Some things about middle school PE class never change. The uniforms, drab and ill-fitting mesh, remain about as stylish as a leisure suit. Students still scramble to plop down on their assigned number stenciled onto the blacktop before the bell. And afterward, just as in days of yore, no one ever even thinks of taking a shower.

Those are the hoary physical education traditions, seemingly handed down from generation to generation.

Yet much truly has changed – evolved is more like it – in the modern middle school and high school PE class. Changed for the better, educators say, especially considering the nation's bloated rate of childhood obesity and alarming predictions about increases in juvenile-onset diabetes.

Gone is the epoch – in most California secondary school programs, at least – when the teacher would just roll out the balls and tell kids to go play, when students would pick blades of grass in the outfield during softball "instruction," their heart rates barely rising about resting levels.

These days, you're more likely to find students checking the heart-rate monitors they've strapped on during jump rope to "stay in the zone," try for that aerobic threshold on the step trainer, and harden those abdominals and obliques with side planks.

Core training in middle school?

Abs-olutely.

Check out this scene from a recent seventh-grade PE class at Antelope Crossing Middle School in Antelope, which in 2008 was named one of four "star schools" in the nation, so designated by the National Association for Sport and Physical Education, or NASPE.

Twenty-five seventh-graders, fresh off a warm-up run, perform ab crunches with arms folded over their chests. Occasional groaning and bellyaching can be heard ("Owww, my stomach hurrrrts!"), to which teacher Laurel Whaley good-naturedly replies, "Oh, come on. Groaning makes you strong."

Over on the next patch of blacktop, teacher Meghan Jinguji presides over push-ups ("Good pushes from the knees are better than bad ones from the toes") followed by high-knee strides and lateral movement.

And around the corner, a boombox is blaring Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and the Romantics' "What I Like About You" as the students sweat it out on circuit training. The music might be straight out of the '80s, but the activity is state of the art: one-minute rotations on a variety of aerobic and strength-training stations, from step platforms to resistance bands to biceps curls.

After 25 minutes, teacher Brian Willey gathers the class on a blustery morning.

"You're sweating a little bit," he says, "that's a good thing. OK, so what was one component of fitness we worked on here?"

Hands shoot up.

"Cardiovascular endurance," one boy says.

Willey: "What's one station that did that?"

"The ladder," another student replies.

As its designation as a national award-winning program attests, Antelope Crossing is on the cutting edge of the latest trend in elementary and secondary school physical education principles: to engage students into lifelong physical activity and educate them on the proper form, function and philosophy of a variety of skills in individual and team sports as well as understand concepts such as optimal heart rate and effort for aerobic activity.

In simpler terms, the kids actually do something in PE and learn fitness skills they can carry to adulthood.

Case in point, says teacher Jinguji: "The (heart rate) monitors help our sixth-graders learn how to pace themselves. The way most come in doing a (mile) run is to start at high intensity, then recover, then sprint, walk, sprint, walk. When they have the monitor on, they can actually see how it's better to pace themselves. They see the graph and it connects the dots for them."

That's a far cry, indeed, from the days when the most strenuous thing a PE student did was line up for roll call.

California physical educators in 2006 adopted content standards that address the skills, concepts and measures needed by students in each grade level. Seventh-graders must master how to assess their muscle strength, endurance, aerobic capacity and body composition. They work with a teacher to set up a weekly personal fitness program and perform "moderate to vigorous" physical activity at least four days a week.

Call The Bee's Sam McManis, (916) 321-1145. Read his postings on The Bee's "Sacramento Health & Fitness" blog at sacbee.com/blogs.