The American College of Sports Medicine and the American Academy of Pediatrics support the notion that strength training can be a safe and worthwhile activity for pubescent and prepubescent youth providing adherence to an appropriately designed program in a supervised setting. Strength training is an important component of youth fitness programs, health promotion objectives, and injury prevention strategies. However, traditional strength training utilizing free weights is unavailable or often impractical in elementary and middle school physical education settings. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which a non-traditional strength training program would impact the health-related fitness of youth physical education students. The researchers hypothesized that strength-training students would see an improvement in push up and curl up scores following a supervised weight training program. In contrast to traditional weight training programs, students participated in body weight, medicine ball, towel, stability ball, training bar, dumbbell, and resistance band exercises. Participants were 185 male and female students in grades 5th through 8th attending four public schools located in North Alabama. Caucasian, Black/African American, and Hispanic populations were represented (45.77%, 38.34%, 11.91%, respectively). Students participated in an eight-week strength training program. Students attended physical education classes that incorporated a strength training regimen three days per week, and cardiovascular enhancing activities and agility activities each once weekly. The President's Challenge Fitness Test was administered to determine the extent to which participants exhibited a change in health-related fitness outcomes following the intervention period. Paired sample t-tests of the mile run, shuttle run, v-sit reach, push up test, curl up test and overall percentile score demonstrated statistically significant differences in several areas for the study population as a whole. Standard errors of means were computed to quantify the accuracy of means estimates. The hypothesis was accepted. Over time decreases in mean scores for one-mile run (11.68 vs. 11.00, p < 0.01) and shuttle run (11.40 vs. 11.17, p < 0.01) and increases in push ups (14.92 vs. 18.32, p < 0.001), curl ups (37.76 vs. 41.24, p < 0.001), and overall percentile scores (18.84 vs. 30.03, p < 0.001) were detected. The results of this study suggest that significant health-related fitness gains can be achieved by pubescent and prepubescent youth through the utilization of practical, inexpensive, and readily available equipment in the elementary physical education setting. Keyword(s): alternative programming, health promotion, physical education PK-12