CHAMPAIGN, ILL. A national program that promotes youth fitness is changing to emphasize health over performance and materials published by Champaign-based Human Kinetics will be part of the new program.

The President's Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition announced Monday it is replacing the President's Council Youth Fitness Test with the Presidential Youth Fitness Program.

The new program will use Fitnessgram, an assessment that reports on a student's individual health and fitness.

"It tells you how healthy you are, based on what you should be able to do for someone in your age group," Human Kinetics President Brian Holding said.

That's a change from the old youth fitness test, which compared a student's performance with those of his or her peers.

Fitnessgram software published by Human Kinetics for the Cooper Institute measures health-related fitness by evaluating cardiovascular fitness, muscle strength, muscular endurance, flexibility and body composition.

Fitnessgram has been adopted by many metropolitan school districts, including those in New York City, Indianapolis and Miami, Holding said.

The software also has been adopted statewide by Texas, Georgia and Delaware and is used in much of North Carolina, he added.

Holding said it's estimated that two-thirds of the schools that do physical fitness testing have been using Fitnessgram, and the other one-third have been using the President's Council Youth Fitness Test.

But with the President's Council switching gears, all those schools stand to be using Fitnessgram, he said.

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Presidential fitness program switches focus to personal health