Restoring Movement, Grit, and Purpose: Why Kids Need Functional Fitness with Patrick Whalen, Iliad Athletics
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Marine Corps veteran and founder of Iliad Athletics, Patrick Whalen, joins Julianne to unpack functional fitness, character formation through movement, outdoor PE, and how parents can raise more capable, resilient kids through purposeful physical activity.
Patrick shares how his time in the military, the classroom, and as a boarding school founder led him to launch a company rooted in the belief that the body is an untapped source of learning. He explains the difference between physical literacy (knowing about movement) and physical fluency (being able to apply movement with confidence and competence). The conversation dives deep into how early childhood biomechanics often get trained out of kids through sedentary schooling and screen-based play.
Patrick and Julianne talk about Iliad’s groundbreaking PE curriculum—done outside whenever possible—that restores real movement to kids. They explore the developmental value of skills like bear crawls, burpees, and hanging pikes, and how exercises like buddy drags and forward rolls do more than build strength—they build grit.
Julianne shares a real-life example from her school’s fitness benchmarking day and reflects on the growth she’s seen in her own children. Patrick explains how movement done in nature teaches perseverance, exposes kids to discomfort in safe ways, and creates character-shaping feedback loops that classrooms can’t replicate.
They also discuss the home environment: why Patrick's family replaced their heating system with wood-burning stoves, how fire becomes a physical gathering space, and the importance of saying "yes" to your kids’ invitations to play, walk, or explore. Patrick closes with an outdoorsy challenge for every listener to go ruck (walk with a light pack) in a local park this week.
This conversation is equal parts practical and philosophical—perfect for any parent, educator, or leader trying to raise kids with courage, capability, and a love for movement.
Where to find Patrick:
Website & Email Newsletter "The Strenuous Life": Iliad Athletics
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Julianne Nienberg (00:00)
Today, I'm talking with Patrick Whalen, founder and CEO of Iliad Athletics, a physical education company on a mission to restore functional fitness and outdoor movement to kids and
brings a powerful perspective shaped by his time in the Marine Corps, his work as a boarding school founder, and now as a leader advocating for whole human health through movement, fitness, and outdoor education.
Whether you're a busy parent trying to figure out how to get your kids and yourself outside more, or someone looking to reclaim purpose-driven physical activity. This is one of those conversations that will leave you feeling both convicted and deeply encouraged. Patrick, welcome to the podcast.
Patrick Whalen (00:39)
Really, and thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
Julianne Nienberg (00:42)
I loved learning all about your background and I want to let listeners know I have the privilege of knowing you now through our schools PE program and we've partnered with Iliad athletics for our current PE curriculum. But I want to start with giving everybody a closer look at your background. Can you walk us through your journey from the Marines to founding a boarding school to now launching Iliad athletics?
Patrick Whalen (01:05)
Yeah, thanks for the invitation. So that's right, I actually left college, I'd started college and I just realized that I wasn't mature enough, I wasn't ready for it at the time, so I withdrew from college, ended up enlisting in the Marine Corps, I served in the infantry for several years. Long story short, the Marine Corps ended up sending me back to school to become an officer, so I went back, finished my undergraduate work at the University of Michigan and then returned to the fleet as a Marine officer. But I spent about,
a total of 10 years on active duty and then several years in the reserves after that. the Marine Corps is just a really wonderful, it's an amazing organization. Folks from all different walks of life coming together in service of a common mission. And that was kind of my first introduction to the power of a physical culture.
Julianne Nienberg (01:41)
. you
Patrick Whalen (01:54)
to unify and kind of give purpose and sense of direction. So I'm sure we can talk about that more. But so after a decade in the Marine Corps, I left active
duty and I went to graduate school. I was thinking about the next step. And ⁓ while I was in grad school, I was teaching in these literacy programs in St. Louis. So kids who are really struggling in school, in some cases from kind of...
know, rough or broken backgrounds. And I just there was this growing tension between what we were doing in the classroom at the university and then what I was seeing in the the classrooms with with my students, the ones that I was teaching. So it eventually ended up making the decision to move out to Kansas, where we're an old friend and colleague of mine had this this invitation to to help found a boarding school rooted in the principal
that the students' bodies are one of the key ways in which we can actually address their academic and their moral potential. And so we went out and founded this school, it's called St. Martin's Academy, and it's still doing very well. It's a funny comment. You can tell that they're invested in physical fitness. They're the ⁓ Kansas State Rugby Champions, I think three years in a row now.
St. Mark's Academy, which is this very small school compared to some of the schools that it's played rugby against. So kind of an intense physical culture there. so if you add all of those pieces up, so if you add the Marine Corps and this kind of the unifying and the shaping experience of the physical culture there combined with them getting into the education space and founding a school, teaching there, eventually what I came to
Julianne Nienberg (03:18)
.
Patrick Whalen (03:34)
of decide is that the body is this untapped potential resource in students' education. But
also, so not only are we undermining their academic potential and their kind of their attention, their ability to be attentive, not only are we undermining that by failing to appropriately integrate the body into the education, but we're also doing them a disservice physically.
They're going to have this body for as long as they're alive. having the body, you'll either have it, it's kind of like marriage, in sickness or in health, for better or for worse. It is yours, and there are things that you can do about it to have it be not sickness, but health, not worse, but better. And so both academically,
from the character perspective and then also just your basic ability to live in your body healthfully and well, to be well. I realized that there's a lot of work we need to do here. So that was the genesis of Iliad Athletics and we started it to provide resources, tools to parents, but then also to schools or other organizations that work with youth to try and encourage them and then give them the tools.
to cultivate the body.
