December 26, 1960 | John F. Kennedy | “The Soft American”

Last year I asked my dozens of readers a question: “What happened the day after Christmas?”

The (excellent) post was about health, fitness, goals, and standards. Goals can be terrific motivators, but what happens when we turn the calendar?

What we want, instead of time bound goals, are standards to live by. A way of being that will last far beyond the holiday, the reunion, or any other short-term timelines.

Soon after that post, I was made aware of an article published this very day on the same topic.

The day after Christmas in 1960, Sports Illustrated published an open letter from the President-Elect John F. Kennedy.

[Skip down to JFK’s “The Soft American”]

Sports Illustrated Cover, featuring "The Soft American" by JFK — Sports Illustrated Cover, featuring “The Soft American” by JFK

“The Soft American” outlined a major concern held by the incoming leader of the free world. Not the Cold War or civil rights, although those were on his mind, “The Soft American” was focused on the declining fitness of the U.S. population.

Kennedy cited a study conducted by Dr. Hans Kraus and Dr. Sonja Weber showing a disturbing trend with American youth. The research looked at 4,264 US children and 2,870 children in Austria, Italy, and Switzerland.

American youth were trailing the Europeans in physical fitness. “Six tests for muscular strength and flexibility were given; 57.9% of the American children failed one or more of these tests, while only 8.7% of the European youngsters failed.”

But why did he care? Was it because the Russians thumped us in the 1960 Summer Olympics?

Partially.

But Kennedy makes the case that a sound body reinforces a sound mind. And for our nation to thrive, we needed both.

He looked to the Greeks, the founders of the Olympic Games, and their contribution in other aspects of western culture, including philosophy, drama, government, and art.

“Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body; it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity. The relationship between the soundness of the body and the activities of the mind is subtle and complex. Much is not yet understood. But we do know what the Greeks knew: that intelligence and skill can only function at the peak of their capacity when the body is healthy and strong; that hardy spirits and tough minds usually inhabit sound bodies.”

31 Easy™

Shortly after Kennedy took office, he discovered Executive Order No. 989, titled “Defining the Duties of the United States Marine Corps.” Another fitness minded President, Theodore Roosevelt, established the directive on December 9, 1908, setting a physical fitness standard for the Marines.

The standard?

March 50 miles over the course of three days, with no more than 20 hours of actual marching time.

Twenty-six months after publishing “The Soft American,” Kennedy borrowed Roosevelt’s idea and upped the ante. He challenged U.S. Marines to demonstrate their fitness by marching 50 miles in just a single 20-hour time block.

At the time of the order, Kennedy joked that maybe his staff should take part in the challenge as well.

For his brother Robert, it was no laughing matter.

The 50 Mile March:

On February 9th, 1963, without any training or preparation, and wearing leather oxford dress shoes, Attorney General Robert Kennedy set out before the sun, marching along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal trail. At 5:00 a.m., RFK, four of his staff members, and his dog Brumis trudged through snow, slush, and foul weather, making way from Great Falls, VA toward Camp David, MD. Though the last of his aides dropped out at the 35-mile mark, Kennedy persisted to the end, completing the march in 17 hours and 50 minutes. His parting words to that staff member, “You’re lucky your brother is not president of the United States.”

RFK showing his big brother that he is not a Soft American

The next morning RFK said, “I’m a little stiff, but that’s natural, never having walked 50 miles before.” Time Magazine reported, “He rose at 7:30 a.m., made it to 9:00 a.m. mass and then went ice skating with his children.”

In the winter of 1963, citizens across the United States found themselves inspired. They were eager to test their limits. Following Robert Kennedy’s example, Americans from all walks of life laced up their boots and set out to complete their own 50-Mile March.

Boy Scout troops, fraternities, retired military men, and a variety of youth organizations hit the road to see if they could match RFK’s feat. Individuals did the same. People from all walks of life attempted the “JFK Challenge,” with varying rates of success. But the results were the same whether they finished or not, they were better for having made an attempt.

Baseline Standards:

What the Kennedy March did—and still does—is establish a dead simple standard. A baseline. A threshold.

And I like having dead simple standards. At least a few.

Back in high school, I made myself a promise: I’d never buy pants larger than the ones I was wearing. Luckily, baggy clothes were in style back then. My weight has fluctuated over the years, but my jeans are still 36×36 today, just like 1999.

