Pull-ups for Tenderfoot

[WasE61]

Not sure why this is ... but even when I worked in the meatpacking plants (college days) I could lift 100+ lbs of sausage/tube steak over my head, but I've never ever been able to do a pullup.

[King Ding Dong]

Is the purpose to determine if they are fit or can they do a pull up? I am in the same boat with my new scout son. Zero body fat and strength. We are working on it with assisted pull-ups but is going slow. He also can't squeeze the knife to unlock the blade. To me that is the bigger problem. Half the NSP can't really pass the swim test but last Saturday he swam 25 laps just 11 short of the mile swim. So is he "not fit" ?

[qwazse]

If the doctor says there is a physical disability, get a waiver for the requirement.

If not, I'd be satisfied if a scout makes an honest effort to improve. That means grabbing a pull-up bar every day for a month.

 

Try asking the boy ...

This pull-up thing, do you think you showed improvement?

Would you like to really try hard on this one and we'll see next month?

If this is the only thing keeping you from Tenderfoot, how about knocking off some second and first class requirements while you work on this one?

[frank10]

How about throwing a scale under his feet and seeing if he can pull harder?

 

[CaveEagle]

This turned out to be a hot topic when I was commitee chair for a small start-up troop back in '02-03. We had a 13 yr old scout that had been working on this requirement for almost a year. The father (Eagle Scout) showed me proof and tracking of the scouts efforts, and he showed improvement in all other areas. The problem was we had an ASM (marine background) that thought it was his personal mission to improve the physical fitness of Americas youth. And......a SM that was signed on to his 'program'. This created a discouraged youth, and angry parent, a split comittee vote and was a major contributor to troops eventual collapse. (no kidding).

 

This is an extreme example, but I think it demonstrates how adult's interpretation of a requirement can really cause big problems with a unit.

 

The requirent say to show improvement on these activities. Not EACH, or ALL of these activities. Lighten up! Follow the spirit of the requirement. Where the requirements are specific, hold the scout accountable to the specifics. Where they are left general, use you descretion.

 

Here's another example.....

 

We had a scout that did his initial 'benchmark' tests towards the end of footbal season, when he was working out every day and was in a very good state of conditioning. I think he did 5+ pull ups. After the 30-day period, footbal season was over and he probably put on a couple pounds. At the re-test phase, he was only able to eek out ~3 pull ups.

 

So, a strict interpretation of the rules would have failed the kid, even though he did more 'actual' pull ups than most of the other kids. Does it really make sense to follow a super-strict interpretation of this rule?

 

I think not.

[DeanRx]

I think a good place to start is, any adult that is going to hold the scout to the standard should be doing the same test (with same standard)... I bet dollars to doughnuts the majority of adult leaders (myself included) would be hard pressed to knock out a single pull up.

[Scouter99]

Sentinel, my oldest son has Klinefelter's Syndrome. He is a 20 y.o. Eagle Scout and can't do one pullup, and very few pushups. Is he physically fit? Yes, he can run far and fast, plays a lot of ultimate, hikes with the Troop every month and competed in wrestling and baseball for years. He has endurance to spare and a resting HR of about 60. But he has very little strength for his size (6'3") because of his disorder. I can't imagine how he would have reacted had his Scoutmasters demanded a full pullup before advacing. Our Troop allows them to show improvement by going from 0 to 1/2 or 1/2 to full.

 

Pullups are a test of raw strength related to body weight, not fitness.

Physical fitness is not one thing. It is not just strength, but it's not just endurance, either.

Fitness has 4 components: Cardio, Strength/Endurance (some people split these, making 5), flexibility, and body composition. A man that can lift 500 pounds, but can't run 100 yds is not fit. A man that can do the splits but can't do 1 pullup is not fit. A man that can run 10 miles but not touch his toes is not fit.

 

It's great that your son is a successful athlete despite his illness, but that doesn't change the definition of physically fit. In either case, the question in the OP isn't about kids with illness, it's about regular kids. BSA accommodates for people with honest issues, the boys in question just aren't trying.

[Scouter99]

As noted by a few others, my troop will sign for less-than-whole improvement (0 to 1/2, 1/2 to 1, etc) on pullups, situps, and pushups, but the rest of them don't really lend themselves to an incremental approach.

I generally despise, in the strongest sense of the word, "fudging" but in an honest case like CaveEagle's where the boy is trying and he has improved in the rest, yeah, if you have to get out your microscope it doesn't say "improve in each" it says "show improvement in the activities listed.

But the boys in your case aren't trying, and, no, I wouldn't sign them off until they did.

[Baseballfan]

Scouter99, it isn't an illness, just an extra chromosome, and he is a "regular kid". (Well at this point he's a regular adult) Also, he did not get diagnosed until a year or 2 after the pullup req... my point being just because a kid is physically weak does not mean he is not fit, or that trying harder would help.

[Stosh]

It must be tough telling a kid that he'll never achieve Tenderfoot, while his buddies are all getting Eagle, just because he can't do a pull-up to some adult's expectation. It would be a shame is some scouter didn't get a knot for his shirt because he missed a roundtable because he had a funeral to attend. Rules are important, but even more so are people. Once BSA works through the homosexual and atheist issues, maybe they can tackle the pull-up issue.

 

Stosh

[Twocubdad]

Roger that, Stosh. It's good to keep the big picture in mind.

[Scouter99]

It must be tough telling a kid that he'll never achieve Tenderfoot, while his buddies are all getting Eagle, just because he can't do a pull-up to some adult's expectation. It would be a shame is some scouter didn't get a knot for his shirt because he missed a roundtable because he had a funeral to attend. Rules are important, but even more so are people. Once BSA works through the homosexual and atheist issues, maybe they can tackle the pull-up issue.

 

Stosh

 

There's a RT every month, and if a kid can't do a pullup by the age of 16, then there's something so wrong with him that he qualifies for an exception due to disability. I don't think anyone here is talking about never letting a kid advance over pull-ups, and if someone ran into that, there are lots of troops. We all squawk and point to the GtA's admonishment that no one may change advancement when some hardnose is making things harder, but it means easier, too.

[qwazse]

I think a good place to start is' date=' any adult that is going to hold the scout to the standard should be doing the same test (with same standard)... I bet dollars to doughnuts the majority of adult leaders (myself included) would be hard pressed to knock out a single pull up.[/quote'] DeanRx has a point. I was doing some climbing yesterday at a surprisingly challenging run. (They don't call the creek that formed these humble cliffs Slippery Rock for nuthin'.) Only the two very wirey boys in our group could beat it. The two girls and two adults couldn't get past the crux. Maybe if I had been working the Tenderfoot reqs with each new batch of scouts every year (i.e., dedicating one month to upping my stats by doing some repetitions every day), I'd have the upper body strength to work myself up that portion of the face on the one least slippery crack that always seemed at arms length.

[Kudu]

Once BSA works through the homosexual ... issues' date=' maybe they can tackle the pull-up issue.[/quote']

 

Pull-ups ARE gay.

 

Transgendered to be precise.

 

Pull-ups are not a requirement until after the "leadership skills" crowd sliced "Patrol Leader Training" off the program.

 

The outdoor naughty bits gone, Hillcourt's training to lead a Patrol into the woods was replaced with sedentary office theory.

 

You can hardly tell its fake!

 

Apparently you flunked Diversity Wood Badge.

 

[packsaddle]

I'd like to see the adult leaders qualify. Seems fair to me.