Pat McAfee rejoices in helping remove ‘Sit and Reach’ from Presidential Fitness Test

Depending on your age and core flexibility, you remember it well… the dreaded Sit and Reach test.

For years many seemingly active and physically fit children often would be denied the ‘Presidential Physical Fitness Award,’ awarded to the top 15% of test takers, specifically due to being unable to reach a certain amount of distance while sitting on the ground. This annoyed myself and many others, including Pat McAfee to no end.

In 2012 the test was phased out by former President Obama who replaced it with the “Presidential Youth Fitness Program,” a replacement less focused on standardized fitness benchmarks. Similar to many things, President Trump has done a 180 on that policy and recently announced the “Presidential Physical Fitness Award” would return and that he’d potentially shake up what attributes were tested. The most recent version included the mile run, a choice of pull-ups or pushups, a 30-foot shuttle run, and the dreaded “Sit and Reach.”

On Tuesday, Bryson DeChambeau appeared on The Pat McAfee Show and McAfee took the opportunity to lobby DeChambeau, who is the chair of the President’s Council on Sports, to remove the Sit and Reach test from the testing criteria. After some playful moments between McAfee and Tone Digs bemoaning the Sit and Reach test, McAfee asks DeChambeau if the test will remain. With a big smile DeChambeau shares that “We are taking that out.”

DeChambeau explains the test will get overhauled and that the awards will be given out based on incremental progress from an initial baseline test and that WWE’s Triple H is spearheading this process.

Later in the show, McAfee circled back to the subject and got more candid about his experience with the test.

“I’ve just never been able to be a flexible person. I’ve never wanted to be a flexible person. And that little blue box bullied me. I mean it bullied me. Those un-athletic little fucks. These little kids just sitting down there (gestures doing the Sit and Reach). And they’re getting celebrated as if! Let’s get a ball! Let’s do it! Any of these other things! We’ve got it! I felt like that thing bullied me. Legitimately took me out.”

Well we’re glad Pat McAfee was able to work out this trauma and perhaps save other inflexible children the same ordeal that he and others experienced. We’ll have to see what the full gambit of tests are and if this will, indeed, help improve kids’ attentiveness and focus on physical fitness. But for now, it seems those who loathed this specific test will be getting a win in the form of future generations being spared a similar fate.