Back then? Today? I sure couldn’t. The mile run and pull ups were not in my wheelhouse as a kid, and the pull ups are right out for me as a adult due to carotid arterial dissections.
The NYT had an article about it that broke down each of the tests with their analysis of what each gets ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. Gift link to article:
Here’s the first few paragraphs since they don’t want to do a preview for some reason:
If you went to an American public school between 1966 and 2012, you probably have memories of sweating through the Presidential Physical Fitness Test — a gym class gauntlet that involved a mile run, sit-ups, pull-ups (or push-ups), a sit-and-reach and a shuttle run.
For those who were athletically inclined, it was a chance to shine: Children who scored in the top 15 percent were honored with a Presidential Physical Fitness Award. (At my elementary school, those kids got their names painted on the gym wall.)
For those who weren’t, it could be a source of dread: proof that you just weren’t cut out to exercise. Anyone else remember hanging in vain from a pull-up bar?
There were about three weeks in my life when I could do full pull-ups, right after I finished a two-week canoeing trek. And then let my upper body exercise dwindle back to my normal levels.
We did these things in gym class over the years. Gym teachers wrote down times and counts on their clipboard but nobody had to pass. AFAIK they threw out that paper at the end of the class, with the exception of 7th grade where we had to run a mile every day forever, or maybe a month. The gym teacher let us know how we did compared to the previous day and I worked at getting my time down. Ages 17-20 I was in the best shape of my life, lifting weights and plenty of pushups, sit ups, and pull ups.
Now, no. Nothing. Too much pain. No flexibility left. Exertion is costly.
I passed it once during my four years in high school. Amazingly, I went from what my PE teacher called “one double-arm hang” to THREE actual pull ups. That may have been the absolute peak of my high school athletic career.
We did it once in elementary school. No preparation, no training. Just something like, ‘Next week we’re doing the President’s Physical Fitness test. If you pass, you get a patch.’ I didn’t pass. Seemed very unfair to me.
I can do a few now: I couldn’t do any as a kid or teen. You know who else struggles with pull ups? Navy Seal candidates. I saw a You-tube vid years ago giving tips on how to do your first pull up. That one is the hardest - if you can do one, you can train for 2, 3, and up.
There are gym machines that have counterweights enabling you to lift only part of your body weight. If you don’t have access to those, use a chair to position yourself with your chin above the bar and ease yourself to the ground as slowly as possible. Then you can build up the strength to do your first pull up.
I probably couldn’t do it then.
Now, 50+ years later (I’ll be 64 this year), I regularly do pull-ups, pushups and sit-ups. I hate running, but I can do it if required. Pre-COVID, I used to do weighted pull-ups, but I’m not sure I’ll get back to that kind of condition soon.
I did it twice in high school, my Sophomre and Junior years. I got a certificate and a patch each time. One of the patches I had my Mother sew on my lettermans jacket.
At 63 the thing that would kill me is the pull ups. Not happening. I can pass my departments entrance physical and I do so every year just to prove I can. But it does not include pull ups. If it did I’d be toast!
Heh. No way. I went to an immense high school with well over 100 people in the gym classes. The PE teachers did the hardest one first, shooting hoops, and when we nerds flunked it we got to go run around the track. Which I enjoyed and where we edited the high school science magazine.
Definitely. I’m kind of surprised so many here couldn’t in school - I’ve still got those round patches they used to give you for passing. I did exceptionally well because I was a tree-climbing addict as a kid, so my upper-body and grip strength were above average, but I was otherwise a nerd that read too much sci-fi and comics; I figured the test was pretty much geared so that any healthy kid could pass.
I know I’d pass now because for a while now I’ve looked up and trained to complete various military fitness tests and I figure those are more demanding than the old PFT (though they’ve steadily gotten less rigorous over the years, imo).
I could easily do it except for the sit-and-reach part. In high school gym class, I was always in the bottom of the four classifications for sit-and-reach, and my flexibility hasn’t gotten any better. I’m still able to do the same number of pull-ups as I did in high school almost 30 years ago. I imagine that my speed in the mile run has improved or at least not decreased since high school, as I have taken up marathon and half-marathon running in the last decade and a half.
Seem to maybe recall passing and getting the patch, but the real eye opener for me was discovering that I really couldn’t, in fact, “run like the wind”. I thought I was pretty fast, just about everybody smoked my ass. Something very clearly wasn’t right. Ha!
Years later, I once got lapped on the track on a 2 mile run. To add insult to injury, the bastards were actually having a leisurely conversation as they were plugging away.
Oh, wow, I still have nightmares about that stupid test (not really, but…ugh.)
I was, to put it nicely, not an athletic child. That’s actually an understatement. I was anti-athletic.
When they had those tests, the kids who scored the highest got a pretty blue patch with an eagle on it. There were two other levels, IIRC: 80% and 50%. Each one got a patch. They gave them out at an awards ceremony.
I couldn’t even get the 50% patch. Never even once. It was humiliating. Academically, I was always at or near the top of the class–but did they give out patches for that? Of course not!
So I got to watch the vast majority of the kids in the class get called up for their stupid patches, while sitting with the couch-potato minority until it was over.
Sounds vaguely familiar. I’ve never been able to run, even in the military, and hated it with a passion. I was also a skinny, unathletic kid. The only thing I could excel at was the shuttle run. I wasn’t fast, but I was quick on the turns.