Julianne Nienberg (04:47)
And now I heard you talk about this in another podcast, and you alluded to it earlier, but you talked about functional fluency, functional fitness.
And when I hear that as an adult, in my mind, I'm thinking, well, you know, I just want to be able to keep up with my kids when we go on a bike ride, or I want to be able to walk and keep up with my kids. I want to be able to go to Costco and pick up my groceries and heave them into my trunk. But when we think about kids and students, especially in the school setting, or, you know, for my family's example, we attend school out of the home. But even for...
those families who are homeschooling, what does functional fluency or functional fitness look like in the life of a student, of a child? Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Patrick Whalen (05:28)
Yeah, so yeah, thanks for the question. We've made a distinction with some of the work that we've done in the curriculum space between physical literacy and what we call functional physical fluency. And it's, you know, I'm all about physical literacy. We have nothing wrong with that. I just wanted to introduce this term of functional and fluency because I think there are some important distinctions here.
As you described the functional aspect really well, it's the ability to perform well at any of the of the physical tasks that our nature requires of us. The distinction with fluency is, if you think about it in grammar, like let's say we've been studying French and I've got a really good, I've got a broad vocabulary in the French language. I'm not a native speaker, but I've learned a lot of the vocabulary and I've also learned a lot of the grammar structure.
So theoretically I can sit down with a book and I'm literate in French, right? can work my way through the vocabulary and the grammar in this book. But.
What we're looking for in physical education isn't just the ability to know the various movements, be able to define them, almost like the grammar of the body, the grammar and the vocabulary. Like, yes, theoretically, I know what a squat is and what the proper body mechanics are. No, it's we want we want fluency. I want to be able not just to read French on a sign. I want to be able to take someone on a date. I want to be able to navigate in the city. I want to be able to do all the things
that I should be able to do with a language like a fluent speaker. Well, that's what we're looking for in physical education. It's not just not mere knowledge about how to do the things and how the body works and biomechanics, etc. No, we actually want kind of a fully embodied fluency. being at peace in your body, being confident, being able to move, having full, you you could break this down into a number of different kind of physical skills.
But like full range of motion, do my joints work properly? Do I know how to generate force? Do I know how to use them to be accurate? Can I balance? Can I move? Can I sustain an activity for, know, do I have the endurance to sustain the activities that I want to be or need to be sustaining? So that would be fluency as opposed to mere literacy, which I associate a little bit more with just knowledge.
So what does that look like for a kid? It's really interesting.
There are a couple of different phases that happen that you can see in a child's kind physical development. And very early on, when kids are really young, they actually tend to be great at some of the fundamental biomechanics. Like I'm sure you've seen when kids go down into a squat, like it's beautiful. Their knees are perfectly aligned. mean, everything's, their back, their spine, it's beautiful. And they're like, great. If you wanted to teach a group of folks, adults, how to do a proper squat.
Julianne Nienberg (07:50)
Okay. .
Patrick Whalen (08:16)
get a toddler in there and just have him hanging out.
He'll be doing squats beautifully. But it doesn't take long for us to almost train that out of them. And this is kind of the negative side of the equation. Some of the things that Iliad Athletics were trying to fight back against. But we have a very sedentary culture.
Julianne Nienberg (08:26)
.
Patrick Whalen (08:42)
Most of the ways that we do work and many of the ways that we do leisure involve
very little physical activity.
And unfortunately for many kids, school is one of those arenas in which physical activity is marginalized and it doesn't happen. Typically in a school environment, we're going to be seated and stationary and teachers going to be asking the students not to move to kind of shut the physical part of their existence off, which is I think that's tough for any of us. But, you know, you can imagine for a little kid, that's very tough.
So starting when we're really young, we tend to have a strong competence in physical fluency. But I think due to cultural factors and social factors, we kind of get them trained out of us.
And so you can, don't know if you've probably not with your kids, given how active they are and they're, you know, they're blessed to have you. But, you know, I teach a PE classes and one of the things that you'll see is, is like just in a squat, child who knew once upon a time when they were little, how, you know, the gravity and the squat should be going down through the heels and like the weight should be going down through the heels. You'll see like limited ankle mobility so that the heels start coming off the ground.
just in order to get down to the ground. So a basic movement like picking up a toy or a stick or just squatting down to have a conversation.
We've started, you can see how with some children, their bodies are beginning this process of kind of limiting the range of motion, limiting the proper range of motion. So I think for school-aged children, functional physical fluency looks like in child form what it would be for an adult, but an ability to kind of do all the things that a child ought to be able to do naturally. And the chief expression of that is in play.
as interesting games.
Julianne Nienberg (10:32)
Absolutely. I love that you talk about the importance of play. And one of the things I noticed on your website was that,
this PE curriculum outside in nature is a really big pillar and foundation of the curriculum. You know, I'm all about that. My audience is all about that. But tell me, in your own words, why was that important to you as the founder of Iliad Athletics is to make sure that a lot of this curriculum contains activities and exercises that can be done outside.
Patrick Whalen (11:02)
Yeah. Well, you know, just a shout out to your podcast that, the very name of your podcast indicates the priority of this, my outdoorsy mom. I just I love that. There are a of reasons, the kind of the hard scientific one is there are many and increasing all the time studies that strongly indicate
a wide range of health benefits, not just from physical activity outside like exercise, but just being outside. The way our eyes, the way our brains are stimulated by nature, by the outdoors, the way our skin is stimulated, we need the vitamin D. There are so many health benefits, psychological, physical, that come from just nature exposure.
