The President's Fitness Challenge

I remember in public school that periodically, typically years apart, a gym class or so would be devoted to assessing the students for the Presidential Physical Fitness Award. We had to do push-ups and pull-ups and sit-ups and run a little ways, and then in high school there was drama over the "body-fat percentage rating" where they took calipers to our arms. I recall being terrified of the calipers test, and then mystified to learn that my body fat percentage was a not-too-bad 17%, whereas a short athletic girl (I remember her name but won't mention it here) was measured as 24%. I think the cut-off at the time for OK vs not-OK was identified as 18%. So every time they did it, maybe 5% of the girls would actually qualify, be congratulated with a certificate, and then it would be forgotten for another few years.

Well, it's back, and this time it's for adults, too. And since there are no calipers involved and I've just resolved (again) to try to improve my health and fitness, I've registered (even thought the challenge officially ended in mid-May). Being quite sedentary, I've enrolled in the Active Lifestyle Program, in which I can track daily online whether I did my 30 minutes of exercise, and get a star :) for every week in which I do so 5 or more days in the week. There is also an Adult Fitness Test, and when I'm good and ready I can also enter my scores online and get comparisons between my own fitness and some vaguely comparable percentile-ranking scale.

The President's Fitness Challenge gives me a page of my own to track my progress, but don't worry, y'all won't see it. The link in the sidebar is just the main page, in case any of my imaginary readers wants to try it out.