I’m not sure what your squat was in high school. You probably don’t know either—what with the infinite importance of bench press and preacher curls—but knowing your baseline and trying to hold the line is a worthy endeavor.

When Kennedy took office, he inherited President Eisenhower’s Council on Youth Fitness.

Kennedy upgraded that program, which was primarily focused on awareness, and propelled it forward with the President’s Council on Physical Fitness. He wanted to target all Americans, not just youth.

Combating the soft American with the physical fitness program

In 1966 Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, took it one step further, established the Presidential Physical Fitness Award Program. Criteria for performance was set. Awards and recognition would be given based on the annual testing that millions of Americans remember with fondness, frustration, and shame.

The Presidential Fitness Test:

Every year, students across America would take part in the Presidential Fitness Test. Perform well, like doing an actual pull-up, and your classmates will be in awe.

Super Mario skills and in shape? Unstoppable.

Super mario Bros. 2 will not get you in shape.

The test included sit-ups, shuttle run, v-sit and reach, one mile run, pull-ups, and push ups.

If your scores were in the 85th percentile or above, you got an award, a certificate, and maybe a patch.

But mostly, you got fit.

Presidential Physical Fitness Award patch.

The program changed through the years and was eventually canceled under President Obama. Apparently, some teachers didn’t like administering the test because it was embarrassing for the kids that were out of shape.

I’m sure that’s true.

Actually, I could have verified this back in ‘88.

Nobody asked.

They have yet to cancel English for the kids who get embarrassed during the spelling bee.

I can verify this as well.

What the test really accomplished was establishing a baseline for performance. A standard for the schools Physical Education programs. And that is important. Just like standardized “bubble” tests, a baseline helps us measure the child and their instructor.

Are they teaching the right things? Is it resonating with the students?

If you believe, like President Kennedy did, that a healthy mind requires a sound body, this is an important part of everyone’s education.

Coach LeProtti had strong opinions on the subject.

La Sierra High Physical Education:

At the extreme end of these physical education programs was La Sierra High School in Carmichael, California.

Take a look.

Now compare this with the neighborhood kids you see out your window. Riding an e-scooter while hunched over their TikTok sipping on some pink drink.

I’m afraid we’ve gone soft all over again.

Coach Stan LeProtti, a veteran of World War II, implemented and managed La Sierra’s Physical Education along with student ambassadors. His program was an inspiration for Kennedy and many others. Some of his students were even featured on The Johnny Carson Show. It seems with physical fitness; we are always in need of extra motivation.

Under LeProtti, physical education classes started with a warm-up, the baseline for fitness at the La Sierra.

Side Straddle Hop (aka jumping jacks) – 5 sets
Push-Ups – x5
Windmills – 5 sets
Push-Ups – x5
Full Bends – 5 sets
Straddle Hops (jumping jacks w/o arms) – x50
Push-Ups – x5
Stride Hops – x50
Push-Ups – x5
Toe Hops – x50
Push-Ups – x5
Squat Thrusts – 5 sets
Mountain Climbers – 5 sets
Push-Ups – x5
Agility – 4 rounds of sprint in place. First two whistles drop to plank – third whistle drop to supine position and roll-over to stand.

Here are the baselines for the “white team,” the lowest performance threshold.

La Sierra High "White" fitness criteria. — [For the full program manual, see the attachment.]

The videos of La Sierra highlight their top physical specimens, but would the baseline “white” standards be such a stretch for graduating seniors in your schools? How would these daily calisthenics—and the habits of a strong physical practice—impact education and healthcare?

Ingrained in our population, this could be the antidote for DadBods nationwide.

Maybe I’m making too much of this, but I know that my house runs much more smoothly when all members are getting their daily dose of movement. Communities might have the same outcome.

Author Joan Walsh Anglund quipped, “A man’s health can be judged by which he takes two at a time: pills or stairs.” She lived to see 95.

President Kennedy felt the same way. He said, “Our citizens are living longer, and we want them to participate fully in that longer life. But they can only do so, if they give some of their time and some of their effort to maintain that vitality.”

As a child, I never did well at the fitness testing. Never got kudos from a classmate or a certificate from the President.

And unfortunately, these programs were dead long before the funding was pulled in Washington DC. They were dead because students like me were never taught the importance. The mind and the body, in concert. That is the standard. That is the baseline.

And without further ado, here is “The Soft American.”