And our position is that when you combine those well demonstrated, increasingly studied health benefits of just any time outside, when you combine those with the health benefits of physical exercise, kind of pursuing fitness, when you put those together, you have a very powerful kind of health tonic. But the other thing I'd
say is
If you think about functional physical fluency, means being kind of being able to perform well at whatever nature might throw at us on a given day. And oftentimes when something's being thrown at us, it's unexpected. you try to be prepared and plan for contingencies, but part of being fit or somebody who's kind of physically capable would be being able to handle even things that you didn't anticipate or plan for.
One of the big things that nature throws at us is weather. You can have temperature extremes. You can have moisture extremes.
I think part of it doesn't show up in the body's ability to generate force, you know, which so that's one way to describe fitness, like is can my body generate force? Can I bring a certain amount of weight over a certain distance within a certain time period that's force? But another way of being physically fit actually shows up more in kind of an interior state.
Can I sustain discomfort, the discomfort of the elements, or even better than sustaining discomfort, can I train myself so that I am actually more comfortable in a wider range of environmental impacts, of weather events? So I think there's all these physical and health benefits, but I think there are also these kind of...
maybe you call them kind of moral or character focused ⁓ benefits where we're exposing ourselves to conditions that aren't the most comfortable. They're not optimized for my comfort. Instead, I'm kind of I'm teaching myself that
Julianne Nienberg (13:35)
.
Patrick Whalen (13:38)
I can be okay when I'm uncomfortable. I can do that and actually it's good for me. So that's the other reason. There's a great book on this by a guy named Michael Easter called The Comfort Crisis. If you're not familiar with it, if your audience isn't familiar with it, I really think it'll resonate with you. And he does wonderful work on actually kind of rooting his hypothesis in a lot of the scientific literature. And the hypothesis
is that our addiction to comfort, our constant kind of insulating ourselves against anything that might cause us a little discomfort is killing us. And it's creating all these horrible kind of social and physical effects in our lives. The last thing I'll just say on that is,
Part of being functional is like being
Our bodies aren't just to be beautiful and to look at, right? We have to use them, we have to live in them, we have to take care of them. And I think there's always been something a little funny to me about the perfect physique in the gym, where it's totally climate controlled and it's just like a totally artificial and insulated environment.
⁓ It's just a little bit funny, especially when you think about the body as something that we need to use. Like, yes, we should take care of it. We should steward it so that it stays beautiful, et cetera, do the best we can. But also like we have to use them. so training in an outdoor environment it always seems to me to be, have a certain kind of authenticity to it that avoids maybe some of the kind of
purposelessness or vanity of a gym environment. This is not I use a gym. have a great, you know, we have a gym in our barn like we so nothing against gyms. I just think that that a bias toward training in nature is a healthy bias.
Julianne Nienberg (15:24)
what I heard from that is that nature can really bring out character formation, right, and we talk a lot.
Sometimes I, think it's on your website too about grit, about exposing our children to uncomfortableness so that they can learn to move through it and past it. And I'll give you a great example. This summer, my kids did summer swim team. And one of the big milestones on the swim team was whether you could swim 25. I can't remember outdoors. If it's meters of yards, if you could do a 25, let's say meter, no breather. So all.
summer long these kids, you and many are able to do it and I have kids that are eight and under and so I had a six year old who crushed a 25 meter no breather, in, didn't come up for air and when I saw that I laughed because I wasn't surprised. He's my most athletic kid but also flashes of his childhood of biking eight miles around Mackinac Island of just this stamina and this endurance.
That didn't happen overnight. It didn't happen just because he was on the swim team, but it was something that little by little we were taking walks and instead of taking the stroller, my kids would like I would kind of make them walk or run. And at one point I was running to keep up with them, but it's all these little things that added up to this. As you mentioned, like functional fluency and it was such a beautiful display because for my oldest it didn't come as easy for her, even though she has been raised in the same family has spent just a month.
as much, if not more time outside than her little brother, but she kept working and working at it. And eventually she did achieve this 25 meter no breather, which was like a big deal on the swim team. And that was the picture of character, you know, just kind of this combination of character formation and grit and being uncomfortable to achieve a goal. And I just, think that's so important.
And something I didn't share with you last Friday, I actually got to join our PE teacher in volunteering to do the baseline testing for our first and second graders. So, you know, I'll have you, I'll have you share a little bit more about what this looks like. But as a volunteer, I'll be honest, Patrick, I thought I was going to stand there with my phone and click the button to start and end. And then I remember that I missed first and second graders and many of them.
Patrick Whalen (17:22)
Nice.
Yes.
Julianne Nienberg (17:43)
might not know what a bear crawl was. Many of them didn't know what a burpee was. And so I and the PE teacher, we were running alongside them throughout this entire course. I think both of us had about 12 kids. We knocked it out in the hour. I was sweating, but I was so happy because I got my second workout in for the day, unbeknownst to me.
Two things, actually three things that I noticed with the kids and part of that recap that I want you to talk more about in a little bit, that recap with the kids and the PE teacher and I both kind of took different approaches. I recap to the kids three things that I saw that I was so impressed with. And I said, one, you all were cheering for each other when it wasn't your turn. You were cheering for your teammate, teamwork. Teamwork makes the dream work. Two, nobody complained.
