Join Priscilla Rahn in this enlightening episode of Restoring Education in America as she sits down with Patrick Whalen, founder of Iliad Athletics. Patrick shares insights from his military and educational journey, explaining how classical physical education can foster character and a lifelong love for learning. Discover the core principles that make Iliad Athletics’ curriculum unique and how they aim to integrate virtue and fitness into a holistic educational experience.
Welcome to Restoring Education in America with Priscilla Rahn. She’s a master educator and author leading the conversation to restore the American mind through wisdom, virtue, and truth.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to Restoring Education in America. I’m your host, Priscilla Rahn, and I really appreciate that you’ve decided to join the conversation today. 2026, it’s America’s birthday, you know, 250 years. It’s pretty amazing. And there is a new school that’s opening in the Centennial Colorado area. It’s Excalibur Classical Academy. And their mission and vision is restoring America’s heritage by developing servant leaders who are keepers and defenders of the principles of freedom for which our founding fathers pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. And if you have a young child who’s starting kindergarten through third grade this fall, please go to their website, sign up for a tour and to get some more information. Their website is Excalibur Classical Academy dot org. And if you’re a teacher who would love to teach in a private classical environment, please send your resume there, too. So one of the things that I’m really excited about with this new school is the curriculum. And who knew that physical education had a very specialized concept for what they’re teaching children and how they’re teaching it. So I’m going to bring someone really amazing to the stage who knows all about classical physical education. Welcome, Patrick Whalen. Hi, Patrick.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hi, Priscilla. Thanks so much for having me on.
SPEAKER 01 :
It’s great to have this conversation with you. Before we start, I’m going to share a little bit of your bio with our listeners. Patrick Whalen is the founder and CEO of Iliad Athletics, an organization dedicated to cultivating nobility of mind strength of character, and practical ability through a unique blend of physical fitness, outdoorsmanship, and experiential challenges. A decorated United States Marine Corps veteran, Patrick served for over a decade, including multiple deployments in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa. His military service spanned roles from infantry rifleman and team leader to platoon commander and law enforcement detachment commander. Patrick’s extensive experience in education includes founding and serving as headmaster of St. Martin’s Academy, serving as operations assistant to the president of Hillsdale College and CEO at the American Classical Education Foundation. A father of four, Patrick lives on a homestead in Michigan where he trains, works, and engages in outdoor education alongside his beautiful family. So Thanks for taking the time. Again, I’m so in awe of the whole homesteading thing that you did.
SPEAKER 03 :
Boy, I was thinking while you were going through all that, this makes me sound so old. So I got to keep trying it. I got to keep trying it.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes. Well, first of all, thank you for your service. I am a proud Army brat. My dad served in Vietnam and he was in the Army for almost 30 years. And so I loved being a military kid and traveling all over, which I know you’ve been all over the place. And so take me back to the very beginning, Patrick. What inspired you to create Iliad Athletics and talk a little bit more about it?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. You know what? The military is a great, it’s actually a great place to start. When I was a platoon commander in the Marine Corps, every new Marine that would join my platoon, you always want to sit down and have a discussion with them. Kind of, you know, this is your first effort at getting to know this person. You’re going to, you know, potentially trust each other with your lives. So it’s important that you establish this relationship. And so I’d always do this initial counseling. And one of the questions I would always ask was who was your favorite teacher in high school? I was trying to get a sense of who this person was. Very often, I would get an answer from these young men, Well, I didn’t really have a favorite teacher. It was my wrestling coach or my football coach or my gym teacher. And you can make a joke of like, well, of course, these are Marines. They’re more interested in that kind of thing in the first place. But I don’t think it entirely boils down to that. I do think that in a lot of education, We address the education entirely at the student’s brains, at their mind. For all of us who are human beings, we’re not just brains, we’re not just minds, we’re integrated. We have these bodies and a lot of the best work that we can do with the mind, we can access through the body. And I think it was one of the conclusions that I drew after having the same conversation over and over again with these young Marines is that the body is actually a super important ingredient in how we come to know. And therefore, physical education or a well-crafted physical education program is a huge kind of force multiplier or accelerator for the quality of the whole education. So really kind of the early seeds planted there. And then once I left the military and got into education myself, I think this insight was validated over and over again with working at kids at all different levels. And eventually I said, well, let’s get right down to it. Let’s try to articulate what the purpose of physical education should be. And then once we know that, then we’ll be able to design a program that really pursues with integrity of vision, what physical education should be and how it fits into the larger whole of the student’s education.
