The FitnessGram™ Pacer Test
Four words that strike fear into all American children. I relive this slice of elementary school hell and wonder why it exists
By: Max Pritchard
Every time, the words would send a shiver up my spine.
“The FitnessGram™ Pacer Test is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues.”
Then the infamous “beep” would ring through the gymnasium, and I would take a cautious first step. I always walked the first few laps; everyone knew that this was the only path to survival. Sprinting through the first 20 meters may make one seem “cool,” but it was also a strategic blunder. The FitnessGram™ Pacer Test isn’t just about speed—it’s the ultimate test of endurance, not only evaluating the fortitude of one’s body but also one’s mind and, indeed, one’s soul.
After the first few laps, a number of things would suddenly become apparent. I would notice a slight nagging pain in my leg, a stitch in my stomach, or some other previously hidden ailment. I would realize that my shorts were a size too small and on backwards.
It was always remarkable how quickly these issues would accumulate. Looking back, it occurs to me that this may have been because we were not taught how to stretch before embarking on such a strenuous physical challenge. We didn’t do any sort of cool down, either.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. With only the first few laps completed, the finish felt like it was hundreds of miles away. After a couple dozen beeps, the first student would succumb to their exhaustion, dooming themselves to a bevy of judgemental looks and a disappointed shake of the gym teacher’s head.
Then students would start to get picked off one at a time.
The FitnessGram™ Pacer Test is a fascinating phenomenon for the simple reason that there are no real consequences to doing badly. Nobody is going to get held back a year for failing it, and it’s not as if it’ll bring down an elementary school student’s nonexistent GPA. Instead, most of the pressure is social, fueled by a desire to impress one’s friends, or self-induced. The dreaded instructional message orders students to “run as long as possible.” Not as long as is comfortable, but as long as one possibly can until every single step is a Herculean effort and one’s body is drained of all energy.
I would push myself until I felt like crying, throwing up, or taking a seven-hour nap. Then I would push myself even further.
Finally, I would succumb to exhaustion, stumbling to the side of the gymnasium and watching glumly as some of the other kids kept running. I would place my hands on my knees and gasp for air—something that all of my gym teachers, from elementary to middle school, were vehemently opposed to. They decreed that the proper recovery form was “standing upright with your hands behind your head,” a strategy that only ever made things feel worse. I felt both vindicated and betrayed when I learned years later that recent research has disproved the latter method.
I will never quite understand the purpose of The FitnessGram™ Pacer Test—students who did badly didn’t receive any extra help from the school. Perhaps it was meant to shame us into exercising more, but it sort of had the opposite effect, turning running into a horribly unpleasant experience that was approached with dread and fear. Years later, I would learn that running can actually be quite fun. I would gain an appreciation for how one can steadily develop their abilities, slowly increasing the distances or decreasing the lengths of their runs. As a child, however, I was burdened with the belief that The FitnessGram™ Pacer Test represented the ideal exercise system, and that terrified me. It wasn’t as if our school taught us helpful running techniques either.
We didn’t think to question The FitnessGram™ Pacer Test at the time, of course. It was as inevitable as death or taxes. A necessary evil.
But looking back at this test, which burdened young children with stress, physical pain, shame, and an unhealthy desire to outperform their classmates, I can’t help but think that we would have been better off doing literally anything else.