Nobody whined. Nobody said, I can't do this. Nobody. And then lastly, nobody gave up. Everybody finished and they went down and they crossed the finish line. And I told them, I am so proud of you because what you did was probably really hard for some of you and you got through it. And I think all of them did it with a smile on their face. They were sweating. I heard multiple reports from parents that their kid went to bed early and slept so hard that night.
And that was just, you know, what a beautiful picture of a PE class. Like if I think in my mind where we've come, you know, as a society with physical education, that right there, that moment for me was, yes, this is everything that we should be doing and that more need to be doing in a PE class. for the listener, tell us about the baseline testing, what all goes into it, what can students expect and
How did you form this testing for the curriculum?
Patrick Whalen (19:28)
Yeah, wonderful. What you just told me makes me so happy. You're describing the whole purpose of this thing and just seeing those kids coming alive in that way and striving as they do. It's like, it is so beautiful. So part of our PE curriculum, one of the ways we want to signal to the kids that, hey, your body is serious and this is a real responsibility you have. Let's give you the tools to take care of it over the course of your lifetime.
We signal seriousness by, you've already said it, by setting goals and then by giving feedback and measuring our progress toward the goals. So in our PE program, we have what we call benchmarking or what you call the baselines. And those are, we suggest doing it three times a year, beginning, middle and end. And it's a battery of fundamental physical tests that assess where you are.
For those reasons that I just described one it gives you a goal. It sets out an objective standard. Here's a goal and We're not all equally physically gifted, but we do all we all are all equally embodied And so whether you're a great athlete or not a great athlete you have a body and you will until you die
And so like, let's give you the tools to set goals, measure your progress and work toward cultivating fitness for your body. that's what the benchmarking is. The way we develop those particular events, we spent a lot of time on this because we don't want this to be arbitrary. We want it to be an authentic measure of functional, physical fluency and not just physical busy work.
And there are some events that kind of have a historical cache as being this is what we do to measure PE and it's like the one mile run or the whatever. we've moved away from some of those events that we don't think have a super high correlation to functional physical fluency.
did a lot of study, worked with a lot of people, much smarter than I am on how to evaluate actual kind of physical fitness. And we came up with a number of different exercises depending on the age of the students. They're either six, seven, or eight of these different exercises. And the centerpiece is the one that you were just describing, which is it's not a individual movement that's measured for weight, time, or repetition.
It's a combination of movements that we call the intensity course. It takes about two to three minutes to complete for the average student. And it takes a bunch of physical skills and combines them in a pretty high intensity. You can hear in the name the intensity course, pretty high intensity.
course that you run. it's think equal parts sprint obstacle course and just kind of a dynamic challenge. I'll say that I was just running the intensity course with students yesterday and I had a nine year old girl, as you said, you were sweating by the end of it and.
Every time I'm running right alongside the students every time and it's and it's just delightful to do But there was a young a young lady that is a nine-year-old who? Who said before she started I I don't think I can do a burpee and and we had you know This wasn't I knew she could and we had I taught
Julianne Nienberg (22:26)
Okay. .
Patrick Whalen (22:46)
them in a previous class what a burpee is and what a bear crawler These are how to do these things that you're gonna be
But she was just saying, I think I'm too weak to do the burpees.
And I said, you know, nonsense. I'm going to do them with you when we get down to the part where we have to do the burpees. And, you know, she gets down there and just knocks them right out. She no problems at all. it's it's so beautiful. I love the benchmarking because it issues a challenge. And this this connects to the character part of the conversation. It issues the students a challenge, not in a hostile or threatening way, but in a in a way that invites self-improvement. It issues them the challenge.
and then you as the coach or the teacher have the best job in the world, which is encouraging and helping this young person achieve this challenge that they set, achieve this goal that they set ⁓ through the challenge. It's just wonderful.
Julianne Nienberg (23:34)
one of the things that I noticed during the intensity course is one activity in particular. I'm sure you've spoken with other professionals and practitioners, but one that as a parent of a child who went from crawling one month to running at 10 months, it was actually the bear crawl. And the bear crawl in and of itself is not just
a great exercise for, you physical ⁓ endurance and strength, but it's that crossing midline motion that when you talk to a lot of skilled therapy service providers that so many kids are missing this critical skill. And I actually just had a podcast with an OT who talked about the importance of crossing the midline. So looking back on it now, I had a child who, who went from
Patrick Whalen (24:07)
Yes. Yes.
Julianne Nienberg (24:25)
crawling one month to literally running at 10 months. And I thought to myself, oh, wow, great. I don't have to bend over. This is like, you know, it was such a backbreaker to hold their hands and try to help them walk. And I was rejoicing that I didn't have to do that anymore. But actually, the developmental milestone of crawling is so significant and profound in childhood development. So I loved to see that. did you?
collaborate with other skill therapy providers and other professionals when you were kind of putting this together.
Patrick Whalen (24:56)
I, we did. So we spent a lot of time reading, pulling the papers, doing a lot of the research. the science is, I think science done well is in kind of constantly searching for the truth and testing hypotheses and making small claims and then attempting to verify whether it's true or not. So, you know, just because it's been published in a paper doesn't necessarily mean it's
It's true, but we did our due diligence. We've done a lot of reading.
I have ⁓ had the benefit of getting to know a guy named Greg Glassman who is the founder of CrossFit and he's now running an organization called the Broken Science Initiative and they have a program within Broken Science Initiative that's called MetFix which is pretty laser focused on the science of movement and nutrition.
And so kind of studied very closely many of the resources that they've provided in addition to some of the resources from the CrossFit community.
of the places that we look to
kind of leadership.
Julianne Nienberg (26:01)
.
