Drawing on his 17 years of teaching/coaching experience, he decided to take it upon himself to eliminate childhood obesity in his school. How he accomplished that goal is a story that every parent, every educator, every pediatrician, and every mentor from sea to shining sea should know about.
The Simple Observation
“I started with a simple observation that every gym teacher in the nation can relate to. From years of fitness testing, I knew that kids who could do pull ups were never obese, and that kids who were obese could never do pull ups. It was an intuitively obvious kind of thing that I thought I could build a case around,” Smith explained.
The Simple Challenge
More specifically, the challenge Smith confronted was to make sure that all the kids who attended his elementary school learned to do pull ups. “According to my observation, if 100% of our kids could do pull ups, none of them would be obese. And as long as they maintained that ability, they’d never become obese,” Smith said. “We named the program Operation Pull Your Own Weight and the rest is history.”
The Results
Historically speaking though, this 21st century miracle took a full four years to reach its goal. The real story then is found in how Ron Smith successfully inspired 100% of his elementary school students to develop their ability to do pull ups, and in the process to eliminate childhood obesity in their school.
Presumption # One
In order to clearly explain the OPYOW phenomena however, there are three fundamental presumptions that need to be understood. First, Smith knew that most kids hate pull ups, But he also recognized that what they really hate is to fail at anything in front of their friends. In fact he noticed that the kids who succeeded on the pull up bar took noticeable pride in being able to tackle a difficult task in front of friends and win.
In other words the successful kids actually liked pull ups because of their public success. From this observation Smith decided that in order for OPYOW to succeed, he had to build public success into the program. “Public success turned out to be the great motivator in OPYOW,” Smith said. “It’s what makes our kids look forward to doing pull ups, when most kids hate the thought of them. Just imagine, a school full of kids who actually look forward to doing pull ups. That’s our school,” he added.
Presumption # Two
Smith’s second presumption was that all kids want to be strong at everything, and weak at nothing. “We eliminated the terms good and bad completely in favor of the terms strong and weak,” Smith said. “I’ve had lots of kids who tell me they want to be bad, but I’ve never met a kid who wants to be weak…at anything. And of course a pull up bar is always associated with strength. For this reason our kids learned to see the pull up bar as an opportunity to get stronger, and they liked it.”
Presumption # Three
The third presumption was that kids prefer opportunity over obligation. For example, it’s an opportunity or a privilege to go out to eat, or to go to the movies. It’s an obligation or a job to mow the grass, or clean the house.
“Once the program began we always treated pull ups as an opportunity to get stronger, and we never forced students to participate. OPYOW was strictly voluntary. But interestingly enough we had 100% participation because the kids saw it as a privilege not a job, which made it an intrinsically valued experience,” Smith said.
Of HAPUB’s and LAP’s
Armed with this original common sense observation and these three presumptions, Smith developed what he calls a height adjustable pull up bar that raises and lowers in one inch increments, in order to accommodate the technique he calls leg assisted pull ups where participants are allowed to jump and pull at the same time. This combination allowed all Smith’s kids to succeed immediately in front of their friends.
The Basic Idea
The basic idea is to lower the bar enough to allow the participant to do at least 8 leg assisted pull ups. If they can only do 7, the bar is lowered enough to allow the student to do 8 repetitions, and that becomes their designated starting point.
“Our kids were allowed to workout on the bar twice a week,” Smith said. “And in workout #2 they were allowed to do nine leg assisted pull ups, in workout # 3 it was ten, in workout # 4 it was eleven, and in workout # 5 it was twelve repetitions. When they successfully complete 12 leg assisted pull ups the bar is raised one inch and the whole eight to twelve scenario is repeated over and over again, until students eventually run out of leg assistance and they’re doing real live pull ups.”
Inch Your Way Up
Done correctly this strategy produces a bunch of kids who succeed regularly, in front of their friends, workout after workout, week after week, month after month until they reach their goal of being able to do conventional pull ups. “Using this strategy, we cultivated a school full of kids who not only learned to do pull ups, but they learned to look forward to the opportunity to get on the bar and get stronger, and to succeed in front of their friends,” Smith said.
Expecting Success
When they’re done with their workout kids inevitably give each other high fives, and congratulate each other,” Smith said. ”In this program our kids systematically learned to expect success instead of expecting failure. And that was a huge asset.”
Thin Slices of Success Add Up A Huge Pile of Success
Smith readily admits to the fact that it took four years to reach his 100% goal. “It’s all about persistence,” he said. “Improve just a little bit every workout, every week, every month, and it’s absolutely astounding what you can accomplish at the end of a year, or in our case, at the end of four years.”
The Six Ideas
What else can be said about this incredibly simple, common sense approach to childhood obesity prevention? “There were six ideas that were drilled into our kids over and over again throughout the year,” said Smith. “We constantly reminded them that they’ll get stronger by working regularly, eating right, getting enough rest at night, and avoiding the negative habits of tobacco, alcohol and drugs. It was also implied that if you failed to workout regularly, to eat right, to get enough rest, and to avoid tobacco, alcohol and drugs, you were making yourself weak. And as I said before, I’ve never met a kid who wants to be weak at anything.”
Personal Responsibility Taking Behavior
Smith’s kids also learned that choosing to work regularly, eat right, get enough rest, and to avoid tobacco alcohol and drugs was mostly up to them. No one else could make those choices for them. “In other words our kids were choosing whether to become strong or weak, and the teacher couldn’t do it for them. Mom and Dad couldn’t do it for them. Their friends couldn’t do it for them. They had to decide for themselves whether they wanted to become strong or weak. So OPYOW promotes personal responsibility taking behavior at a young age,” Smith said.
Bumps in the Road
Was it all smooth sailing? Or were there some bumps in the road along the way? “We had a couple of detractors in the beginning,” Smith said. “For example, one parent thought that OPYOW was built for boys until she saw that her own daughter joyfully participating. Girl’s success is not unusual when you start kids young (K-12) because little girls usually mature faster than little boys, and they’re often the best athletes in class at this age.”
There were other critics who contended that OPYOW had no aerobic component and was far too restrictive. But as Smith eloquently points out, OPYOW was never meant to be a full blown fitness program, but just a great functional antidote to obesity. “On the other hand to the degree that it discourages obesity, it’s also heart friendly by reducing the load 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” said Smith.
But Just Imagine
“Just imagine if we implemented OPYOW across the nation and we were graduating entire classes of students who could physically pull their own weight. What do you think would happen to the childhood obesity epidemic? It would dry up and blow away overnight. This is not an impossible goal, and the ramifications of such a movement would be beyond any calculator on earth,” Smith said.
Now you have the story of an average gym teacher in an average elementary school in and average Midwestern town who translated an utterly simple observation into a program that solved a big problem in his school. So the question now becomes, if one school can do it, why not one school district? And if one school district, why not one state, one nation, and one world? In any case, hats off to Ron Smith and his OPYOW kids. We need lots more people like Ron, with lots more common sense to tackle lots more problems around the world.
Rick Osbourne is a Chicago based writer who currently serves as Executive Director of Operation Pull Your Own Weight, an informational web site that's dedicated to naturally immunizing kids against obesity for a lifetime without pills, shots, or special diets.
