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Generations of Americans who struggled to complete a pull-up in front of their classmates winced as President Trump announced that he was reinstating the annual assessment.
Aug. 1, 2025, 5:24 p.m. ET
Ivory Burnett, 41, does not have fond memories of taking the Presidential Fitness Test.
It felt like a military recruitment exercise, she said, with all of her classmates watching as she struggled to run a mile and complete a sit-and-reach, a pull-up and other exercises.
“Doing that pull-up in front of everybody — that was the worst,” said Ms. Burnett, a freelance writer who described herself as taller and “a little chubbier” than her classmates at Carter and MacRae Elementary School in Lancaster, Pa.
“I never did a pull-up,” she said. “My jam was just to hang there and cut jokes.”
President Trump’s announcement on Thursday that he was reviving the fitness test, which President Barack Obama did away with in 2012, has stirred up strong feelings and powerful memories for generations of Americans who were forced to complete the annual measure of their physical abilities.
While some still proudly remember passing the test with flying colors and receiving a presidential certificate, many others recoil at the mere mention of the test. For them, it was an early introduction to public humiliation.
“You would see it,” Ms. Burnett said. Her classmates “would feel body shamed if they didn’t perform as well.”
Born of Cold War-era fears that America was becoming “soft,” the test was introduced by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966. Although it changed forms over the years, the most recent version included a one-mile run, modified sit-ups, a 30-foot shuttle run, the sit-and-reach flexibility test and a choice between push-ups or pull-ups. Children who scored in the top 15 percent nationwide earned a Presidential Physical Fitness Award.
