Ethan Dreitz

Dr. McMullen

SES 342

Personal Fitness Plan Reflection

As a future physical educator, I found my experience with this assignment to be very

educational. Seeing my personal fitness records throughout the semester gave me a great insight

on the importance of keeping a physically active lifestyle. This is not only important for our

personal health, but also important to be a positive role model for our students. Using the

fitnessgram also gave great exposure to not only learning each exercise, but also how to

appropriately teach the fitnessgram to our students. However, the learning experience does not

stop after scores are recorded. It is of equal importance to promote and encourage outside

physical activity and fitness. The use of activity logs and fitness planning can help teach

appropriate fitness levels amongst students. Using these throughout of class helped me realize

areas for improvement in my personal fitness and find ways to improve my overall health.

Overall, throughout the semester, I was able to find ways to improve my overall cardiovascular

endurance during the pacer test, and also keep my muscular strength where I want it.

Assessment Baseline Midpoint Endpoint

Pacer 56 60 62

Curl ups 30 35 40

Trunk Lift 10in 8.5in 10.5in

Pushups 25 26 26

Sit & Reach (left) 10.5in 12in 11in

Sit & Reach (Right) 9in 10in 12in

Height 6’ 1” 6’ 1” 6’ 1”

Weight 184.4 183.0 184.1

 BMI 24.1 24.1 24.2

% Fat 21.1 20.5 20.8

% Muscle 38.3 39.4 39.9

As shown in the HRF table, almost each component continuously progressed in a positive

direction. I was most happy about my pacer, curl up, and push up improvements. These three

addressed cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength, and muscular endurance. Personally, I

value these three scores the most because I feel that they measure my fitness level in the most

accurate way. I also enjoyed seeing a solid end result in my flexibility. My baseline and midpoint

scores were quite low. I felt that I had stiff muscles because of working and was not able to

perform the way I wanted. However, in my endpoint results, all of my flexibility tests were

scored at a higher number, closer to where I want them to be. Lastly, I was surprised and relieved

that my BMI and fat percentage scores stayed in a relatively same range. I was not able to

maintain a very health enhancing amount of physical activity on my own time. This is something

I need to continue to work at. However, I am still proud that I was able to endure and push

myself to improve my fitnessgram results throughout the semester.

 Surprisingly, I was able to reach and/or exceed almost all of my fitness goals regarding

my fitnessgram scores. I say “surprisingly” because I had a very hard time meeting my out of

testing physical activity goals. I rarely ended up making it to the gym to work out as much as I

wanted. I also arely did any cardiovascular exercises. I feel that a lot of the reason why I bettered

my scores was because of my mentality during the tests. I was able to motivate myself to better

my scores and that is all it took. If I want to continue to improve my health and lead as a

positive role model for my students, I am going to have to start finding more ways to be

physically active. Although I want to be in the gym and lift weights, if I am unable to do that, I

need to find other ways. This could be hiking, riding a bike, snowboarding, ect. My goal for this

summer is to spend more time being physically active and spending more time bettering myself.

My experience with this assignment has greatly affected how I plan to teach my future

students. Not only will fitness testing help find out where our students are at and what they need
to improve. We can base some curriculum on how our students perform through these tests.

Also, I really like the idea of incorporating the fitnessgram in a similar way that we were

introduced to it in the class. It is extremely important to teach our students the importance of

being physically fit and the positive effects it has on lives. Also, our students need to be

motivated and taught how to use their personal fitness scores to plan on improving and bettering

themselves. Students will not take their fitness seriously if they are unmotivated to improve.

Understanding the importance of fitness and the importance of the fitness testing is the

foundation of building better fitness amount students.