The Soft American

By President-Elect John F. Kennedy December 26, 1960, Sports Illustrated

Beginning more than 2,500 years ago, from all quarters of the Greek world men thronged every four years to the sacred grove of Olympia, under the shadow of Mount Cronus, to compete in the most famous athletic contests of history—the Olympian games.

During the contest a sacred truce was observed among all the states of Greece as the best athletes of the Western world competed in boxing and foot races, wrestling and chariot races for the wreath of wild olive which was the prize of victory. When the winners returned to their home cities to lay the Olympian crowns in the chief temples they were greeted as heroes and received rich rewards. For the Greeks prized physical excellence and athletic skills among man’s great goals and among the prime foundations of a vigorous state.

Thus the same civilizations which produced some of our highest achievements of philosophy and drama, government and art, also gave us a belief in the importance of physical soundness which has become a part of Western tradition; from the mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body) of the Romans to the British belief that the playing fields of Eton brought victory on the battlefields of Europe. This knowledge, the knowledge that the physical well-being of the citizen is an important foundation for the vigor and vitality of all the activities of the nation, is as old as Western civilization itself. But it is a knowledge which today, in America, we are in danger of forgetting.

The first indication of a decline in the physical strength and ability of young Americans became apparent among United States soldiers in the early stages of the Korean War. The second came when figures were released showing that almost one out of every two young Americans was being rejected by Selective Service as mentally, morally or physically unfit. But the most startling demonstration of the general physical decline of American youth came when Dr. Hans Kraus and Dr. Sonja Weber revealed the results of 15 years of research centering in the Posture Clinic of New York’s Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital—results of physical fitness tests given to 4,264 children in this country and 2,870 children in Austria, Italy and Switzerland.

The findings showed that despite our unparalleled standard of living, despite our good food and our many playgrounds, despite our emphasis on school athletics, American youth lagged far behind Europeans in physical fitness. Six tests for muscular strength and flexibility were given; 57.9% of the American children failed one or more of these tests, while only 8.7% of the European youngsters failed.

A CONSISTENT DECLINE

Especially disheartening were the results of the five strength tests: 35.7% of American children failed one or more of these, while only 1.1% of the Europeans failed, and among Austrian and Swiss youth the rate of failure was as low as .5%.

As a result of the alarming Kraus-Weber findings President Eisenhower created a Council on Youth Fitness at the Cabinet level and appointed a Citizens Advisory Committee on the Fitness of American Youth, composed of prominent citizens interested in fitness. Over the past five years the physical fitness of American youth has been discussed in forums, by committees and in leading publications. A 10-point program for physical fitness has been publicized and promoted. Our schools have been urged to give increased attention to the physical well-being of their students. Yet there has been no noticeable improvement. Physical fitness tests conducted last year in Britain and Japan showed that the youth of those countries were considerably more fit than our own children. And the annual physical fitness tests for freshmen at Yale University show a consistent decline in the prowess of young Americans; 51% of the class of 1951 passed these tests, 43% of the class of 1956 passed, and only 38%, a little more than a third, of the class of 1960 succeeded in passing the not overly rigorous examination.

Of course, physical tests are not infallible. They can distort the true health picture. There are undoubtedly many American youths and adults whose physical fitness matches and exceeds the best of other lands.

But the harsh fact of the matter is that there is also an increasingly large number of young Americans who are neglecting their bodies—whose physical fitness is not what it should be—who are getting soft. And such softness on the part of individual citizens can help to strip and destroy the vitality of a nation.

For the physical vigor of our citizens is one of America’s most precious resources. If we waste and neglect this resource, if we allow it to dwindle and grow soft then we will destroy much of our ability to meet the great and vital challenges which confront our people. We will be unable to realize our full potential as a nation.

Throughout our history we have been challenged to armed conflict by nations which sought to destroy our independence or threatened our freedom. The young men of America have risen to those occasions, giving themselves freely to the rigors and hardships of warfare. But the stamina and strength which the defense of liberty requires are not the product of a few weeks’ basic training or a month’s conditioning. These only come from bodies which have been conditioned by a lifetime of participation in sports and interest in physical activity. Our struggles against aggressors throughout our history have been won on the playgrounds and corner lots and fields of America.

Thus, in a very real and immediate sense, our growing softness, our increasing lack of physical fitness, is a menace to our security.

However, we do not, like the ancient Spartans, wish to train the bodies of our youths merely to make them more effective warriors. It is our profound hope and expectation that Americans will never again have to expend their strength in armed conflict.

