Trainer Tips: Teach Fitness With Confidence

Teach Fitness With Confidence

Tips from SHAPE America national trainers.

When teaching health-related fitness concepts, you can pair them with practical fitness activities such as having students put their hands over their hearts (K-2), take a 6- to 10-second heart rate, or use heart rate monitors when participating in moderate-to-vigorous activities. The Physical Best text and adjoining lessons provide a ton of amazing resources.

Joe Deutsch, SHAPE America Physical Best Trainer

If you include fitness assessment as a regular practice in your physical education program, consider these suggestions:

Reward improvement. When students are not as physically fit as their classmates and may not meet a certain fitness standard, try to identify ways to encourage their personal growth and improvement, even if it’s only a small step in the right direction. Encourage individual best effort.

Use stations. Consider skill-based learning activities throughout your curricular units by occasionally including stations, with one or more of those stations having a fitness emphasis.As students rotate through different learning stations, they can also work on their fitness performance or technique in a quality learning environment.

Provide opportunities for student voice and choice. Listen to your students and modify your instruction based on what they say, aligned with best practices. If students do not enjoy a certain fitness activity, consider not using that activity Allow for their own creativity, interests, and appropriate level of challenge.

Brent Heidorn, SHAPE America Physical Best Trainer

Teach Fitness With Confidence

Tips from SHAPE America national trainers.

Co-Create “Social Safety Nets” to Trigger the D.O.S.E. Response

In my experience, before I even touch a fitness benchmark or conditioning drill, I have to establish a culture of psychological safety. If students are anxious about performance or peer judgment, cortisol floods the brain, shutting down learning and buy-in. By using the MPE pillars of social interaction and fun, I intentionally trigger the neurochemistry of positive mental health right out of the gate.

The Blueprint: I start the year with a Partner Support Blueprint. Instead of jumping straight into fitness, I put students in small, intentional peer groups to tackle cooperative challenges. Before they move, I have them define what support looks like: What does encouragement sound like when someone is struggling? How do we handle it when a movement feels too hard?

The D.O.S.E. & Mental Health Tie-In: Dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins: Creating this explicit peer safety net builds immediate social connection (oxytocin) and a sense of belonging and respect within the group (serotonin).

Positive Mental Health Skill — Reframing Vulnerability: I am teaching students to reframe the physical discomfort of fitness not as a risk for public failure, but as a shared, supportive team effort.

Driving Behavior Through Reflection:At the end of the challenge, I have students complete this quick, high-impact reflection to anchor the experience:

Think about a moment during today’s challenge when you felt supported by your group. How did that social connection change how you handled the physical difficulty, and what does that tell you about the kind of environment you need to grow this year?

Dave Schmidt, SHAPE America Physical Best Trainer