I read some recurring news in several media outlets this week that is a little disturbing. I have read about this problem for several decades, and this week reports indicate that the problem is still around. The news stated that, “7 out of 10 young adults are not fit for any military duty.” The lack of physical condition for the majority of youth that prevents them from qualifying to serve in the armed forces has been present for several decades now. And the point of not being fit for military service is not limited to that occupation. Talking with police officers, fire department personnel, construction owners, and most jobs that require some sort of physical condition, are experiencing problems with getting people that are capable of working.
My first year in San Marcos I joined up with Jay Horton to teach a summer gymnastics class for youngsters. We called ourselves the "Mat Masters." We had a high bar, parallel bars, rings, mats, and a trampoline for the classes. We had problems with the students in the class starting on the first day. On the high bar it is imperative to be able to get up on the bar. The students could not do one chin up and just hung on the bar. They could not lift their legs up to reach over the bar. We had to pass on using the high bar. The parallel bars were next. The students could not do a dip (support themselves and then bend the arms and straighten the arm out). We tried to see if they could do a push up on the bars as a lead up to doing parallel bar dips. They failed at that also. The rings were a total loss, as even after we lifted the students up on the rings, they could not support themselves and came down to hanging on the rings. There was no arm and shoulder or abdominal strength to do any apparatus in gymnastics. The remainder of the summer was spent on the mats doing somersaults and jumping on the trampoline.
I was helping an elementary physical education teacher record some of her fitness scores from the physical fitness test. I noticed on the chin up exercise scores of 8, 7, 15, etc. and one 20. I thought that was very good that these students could do that many chin ups. She explained, “Those are not chin up scores. Those are the number of seconds that a student can hang on a bar with bent arms.” The students could only hang on the bar a few seconds before dropping down. The chin up scores on average were less than 1. In other words, most scores were zero. The way to correct that problem was to not do chin ups anymore on physical fitness tests. I was taught to do a push up by lowering a rigid body down until your chest hit the floor and then return to a straight arm position. If you have an opportunity to see the versions of a push up today you might not recognize it. It is more of a head bobbing exercise with very little arm bend to do a push up.