SPEAKER 01 :
That’s beautiful. I know growing up, I feel like looking at some of your curriculum, that was how I remember physical education. It looks a little different. So explain to maybe a parent who’s curious about, well, when do the kids just get to play? That’s really different from recess versus physical education. Can you talk a little bit about the difference between the two?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I love it. So I’m a huge, huge fan of free play, kind of free unstructured play. Let’s have more recess. Let’s do this longer. That’s great. But recess is not the same as physical education. So the way I think about it is this. In PE, in physical education, our desired end state is to give the students the knowledge, the skills, and then the habits to cultivate functional physical fitness over the course of a lifetime. And that sounds kind of jargony. Let me break it down. So functional physical fitness. These kids are going to have this body for the rest of their life. As long as they’re alive, they’re going to have this body. And they’re going to need to be able to use it and to use it well with whatever kind of curveballs nature, whatever curveballs life throws at them. If one of the things that we’re doing in education is trying to set students up for success, to live a happy, fruitful, flourishing human life, peaceful, free, full of agency and responsibility, the body is a huge part of that. And a healthy body is going to be able to be out engaged in its community, engage in its civic responsibilities and duties, be a good neighbor, whereas a body that is not working properly is going to prevent you from doing a lot of those things. You’re going to be spending more and more time in doctor’s office, not doing things that you want to be doing, instead kind of just trying to patch it together. So I think, I feel strongly that in school, as we’re giving kids the intellectual tools, the cognitive tools, the cultural tools to understand who they are, their civilization, their culture, their purpose in life, and allow them to be productive, well, the body is a huge part of that. So that’s the functional fitness piece. And then the way you do it is not just just because we have a body doesn’t mean we have the user manual. That’s not we have good instincts. You know, yes, eventually we’ll learn to crawl and then we’ll learn to walk. But there are actually physical skills and you can you know, you can break them down. You can analyze them, speed, strength, agility. There are physical skills that do require some learning and some practice in order to become good, in order to get good at it. So that’s why I say knowledge, skill. So we have to know what the things are, and then we have to practice them. We have to develop them into a skill. And then the grail is habits. So it’s not enough just to know how to do something or just to do it in school. If we’re succeeding as educators, what we’re doing is we’re setting kids up so that they do this thing, they can flourish physically after they leave school. They can flourish physically for the rest of their lives, and that’s where that habit piece comes in. We want that building block approach, start with knowledge, grow the knowledge into skills through practice. And then over through all those repetitions, students are graduating, able to do this for themselves. They don’t need me anymore. They don’t need Coach Whalen sitting there giving them a workout of the day, kind of coaching them through their next goal. They’ve internalized all that. They’re setting their own goals. They’re kind of taking their own temperature and they’re responsible for themselves as citizens and as someone with a body who’s going to keep it in shape.
SPEAKER 01 :
If you’re just tuning in, my guest today is Patrick Whalen. He is the founder and CEO of ILLiad Athletics, a really amazing curriculum. As I started digging into your website and we had a previous call and you kind of went into depth with it. So there was a time when President Kennedy really made this an initiative in America. And that’s when I started seeing some footage around this concept of really changing American physical education in our schools. But when we’re talking about the attraction for classical schools, we hear a lot of times in the classical world words like virtue and beauty and truth. How do those things tie into physical education?
SPEAKER 03 :
This is a great question. I love it. So there’s there’s a lot we could say here. I’ll start with this. You know, in classical schools, we love Aristotle. Right. And so so we can start with Aristotle on this one, which is. Our first encounter with reality comes through our senses. And then through our senses, we’re capable of abstracting. So when we experience a table, and then I experience another table through my, you know, I see it, I touch it, I actually physically encounter table. Eventually I’m able to abstract the idea of tables. And now I have a form in my mind that I can use to reason. It’s one of the fundamental building blocks of reason. So Aristotle says that our primary impressions are necessary for us to do any reasoning and primary impressions are in our senses. What does this mean for teachers in a school or for parents of little kids? If we want our kids to be able to reason well, if we want them to be able to read the great books, and think about the great ideas and study the great characters in history, we need to give them enough actual primary impressions, enough rich kind of physical experiences that those ideas, those books are like seeds landing in the soil of the student’s physical experience. And if the student has a broad and a deep experience, so lots of playtime outside, lots of physical exercise, acquaintance with what the seasons are like, what they feel like, what different temperatures are like, not just conceptually, but actually physically feeling it, that’s creating this rich experiential soil that those seeds of learning can plant, germinate, and grow in. So that’s one thing, and that’s great classical school. It’s rooted in Aristotelian epistemology. On the virtue thing, though, here’s the other thing. Again, this is very Aristotelian, but we don’t grow in virtue simply by defining a virtue. So I don’t grow in prudence because I can say that prudence is right practical judgment given circumstances in a scenario. Just because I can define that doesn’t mean I’m a prudent person. So the way we develop in virtue, the way we grow in virtue is by practicing. You have to be placed in situations where you’re called upon to exercise the virtue. And so in the classroom, a lot of the work that we do is in defining. A lot of the work we do is with verbs or words. And that’s great. That’s really important. But the huge opportunity that we have in physical education is not just cultivating physical excellence, which is certainly something we want to do. but it’s in teeing up these opportunities for the students actually to practice the virtues themselves. Whether you’re simply confronting a challenge and overcoming that challenge and exhibiting the virtue of fortitude or perseverance, or maybe we’re placing you on a team and there’s some team dynamic that requires you to be patient. or prudent, or temperate, or just. These are all virtues that actual physical challenges creates an occasion, almost like an elaborate environment, where you get to go hands-on with actually developing these virtues. And I just think that’s an enormous gift, the physical education, and why PE should never just be like busy time, this is where we work off energy. No, this is an integral part of the way classical educators conceive of a human being and how we learn and grow.
