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By Jennifer Warner WebMD Health News

Reviewed by Hansa D. Bhargava, MD

Sept. 13, 2012 -- Goodbye percentile scores, hello "healthy fitness zone."

A new presidential youth fitness program is replacing the old presidential fitness test that most adults grew up with in physical education (PE) classes in school.

The updated program does away with comparing students' performances on athletic tasks like sit-ups and push-ups and then rating them on a percentile scale vs. their peers.

Instead, the new program measures students' health-related fitness based on what current research shows promotes good health and lowers the risk of disease.

"What is really apparent is that we have an obesity epidemic in our country, so we feel like we now need to focus on health versus athletic performance," says Shellie Pfohl, executive director of the President's Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition. She announced the new program this week.

Pfohl says that when the original presidential fitness test was developed almost 50 years ago, it was designed to measure children's athletic performance and abilities -- particularly in case they were called into military service.

"By design, the old test compared kids against each other, so by design 50% failed," Pfohl tells WebMD.

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Details: New Presidential Youth Fitness Program