Patrick Whalen (26:03)
is the gymnastics
community. one of the benchmarks events is a hanging pike. And we landed on the hanging pike. That is not one that naturally occurred to me. I wasn't just like, I really like push-ups. We're going to do push-ups. I really like it. No,
the hanging pike though, there were a number of studies and one of them in particular was completed on
adolescent female gymnasts and they had tried to figure out what is the best predictor of success or high performance among these adolescent female gymnasts and turns out of all the different things that they could test the Hanging Pike
was the one that they landed on. once I read this paper and kind of started researching this in a little more depth, it made a lot of sense when you think about, so you started this by asking about the bear crawl with the cross-body proprioception.
If you think about the hanging pike, you're hanging from the bar and needing to bring your toes all the way up to that bar.
You're recruiting so many different parts of your body in integrated fashion to generate the force necessary to get your feet up to the bar. anyway, that gives you a little bit of an insight into the process, though, on how we landed on those things. And the bear crawl, you're absolutely right. That is one of the things that we get worse at as we get older.
There are parts of the intensity course that as a grown man are much easier for me than other parts. Like I can do the sprint, no problem. Like even for the older kids, they do a buddy drag where you have a partner and you're having to carry them. So one of the hardest parts for me that I need to work on is after the bear crawl, there's a forward roll.
Julianne Nienberg (27:31)
you you
Patrick Whalen (27:53)
It's wild
because it's a somersault. You used to do them all the time, would do them all the way down a hill as a kid. Well, it turns out now as an old man, apparently it's very disorienting to be flipped upside down like that and then try to get back on my feet and start running through a serpentine pattern. And
lot of those events we have put together in order to kind of...
pressure test, provide a little bit of pressure on areas that are likely to be weaknesses for different physiques or different body types or even different age groups.
Julianne Nienberg (28:24)
when you talked about the hanging pike, I was trying to describe it to my son who has to make up his, his, ⁓
Intensity course because he wasn't there that day and I was trying to describe it to him and for some reason the term hanging Pike was escaping me and I said, you know, it's like you're doing a dead hang but then you have to bring your legs all the way up and sure enough, I just know he's going to crush it. But the thing that stuck out to me was because we know when adults are so many studies that point to hand grip strength as being one if not the top marker of mortality. there's a body of research that points to that in kids.
I've seen this play out where even in my own children, my kid who's super athletic has tremendous hand grip strength. At the age of three, he was unscrewing light bulbs in his room and I'd find them just laying on the dresser. said, that's a special kid. That's a special skill.
Patrick Whalen (29:12)
busy.
Julianne Nienberg (29:15)
So now he's my kid that likes to tinker. He's the one that I say, hey, I need you to put this together. Could you put this together for me? But when it comes to physical function, I have seen in many kids in my oldest, her hand grip strength is not that great. So she's the one that I'm handing jars to all the time saying, let's work on this because I know that this is a physical weakness. So all of these activities, the hanging pike or anything that the kids do on the monkey bars, I think is so important because it's not just
important for their play, but it's important, as you said, for all the functional things that they need to do. I spent some time over the last two days helping my kids class do sewing projects. And there were so many kids that were having trouble with that fine motor skills of threading a needle, pushing the needle through, pulling it on the other side. And because I have this special lens, I can see how that all ties. But I love how that your program
is incorporating these exercises to not only strengthen kids in this way for physical endurance, but also because it will lend itself to strengthening in so many other ways that, like you said, increase functional fluency for children.
Patrick Whalen (30:22)
Julianne, there's just one other comment on that. It's kind of interesting. A lot of the times, performing well, like performing well on the bear crawl, it takes a certain amount of physical strength, sure, and stamina, You just need to learn the skill of the movement. And once you've mastered that, you can do it very well.
We have such a massive appetite for learning. And even before we can speak, our bodies are learning. We roll over. That's one of the fundamental milestones that we get to crawl. We're voracious for learning how to do things with our bodies. But then I think one of the big issues that I'm trying to highlight with this work is that because of our culture
Julianne Nienberg (31:03)
.
Patrick Whalen (31:04)
of seatedness, sedentary-ness, indoor-ness, we
kind of turn off that appetite for physical learning. And so there are basic physical skills that are atrophying at younger and younger ages. In some cases, they're never learning how to do a movement. How can I use my body to generate force in this necessary or fun or whatever way? And the hanging pike is an interesting one.
Julianne Nienberg (31:11)
Okay.
Patrick Whalen (31:30)
Do know what I mean if I say having an active shoulder? so your shoulders are down and back and the muscles in your back are engaged. And you can do that when your arms are overhead. A key distinction between kids and their ability to perform on the hanging pike is not necessarily their abdominal strength, but whether they know.
how to activate their shoulders in order to generate force from their hands when they're hanging. And it's just a physical skill. can see, can take a group of kids who don't know to, they're just kind of hanging there limply from the bar, trying to figure out how to get their feet up there. their brain doesn't know how to tell their muscles what to do to get up there. You can take that same group, teach them how to activate their shoulders, and then all of a sudden they can do a hanging pike.
We don't necessarily learn the physical skills that we need in order to fully kind of realize our physical potential.
Julianne Nienberg (32:22)
Yeah, so many great things you said there. you know, I think about just that the how much strength these kids are, even if they're they're they're not strong at the beginning of this curriculum, I can only imagine over time with
Having this class in this curriculum in this fashion week over week, they're going to be building skills that it's going to be fun for them to look back, especially because the littles I have, you kids that are eight and under. So it's going to be really fun to look back with them and say, hey, remember when you couldn't do this or you found this really challenging? Now look how far you've come. And I'm sure you have so many great success stories of students and children that have gone through this curriculum that have come out stronger and not just physically, but mentally, emotionally.
having had a chance to do this.
