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What makes the Physical Best approach unique?

This is an excerpt from Physical Best 5th Edition With HKPropel Access by Jayne D. Greenberg,Joe Deutsch.

By Suzan F. Smith-Ayers

The uniqueness of Physical Best lies in its comprehensiveness, which combines the latest scientific research with practical experience and activities from physical educators around the country. As noted at the beginning of this chapter, Physical Best, Fifth Edition is aligned with the 2024 National PE Standards, and this approach is supported by the profession’s definition of the physical literacy journey:

The physical literacy journey involves the ongoing acquisition and application of knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary for engagement in a lifetime of healthful and meaningful physical activity. (SHAPE America, 2025, p. 3)

The following list highlights some of the features of Physical Best that make it a valuable tool for physical educators and students alike:

• Comprehensive conceptual framework. Physical Best provides a framework that educators can use to teach conceptual information about health-related fitness and nutrition in the activity setting. In this way, the program helps students understand and value the concepts of health-related fitness and its relationship to a healthy lifestyle; it also provides information about individualized assessment, personal goal setting, the role of reflection, and motivational strategies. In addition, Physical Best offers ideas and suggestions for integrated curricula (across subject areas and learning domains), as well as family and community involvement.
• Active participation. Physical Best activities, available in HKPropel, are designed to involve all students and help them remain active most of the time. Teams are generally limited in size (two to four students per team) so that each student has numerous practice opportunities and wait time is limited.
• Individualized activities. Activities are designed so that students can work at their own level of health-related fitness or activity. Physical Best also provides avenues for students to excel by including specific guidance for ways to adapt activities for inclusion as well as ideas for home extensions. The activities may provide various levels to achieve, different practice times, variety in the number of trials, choices of task difficulty, and so forth. In turn, individuals have the opportunity and freedom to choose activities that are interesting to them. They can also modify an activity to suit their needs, goals, and abilities without losing the activity’s health-related benefits. In short, Physical Best emphasizes enjoyment in participation and encourages students to strive for personal success in a positive learning atmosphere.
• Tools for lifelong activity. Students gain the knowledge, skills, and self-motivation that can prepare them to engage regularly in one or more physical activities to help make the active choice the easy choice. The activities themselves provide students with the opportunity to practice the important skills of self-assessment and individual goal setting, of which reflection is a key element. While these are critical skills when implementing Physical Best, the ability to informally assess one’s own health-related fitness and adjust goals for continued improvement, or maintenance of personal fitness, provide a skill set that can be used across the life span. For example, if a student realizes that they have not made much improvement in a specific health-related fitness area they were trying to improve, their reflective thinking may inform their decision making in revising their approach and selection of activities. They may realize that they have been engaging in activities that are not particularly enjoyable or productive for them, so changing the target activities to something more personally fulfilling may be a simple step to initiate the desired improvements.
• Health-related physical activity. Safe and sequential activities that help maintain or improve the components of health-related fitness focus on personal improvement rather than attaining unrealistic standards. The program encourages teachers and students to incorporate results from the latest health-related fitness assessments (FitnessGram) with personally selected activities into a plan for individual improvement. This goal-setting process is individualized and can be completed with the teacher to the degree necessary and desired by each individual. This process is also explicitly connected to the role of reflection addressed in Standard 4 and can be integrated into a lifelong physical literacy journey.
• Adherence to standards. Physical Best was developed to help teachers meet national standards for physical education and health education (see chapter 9). It also supports the Healthy People 2030 objectives (ODPHP, n.d.), the second edition of the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans (USDHHS, 2018), and the National Physical Activity Plan (Physical Activity Alliance, 2022b).

Rather than just teaching sports, physical educators are encouraged to teach the how and why of a physically active, healthy lifestyle. While physical education is the lone content area in K-12 schools where motor skills are taught, this is also when students can develop an appreciation for how physical activity can provide outlets for self-expression, opportunities for social interaction, ways to challenge oneself, and strategies to manage emotions and behaviors in activity settings. In Physical Best, these components support a comprehensive K-12 education program that includes health-related fitness. The program uses a variety of resources, as well as professional development training, to facilitate success for both students and teachers.

More Excerpts From Physical Best 5th Edition With HKPropel Access

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