Phil Lawler and PE4LIFE

Piggybacking on the post I made yesterday about the need for more effective physical education in schools I would like to highlight a program, PE4LIFE, that has been doing this since its inception in 2000.

PE4LIFE trains school districts to improve their physical education offerings and has had amazing success in improving student’s health and academic performance. Check out their website here.

This past Friday I had the privilege of speaking with Phil Lawler the founder of PE4Life. A four-time cancer survivor and 35 year baseball coach, physical activity advocate and entrepreneur, Phil has been on the front line of the fight against childhood obesity. His message has reached schools around the country and the world, the floor of Congress and the pages of Time Magazine and other major news outlets. Phil is an amazing individual and the hour conversation I had with him opened my eyes to so many things.

Apart from not providing sufficient physical education to our students, our schools do not provide them with the right type of physical education.

Physical education has always been sports focused and results based. We put a premium on how fast you can run a mile, how many pushups you can do and how many free throws you can make in a row. We allow the physically inclined to thrive and ostracize the non-athletic students.

Perhaps your PE experience was different, but in mine every activity we did was a team sport. What about those kids that don’t like sports? Or just aren’t very good at them? What are they supposed to do? Sit and watch or not participate?

Well, after talking to Phil who has observed PE classes all over the country for 35 years, the answer is yes.

Many of the kids that need PE the most fail to get anything out of it because we do not provide them with the right medium through which to be physically active.

What is worse, we focus mainly on playing team sports even though as adults we seldom play organized team sports. According to Phil less than 4% of the US population over the age of 24 plays on an organized team, so why are team sports the main focus in PE class?

Well, whatever the reason is, one thing is for sure, they shouldn’t be the focus. In addition, to team sports we should look to non-traditional means of exercise like dance, martial arts, rock climbing, team building games and exergaming. Exergaming has shown huge successes in improving student’s health and academic performance in the schools that have implemented. Phil like many others believes exergaming holds the key to bringing us closer to solving the childhood obesity epidemic.

Well exergaming might be part of the solution, what is for certain is that we need to incorporate many non-traditional means of exercising into PE class to allow all students a chance to participate and feel good about themselves.