might be more show than substance.<\/p>\n

I too am deeply concerned about the lack of exercise among American children and adults, and am thrilled this is an administration priority. Yet I worry that Trump is bringing back the narrowest version of JFK\u2019s vision, having learned little from fitness culture since, making it unlikely that this endeavor will improve the fitness and overall health of everyday Americans.<\/p>\n