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
Copyright © 2026 by SHAPE America | shapeamerica.org | All rights reserved. PO Box 225, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701 | 800.213.9527
TRAINER TIPS