Patrick Whalen (33:07)
It's that again, that's one of the most beautiful things that I've ever seen is a young person who has confronted the challenge and then kind of grown or overcome it. And I'll just there are two that are fresh in my memory. One is from my son who.
He broke his knee wrestling last year. He's a wrestler. He's 12 and he broke his knee in ⁓ wrestling and so had this kind of long recovery time and he's a very physical kid. And so this was kind of distressing to him, although also hilarious to see somebody in a full kind of straight leg brace sprint across the yard despite, you it's amazing that we can kind of improvise and overcome.
but he has been hyper-focused on the intensity course. especially the part where, it's, it's, you know, when, it's your first time doing the intensity course with the buddy drag, you get to that part of the course and You're already exhausted. It's the very end. and then you introduce weight in the form of a partner.
Julianne Nienberg (33:57)
.
Patrick Whalen (34:07)
for whom you're responsible. So there's just both the physical dimension and the kind of character dimension, which is now you finishing this course isn't about you. In order to finish, you've got to bring your buddy along with you. we have these tears, the bronze, silver and gold. He was chasing the gold and he had just a couple seconds left before he got to the finish line and it was approaching that threshold and he knew where it was.
And it was just beautiful to watch him kind of fighting with himself. had all this fatigue, totally exhausted, muscles are burning, lactic acid building up, just one foot after the other. And then his brain saying, no, I am going to get it. And so and he did. He got it just within the time threshold. And so that's an example of ⁓ a kid setting that goal and then meeting it through intense effort.
But also one of the things that I love seeing are a kid who really tries. And even when they don't get it, they're not giving up. They've hit a physical maximum. They performed to the extent of their physical potential at this time.
And they acknowledge that, but they don't do it in a way that's defeatist or like, I can't do this. I give up. There was a young girl on the pull-up bar she didn't have one. She didn't have one. I think most folks very quickly realize they're not going be able to do a pull-up or the next pull-up and then they drop off the bar.
Julianne Nienberg (35:25)
.
Patrick Whalen (35:29)
Well, this young lady hung on the bar for full 60 seconds, trying. She'd work her way over to this arm and see if she could get this side to go more. And then she'd kind of drop back down, just kind of hanging the whole time.
exhausted
and then she would go for the others. It was gorgeous. It was just beautiful to watch that that that spirit that was saying, OK, I probably can't do this, I am trying I guarantee she'll be doing pull ups by the end of the year with an attitude like that. Easy day.
Julianne Nienberg (35:59)
those are just beautiful examples to watch.
I love that this curriculum is bringing that out in kids, in a way that's healthy, in a way that's outside. And to be honest, it's doing it in a way that really can't be replicated indoors, right? That really can't be replicated in sitting in a classroom, I should say.
Patrick Whalen (36:14)
this is one of the big arguments that I make for physical education. Cause I think a lot of educators, I I understand why think of PE is like, yep, we'll burn off some energy, get them out of the classroom where we do serious work, serious intellectual and serious moral work.
got it, PE is necessary, we'll send them out there, burn off the energy, but then I'll get them back later in the day so they can be more focused in my classroom and where we do the serious work. And I understand that. I just, I don't think it's true. And I think it misunderstands what our bodies are in our lives, but in particular, it misunderstands the potential of the body in
Julianne Nienberg (36:44)
.
Patrick Whalen (36:54)
So you said that it's very difficult or even impossible to replicate
the kind of character development opportunities that you have in physical education in the classroom. And I think that's true.
I would return to the
literacy versus fluency distinction.
Let's talk about the virtue of fortitude or endurance or perseverance. Let's say perseverance. You can define perseverance. You can know the definition of perseverance intellectually.
Julianne Nienberg (37:15)
.
Patrick Whalen (37:26)
And I can be sitting in a classroom with a social studies teacher or a humanities teacher, a philosophy teacher, and we can
talk about the definition of perseverance. I can take notes. can pass the test when you ask me, what is perseverance? But none of that has necessarily trained me or cultivated in me the habit of the virtue of perseverance.
Whereas, and I'm not a huge fan of running the mile, I think there more high value kind of physical fitness activities we can do, but one of the benefits of running the mile isn't physical. It's moral. It has to do with our character. And that would be actually cultivating the virtue of perseverance, which is everything in me is saying this is wrong. It hurts. I'm tired and I want to stop. And I'm not going to stop. I'm going to keep going.
and I'm not saying it's unimportant to know the definition I am saying it's way more important to actually have perseverance and to practice perseverance and that the body the physical practice is the easiest place to start
You could say, kids are practicing perseverance when they're sitting in the classroom taking notes after an hour when they don't want to be there. Yes, theoretically, they could be practicing perseverance. They could also be just failing utterly to practice perseverance. And they could be cultivating resentment or ⁓ distraction in any number of ways that are actually disabling to their long-term capacity for developing this virtue. So the body is a...
Julianne Nienberg (38:46)
you
Patrick Whalen (38:51)
you know, I've called it kind of the premier training ground for the character. It's and that's premier as in like from Primoose, like the first, it's not necessarily the most advanced. Like it takes a certain kind of very serious moral courage to do certain things. I don't know to like.
