As professional writers, we are taught not to go for the easy punchline. We are taught that we’re supposed to be, quote, “better than that”. So I’m just going to give you a moment to pause right off the bat so you can make the joke about President Donald Trump signing an executive order to bring the Presidential Fitness Test back to American schools yourself.
You good?
Did you use the word “cankles”?
Great. Now if you’re anything like me, the Presidential Fitness Test was something you’d look forward to all year. A chance to show off your athletic prowess by doing as many pull-ups as you could, which is definitely more than zero! An opportunity to run the mile in front of all your peers, who were all very cool about it and probably chanted your name in an extremely non-sarcastic way! Once you completed the test, the school would call your parents and be all, “Your daughter is in peak physical condition!” and your Dad would say he’s proud of you for the first time ever.
Obviously I’m kidding. Anyone who was forced to partake during their school days knows that the Presidential Fitness Test was a living nightmare. As a person who “ran” the mile and has never once done a single pull-up, let’s just say I preferred the part of the year where we got personal pan pizzas for reading books.
Look, I don’t know if a fitness test is a good idea for kids or if there’s a non-mortifying way to do it. But it’s hard to ignore the inherent irony of modeling one after a president so known for his love of fast food that Saudi Arabia provided him with his own mobile McDonalds on a recent visit. A man who can be taken out at any point by a devastating handshake injury.
It’s equally hard to overlook the fact that the guy Trump has placed in charge of this test—Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—drinks raw milk, swims in sewage and looks like what would happen if someone injected steroids into a Ken doll and then left it in the sun for approximately 938 years. Also, he works out in jeans.
I shudder to imagine what those two will come up with for fitness standards. Roadkill lifting? Social climbing? Golf, but somehow it’s anti-vaccine? Of course, any challenge truly modeled after this administration will surely have no penalties for cheating and P.E. teachers will be required to accept bribes for higher scores.
The problem I always had with the Presidential Fitness Test, as well as many other standardized tests, is that testing how well kids can do things doesn’t do a whole lot to teach them how to do them.
But here’s something interesting: President Trump’s presidency has already done wonders for my fitness. In fact, since the beginning of Trump’s second term, I have created my own sort of Presidential Fitness Challenge.
Specifically I have made it my goal in life to be able to deadlift Donald Trump.
That’s right. My method of coping with the underlying anxieties and blatant terrors of living in the Trump administration has been to lift weights.
Here are the rules I made for myself: I will be doing my deadlifts on a hex bar and only have to lift the weight for one rep for it to count. (I do more reps at lower weights, but that is not part of The Goal.) As for Trump’s weight, I have opted to use the number his doctor provided during his first term in office: 244 pounds.
Now I know what you’re going to say: he’s lying about his weight. And to that I say, welp, this is not about me being a weird circus performer who is good at guessing people’s weights. It is also not about shaming the body of a president who has literally infinity things wrong with his personality—even though I did let you say “cankles” earlier because it is a very funny word.
It is about me getting strong. It is about feeling like if I meet Donald Trump on the street, I could pick him up and then set him back down. Maybe give him a little shake. I wouldn’t. But I would know I could. And that is something. In the absolute hellscape chaos of 2025, it is what I have.
And guess what? It’s working! When Trump took office, I could probably lift a solid 150 or so pounds. Yesterday I lifted 215 pounds. It was so ridiculously hard that I do not feel at all confident I will ever lift more. But I have felt like this before AND THEN I DID LIFT MORE. Spite, it turns out, is one hell of a motivator.
In my school experience, the Presidential Fitness Test did not get me in better shape or help me learn that I can do hard things. But my own personal Presidential Fitness Challenge has done exactly that.
So join me if you like. Deadlift Donald Trump. Bench press Stephen Miller. Train so you can outrun ICE or best Pete Hegseth in a push-up contest. Or, you know, just work to beat the entire Trump administration in a “Book It” challenge. In fact, you probably already have.
And that is something.
The post Opinion: Here’s the Presidential Fitness Test We Should All Be Taking appeared first on The Daily Beast.
