According to the official Operation Pull Your Own Weight prescription, kids should have access to height adjustable pull up straps twice, or maximally three times a week, on non- consecutive days. Barb Williams, PE Instructor at Longfellow Elementary School in Wheaton gave her 4th and 5th grade students access twice a week.
According to the prescription, the height of the grips and the repetitions should be customized to fit each student, and tightly controlled by the teacher in order to insure weekly progress over many weeks. Weekly progress in turn encourages the motivational momentum upon which OPYOW is built. Williams however allowed her troops to do as many repetitions as they wanted to do, as often as they wanted to do them.
According to the prescription each student’s workout should be documented in order to generate an evidence based paper trail and to cost justify this functional, obesity prevention intervention. But at Longfellow Elementary classes are short on time and long on all the bases to be covered. In other words, there was no time for the detailed documentation suggested by the OPYOW prescription.
Growing Stronger is Always Cool
On the other hand, Williams knew intuitively that kids value the opportunity to grow stronger in front of their peers. She also knew that height adjustable straps in conjunction with leg assisted pull ups (jumping and pulling at the same time) give all students the opportunity to succeed, without the humiliation that often goes hand in hand with the inability to do conventional pull ups.
The Kids Loved Using Them
At Longfellow leg assisted pull ups were strictly voluntary. No one was forced to participate. “The main thing,” according to Williams, “was that the kids just loved using the height adjustable straps (similar to gymnastic rings). And in the process of using them, they developed the upper body pulling strength that so many kids lack these days.”
What Williams did document however was her students’ BMI scores. She also documented their ability to do conventional pull ups, as well as the percentage of students who won Presidential Fitness Awards. The results are as follows.
Zero Percent Were Obese…
At the end of the school year a whopping 52 percent (78 out of 149) of her 4th and 5th grade students were able to do at least one conventional pull up, and according to their BMI scores NONE of these students were obese. Furthermore, as long as they eat and exercise in ways that allow them to maintain the ability, none will ever have to wrestle with the disability that the US Surgeon General calls “America’s # 1 health threat.”
Presidential Fitness Awards Up by 60%
Not only that but the percentage of students who won Presidential Fitness Awards increased by 60 percent. “We generally have 30 to 35 winners. But this year we had 54,” said Williams. “And it had lots to do with the fact that more kids could do pull ups.”
Despite their lack of regimentation, Operation Pull Your Own Weight was a success at Longfellow Elementary School this past school year. Not only that, but “OPYOW will be a big part of our curriculum next year,” Williams added. Hats off to Barb Williams and her students for taking documented bites out of childhood obesity!
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