I can imagine scenarios where you might lay your life down for somebody. that's, mean, there's a strong physical element to that, but that courage is, it's beautiful kind of demonstration of your character. I think that training the body, training the will and the character through training the body is available to everyone. It's the easiest first step.
and going from there into the classroom is moving from the immediate physical practical into a realm of somewhat more abstraction. In the classroom, I'm defining and talking about perseverance, but out here, I was actually just having to experience it and maybe even experiencing failure with it, but in an immediate, uncomplicated way. It's just perseverance in my body. I felt it.
⁓ And so anyway, so that's why I always advocate that physical education is a necessary starting ground for cultivating character. It's not just a training ground that you leave behind once you're more advanced.
None of us are so advanced in virtue that we can't challenge our characters through physical challenge and can't grow in virtuous habits through physical challenges. None of us are so advanced that we outgrow the body.
Julianne Nienberg (40:21)
.
.
Patrick Whalen (40:23)
Like we never outgrow the body, our bodies grow, they change, they develop over time, but we never outgrow our bodies. it's always integrated with our whole person. And so it's got the quickest feedback loop in terms of developing a virtuous habit. It's immediate, it's accessible to everyone that has a body.
you can't do that in the classroom. it's not the same.
Julianne Nienberg (40:43)
when I hear you talk about perseverance and you spoke of your son earlier in terms of not just the perseverance to recover quickly, but the perseverance to try some of these things, as you mentioned, despite having an injury, despite having a straight up and down leg brace, how does movement and outdoor time
play out in your family life?
Patrick Whalen (41:04)
as you might have guessed, fitness is kind of a it's a big thing. My wife and I are both, we work out almost every day. our kids have, they probably can't even help themselves. They're, they're, they're involved in that. so practically speaking, we do our best to have our recreational time.
be outdoors or at least embodied. And so I'll make a couple of distinctions here. We avoid screens as much as possible, just in our family life and our family culture. We avoid screens as much as possible. we do our best,
Julianne Nienberg (41:26)
.
Patrick Whalen (41:35)
not on phones, they're not on computers, et cetera, except when necessary. generally speaking, we want our leisure time to be physical, active, and outdoors, if possible.
might be a controversial one, but one of the things that we did several years ago is we removed
heating system from our house and installed two wood burning stoves. what that did is that it forced a series of physical actions that are necessary to sustain
the heat in our home through the winter times. So it built in a workflow that doesn't depend on whether I want to do it or not. like I have to do it. And that means going and bucking the wood. means transporting them. It means splitting it, stacking it, moving it from the stacks into the house, from the house into the fires. kind of
Julianne Nienberg (42:12)
Okay.
Patrick Whalen (42:24)
activity back into kind of a core or an essential part of our family pattern of life. So that's a ⁓ winter version. And then in the summer, we've tried to make that kind of outdoor space around our house. It's something that we
live into. And I wonder if this would resonate with you. I remember a certain point as an adolescent really hating sweating.
Because I would get out of a shower, I'd be clean, put on clean clothes, be out of the shower. And then if it was the middle of summer, as soon as you start sweating, you just feel like you ruined it. And it's like, I'm not going to be clean again until the next time I shower. I think just cultivating some comfort with being a little uncomfortable.
⁓ With sweating a little bit like this isn't this is normal. This is how your body takes care of itself So so in the summer months doing our best to live out You know eat outside on the deck
or on the patio and garden or go for walks, all this kind of thing. there's nothing crazy. It might be a little crazy to heat your house with wood, but nothing too crazy. The only other thing I'd say is if you think about the number of folks that have gym memberships and love that and they go to the gym We've been really fortunate for years to be able to have some space in a garage
or now in our barn where we set up a home gym and it has all the things that you would expect but the kids because it's home the kids are often
around us when we're using it and jumping in with us or they have the opportunity to use it themselves and it's all right
that's kind of a benefit of not having this specialized set aside environment where we do fitness. we jump in the car to drive to the gym so we can get on the treadmill. Like no, just have it be kind of a part of our life here where we are, we're family
life plays out is where we do everything that's core to us, including pursue fitness.
Julianne Nienberg (44:13)
you mentioned earlier that that sensation of sweating and and that did resonate with me because, you know, I just took a shower. I don't want to be out there sweating, but I laugh because my son has a shirt that says a little dirt never hurt.
And oftentimes he's wearing it and he runs, from outside to the inside and he's got dirt all over his face. He's got like a mud mustache. And he's just like the poster child for this t shirt. And he's truly living out this phrase of a little dirt never hurt. we don't have a wood burning stove like yourself, but we do have a wood burning fireplace. And it is actually one of my favorite
family activities. don't have a wood splitter, so we get it delivered. But there have been a few trees that have been taken down that my husband will get his acts out. And one of my favorite activities to encourage him and to encourage our kids is help daddy he usually takes the wheelbarrow out from the front to the back where we have a couple of bonfire pits. But boy talk about a great example of heavy work for children.
Just like you said, that functional fluency, being able to perform activities that are not only beneficial for your body, but also beneficial to the family unit, right? As being part of a team, being part of a group outside of yourself. I have an audience full of listeners who are the spectrum of being super outdoorsy, but also parents who want to get their kids outside more.
maybe feel a little overwhelmed, maybe the concept of spending time outside is new to them, or maybe they're short on time. What advice would you give to those parents
Patrick Whalen (45:48)
Yeah, that's an interesting question.
have two thoughts and one is it's actually not outside, but it relates to what you were just saying about the fireplace. this is something that's on my mind, perhaps because my oldest is she's 17 and she's a senior in high school. so as a dad, I'm looking at that and saying, OK, my time with my whole family together in the home is actually is limited. And I'm not I'm not really ready for that. But it brings into to relief how
Julianne Nienberg (46:13)
.