But physical fitness is as vital to the activities of peace as to those of war, especially when our success in those activities may well determine the future of freedom in the years to come. We face in the Soviet Union a powerful and implacable adversary determined to show the world that only the Communist system possesses the vigor and determination necessary to satisfy awakening aspirations for progress and the elimination of poverty and want. To meet the challenge of this enemy will require determination and will and effort on the part of all Americans. Only if our citizens are physically fit will they be fully capable of such an effort.

For physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body; it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity. The relationship between the soundness of the body and the activities of the mind is subtle and complex. Much is not yet understood. But we do know what the Greeks knew: that intelligence and skill can only function at the peak of their capacity when the body is healthy and strong; that hardy spirits and tough minds usually inhabit sound bodies.

In this sense, physical fitness is the basis of all the activities of our society. And if our bodies grow soft and inactive, if we fail to encourage physical development and prowess, we will undermine our capacity for thought, for work and for the use of those skills vital to an expanding and complex America.

Thus the physical fitness of our citizens is a vital prerequisite to America’s realization of its full potential as a nation, and to the opportunity of each individual citizen to make full and fruitful use of his capacities.

It is ironic that at a time when the magnitude of our dangers makes the physical fitness of our citizens a matter of increasing importance, it takes greater effort and determination than ever before to build the strength of our bodies. The age of leisure and abundance can destroy vigor and muscle tone as effortlessly as it can gain time. Today human activity, the labor of the human body, is rapidly being engineered out of working life. By the 1970s, according to many economists, the man who works with his hands will be almost extinct.

Many of the routine physical activities which earlier Americans took for granted are no longer part of our daily life. A single look at the packed parking lot of the average high school will tell us what has happened to the traditional hike to school that helped to build young bodies. The television set, the movies and the myriad conveniences and distractions of modern life all lure our young people away from the strenuous physical activity that is the basis of fitness in youth and in later life.

NOW IT IS TIME

Of course, modern advances and increasing leisure can add greatly to the comfort and enjoyment of life. But they must not be confused with indolence, with, in the words of Theodore Roosevelt, “slothful ease,” with an increasing deterioration of our physical strength. For the strength of our youth and the fitness of our adults are among our most important assets, and this growing decline is a matter of urgent concern to thoughtful Americans.

This is a national problem, and requires national action. President Eisenhower helped show the way through his own interest and by calling national attention to our deteriorating standards of physical fitness. Now it is time for the United States to move forward with a national program to improve the fitness of all Americans.

FIRST: We must establish a White House Committee on Health and Fitness to formulate and carry out a program to improve the physical condition of the nation. This committee will include the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare and the Secretary of the Interior. The executive order creating the committee will clearly state its purpose, and coordinate its activities with the many federal programs which bear a direct relation to the problem of physical fitness.

SECOND: The physical fitness of our youth should be made the direct responsibility of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. This department should conduct—through its Office of Education and the National Institutes of Health—research into the development of a physical fitness program for the nation’s public schools. The results of this research shall be made freely available to all who are interested. In addition, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare should use all its existing facilities to attack the lack of youth fitness as a major health problem.

THIRD: The governor of each state will be invited to attend the annual National Youth Fitness Congress. This congress will examine the progress which has been made in physical fitness during the preceding year, exchange suggestions for improving existing programs and provide an opportunity to encourage the states to implement the physical fitness program drawn up by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Our states are anxious to participate in such programs, to make sure that their youth have the opportunity for full development of their bodies as well as their minds.

FOURTH: The President and all departments of government must make it clearly understood that the promotion of sports participation and physical fitness is a basic and continuing policy of the United States. By providing such leadership, by keeping physical fitness in the forefront of the nation’s concerns, the federal government can make a substantial contribution toward improving the health and vigor of our citizens.

But no matter how vigorous the leadership of government, we can fully restore the physical soundness of our nation only if every American is willing to assume responsibility for his own fitness and the fitness of his children. We do not live in a regimented society where men are forced to live their lives in the interest of the state. We are, all of us, as free to direct the activities of our bodies as we are to pursue the objects of our thought. But if we are to retain this freedom, for ourselves and for generations to come, then we must also be willing to work for the physical toughness on which the courage and intelligence and skill of man so largely depend.

All of us must consider our own responsibilities for the physical vigor of our children and of the young men and women of our community. We do not want our children to become a generation of spectators. Rather, we want each of them to be a participant in the vigorous life.