McHenry High School has been having an issue with student motivation, so they have been trying to come up with ways to “Beat the Blahs”. Anthony Swanson sees this as an opportunity to conduct research to see if Strength PE is as beneficial in motivation, if not more, than general PE. He wonders if lifting weights and conditioning can be more motivating than floor hockey.
Physical education teacher Anthony Swanson teaches strength and conditioning PE at the Freshman Campus. He is conducting research on student motivation and student performance in general PE classes versus strength and conditioning classes.
“I think strength is extremely beneficial,” said Swanson. “Even though I don’t teach all the PE classes that we offer, I think strength has to be the most beneficial of them all.”
Swanson motivates and coaches his students every day and helps them get better in the weight room. He prescribes a workout and encourages his students to complete it to their full potential. He teaches students how to lift weights for a multitude of different kinds of lifts and how to operate in a weight room safely and productively. Swanson says, “I like to get kids to love fitness.”
“Swanson is a really great coach,” said freshman Lily Ahrens. “He walks around and talks and engages with everyone and just makes strength a fun class. He doesn’t yell at us. He just makes the class entertaining.”
MCHS has been having an issue of student motivation. Swanson sees this as an opportunity to conduct research for his college study. He is going to compare student motivation and student performance in general PE classes versus strength and conditioning classes.
“I think Swanson’s study could benefit me, as well as many other MCHS students,” said freshman Oliva Meyer. “The fitness tests not only motivate students to see improvement, but to enhance their athletic ability.”
To conduct this study, Swanson is going to take all of the fitness testing data, analyze it, and do some comparisons amongst the classes. Students will also fill out a motivation questionnaire about how motivated they are during, and after their class.
“Strength definitely motivates people to play sports more,” said Ahrens, “since you can’t really get in the class easily if you’re not playing sports. So I feel like it encourages students to be more active in their daily lives.”
Swanson assumes that strength and conditioning classes will have better performances in their fitness testing and have greater motivation versus general PE classes. The results of this research can also be beneficial to society in a lot of different ways.
“My hope is,” said Swanson, “that it’ll show other schools that maybe don’t have a strength and conditioning program, the values that a strength and conditioning program can have on students.”
The fitness testing shows strength classes have a slightly better performance than general PE classes, but not a significant difference.
The average number of pacer laps ran in strength is 41.875, versus general PE with average 33 laps. The average number of sit ups in one minute in strength is 36.125 versus general PE with average 28.444. The difference in Push Ups between the two classes was 0.361, the average score was 10 in either class. The difference in Sit & Reach between the two classes was 0.513, the average score was 30 in either class.
This study can be beneficial to teachers like Swanson, to improve their physical education curriculum. It can also be beneficial to schools, as a way to convince them to invest in a weight room, which would be beneficial to students to help motivate them to be more active.
Swanson’s research could have a big impact on MCHS and other schools all around. Overall, the motivation and performance of students is important and there are lots of different ways to improve. Statistics can be our first step.