Patrick Whalen (46:18)
precious that time as a family together is. in your example, how precious the opportunity as a dad to to take a wheelbarrow with your son out to a woodpile and load it up and just to be working alongside one another.
But then furthermore, one of the reasons that we shifted
to wood burning stoves and I imagine that the fireplace serves the same function to your household is it, especially in the winter months, especially in Michigan, it really becomes a focal point for where the family is. If there's a fire and it's warm and it's bright, that's where the people tend to be. And so there's this gathering function, there's this family gathering function of
a real fire and the warmth and the light that it creates. And I think in the winter months, I encourage everyone to get outside and go do stuff, but also encourage the kind of the warmth and light of the fire, which is solar energy, just the trees harvested it via photosynthesis, and then they stored it. the wood is just a big solar battery that then you take into your home and you release heat.
and light, just like the sun right there in your
attracted to that. And so it's a really wonderful way of being together in a physical way. You're not all in your different rooms on your different devices, but in a room together. whether you're reading, whether you're playing musical instruments, any kind of these embodied experiences, I think it's a great.
arena to do that. that would be one encouragement even though it's not outdoors, although it does require some outdoor time just to get the wood, but is actually having that kind family meeting place, ideally around a fire or if it's a summer months around a patio or just a little, it doesn't take much space, just how much space to however large your family is, some kind of a gathering space.
Julianne Nienberg (47:53)
. you
Patrick Whalen (48:06)
But then the other thing I think what two other thoughts. One is children will often make offers
to do things that we as parents or as adults are too busy, too stressed to whatever to say yes to. I had a mentor once who he was talking about, how kids always ask you to read the same story over and over and over again, especially when they're really little.
And his advice was profound as it was simple. He said the right answer to that, you've read this 100 times, you're bored out of your mind by this story. And the kid asks for the same story for the bedtime story. He says the right answer to that is yes. Period. Just accept. So so for parents.
Especially, you know, I got it. If you're going to go for a walk right now because your kid wants to go for a walk and that will mean that you lose your job. That's not what I'm saying. But what I'm saying, if you can. When they give an offer, when they make an offer, accept the offer, just say yes. And one, you'll be.
building your relationship beautifully. then two, it will be also healthy for you. You won't want to do it at first, but as soon as you start doing it, it becomes so much easier. And then I guess just the third thing would be spend some time taking advantage of resources like the one that you provide.
to look at your calendar, look at the dates that you have available in big blocks of time, like a Saturday morning or a Saturday afternoon or something like that, or a Sunday afternoon. Look at the calendar, look at those blocks of time, and then look at the resources that are available and just put them on the calendar. This Saturday morning, we're going to spend four hours going to X State Park and doing a hike, and we're going to shoot for whatever mileage or we're going to do this loop.
and do a little research, put it on the calendar. first of all, it safeguards it, makes sure it doesn't get eaten up by other kind of busyness. But then also gives you all kind something to look forward to. It's a way of making an offer to the kids, inviting them to say yes to something. So those are my thoughts. The kind of fire as the family gathering place, kind of as a concept, too, would be just say, like, accepting the offers that they make.
And then three would be schedule it. know, it's just straight up schedule it.
Julianne Nienberg (50:12)
It's so true. know, if something's not on my calendar, it pretty much doesn't exist.
But Patrick, as we wrap up our time here, I wanted to ask you two things. One, where can listeners find more information about Iliad athletics or connect with you or perhaps join a newsletter? Can you share with listeners where they can find you?
Patrick Whalen (50:29)
Yeah, wonderful. Thank you. you can go to www.Iliadathletics.com. Iliad has just one L, so I-L-I-A-D.
iliadathletics.com. We have a Twitter account and we're on LinkedIn as well, so you can find us in either of those places. If you do go to iliadathletics.com, we just launched our first newsletter ⁓ and it's called The Strenuous Life. So we're encouraging that embracing of the uncomfortable. And that's from Teddy Roosevelt. He had this great talk about the strenuous life.
But you can sign up for that newsletter at our website.
Julianne Nienberg (51:06)
I got that email the other day. I thought it was fantastic. actually listened to your other podcast that you had recorded with. it, Beanie Beanie? Yes, through the podcast newsletter. So listeners, if you are interested in learning more, you can find more information about Patrick and his PE curriculum at IliadAthletics.com. I'll make sure to include it in the show notes. And then Patrick, one more thing before we wrap up,
we always ask our guests to leave listeners with one simple, actionable, outdoorsy challenge. And you actually listed a ton already, but what's one thing that you'd love to invite them to try this week?
Patrick Whalen (51:40)
Yeah, I, okay, so this week in particular, find a state park, county park, city park, state game area, find some kind of an outdoor wilderness space that has trails and just go. You can go
walking without any weight or you can do a ruck. So throw a backpack on or a weighted vest with just a couple pounds. it's so beautiful out right now it is nourishing both for your body but also for your soul to be out in this kind of beautiful weather So that would be my recommendation.
Julianne Nienberg (52:12)
Patrick, thank you so much for joining me here on the My Outdoors, You Mom podcast.
Our conversation has been not only a delight, but so encouraging to me as well as my listeners. And I know that they're going to walk away feeling encouraged and convicted to implement more of this functional fluency as you talked about with their families and with their children. So thank you so much for your time today.
Patrick Whalen (52:32)
Julianne, this is my pleasure. Love talking with you.