SPEAKER 01 :
Patrick, are colleges teaching PE teachers to teach this way and they’re just not doing it? Because I mean, look, I’ve never been a physical education teacher. I’ve been an athlete. I’ve been a coach. I just don’t remember it being so explicit to teach these things. Did we lose that somewhere along the way in public education?
SPEAKER 03 :
I’ll say this. I am not up to speed on what colleges are teaching PE teachers, but I will say this. If you judge our country’s efforts at PE by their results, you have unprecedented levels of child obesity, unprecedented levels of childhood chronic disease. and psychological issues that come from inactivity, a sedentary lifestyle, and poor nutrition. So if we just judge on the results, clearly what we’re doing, clearly our approach to PE right now is not working. And I’ll see what I have observed by looking at some of the programs that are out there and the way we talk about PE. We are afraid to set standards and to measure student performance against those standards and then to issue unapologetically rigorous or vigorous calls to improve and to move toward excellence. And I fear that this is because we don’t want to hurt someone’s feeling. If we say, here’s the standard, you should be striving for this. This is excellence. And then you fall short. Well, then you’re going to feel bad. And what I would say to the teacher or the parent who’s concerned about my kid feeling bad because they haven’t reached the standard is it’s not kind to give up on somebody because they can’t reach the standard of excellence. What’s kind is to say this is this. This is the example. Let’s set goals and move toward that standard. That’s kind. I mean, that’s actually like traveling with somebody. It just seems so cynical to me to say, well, because we can’t all we’re not all equally gifted in this way. Let’s pretend like it’s not a good thing to be. You know, there is no excellence in this field. You know, the other thing is, it’s just every person alive has a body. And so it’s inescapable. And so really, it doesn’t seem kind to me to say, oh, it’s okay. You don’t need to worry about that. There’s a great quote. If you don’t make time to exercise, you will need to make time to sit in the doctor’s office later.
SPEAKER 01 :
A hundred percent. Okay. So I feel like we’ve come like full circle with the Kennedys because I, okay. You know, health and human services.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 01 :
We’ve got, we’ve got the Kennedys who were really pushing great physical education. And now we have a Kennedy who’s in charge of our health and human services and this new dietary guideline for Americans came out. I interviewed the assistant secretary of health on an earlier episode around the new dietary guidelines and they go hand in glove with your physical fitness and your diet, because we know as athletes, everything’s internal. So your curriculum, what if I don’t send my children to public school? What if I’m a homeschool mom and I would love to, and I don’t know anything about physical education. Is there an opportunity for me to engage in your curriculum?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, so that’s a great question. Thank you. And what’s really cool about this is I love the initiative that parents take. One thing you cannot doubt about human beings is that we love our children. and we want the good for them. And so if we don’t feel like they’re getting it, we find it ourselves, like we go hunting. And as a result, we have several, in the very first year we launched our PE curriculum, we had several homeschooling parents who reached out and A, attended our training. So we run a teacher training program that we just call the educator course. And typically it’s over the summertime. This year we’re doing a couple in-person and a couple online. So we’ve had homeschooling parents attend our educator course. And then we’ve also had them license the curriculum. There’s one gentleman in Indiana who is running our PE program for a group of neighborhood kids. And they’re not all formally homeschooling together, but he said, I’m just identifying that the inactivity, the sedentary, the screen-addicted culture… I, as a father in my community, I’m going to kind of step forward, take some ownership and initiative and say, hey, parents, we’re going to be doing PE every afternoon at four o’clock after school. And, you know, neighborhood kids come out and show up. So it’s really awesome. I love seeing that.
SPEAKER 01 :
So, Patrick. If someone wants to engage in your curriculum, is it a script or how does someone engage in and teaching this curriculum?
SPEAKER 03 :
Great, great question. So I’m a I’m a big believer in the curriculum. teacher in the classroom knowing the students and the particular local conditions best. So I am never going to know from my office here in Michigan, I’m never going to know all the little details that you know in your classroom, wherever you’re trying to teach this curriculum or playing field or gymnasium. So our philosophy, the way we think about this is that what we want to do is really invest in training the teacher to give the teacher the best training we can give. And then we’re equipping that teacher with the curriculum. And for us, our curriculum is a resource that lives online. So you purchase a license to the curriculum and then you log in and you see the whole school year. You zoom in on the particular part of the school year that you’re at. And then you do your lesson planning. So I don’t want to give you a script because no two schools are the same. No two classes are the same. We use acronyms, no time, space, and logistical considerations, TSLC. No two schools have those the same. and so our goal is give the teacher the tools that they need very quickly um and with integrity and purpose you’re not just making stuff up or like what what games are we going to play today like no no it’s not what games we’re going to play today it’s our focus for this week is this is developing this physical skill which fits in this larger arc of the student’s physical development cultivation of knowledge skills and habits And here are a bunch of tools that you can use to make sure that you’re training this particular physical skill appropriately. And, you know, the other thing I’ll say, just mentioning the Kennedys, I think maybe the favorite thing that I’ve seen on the news in the last year has been RFK jumping up on a pull up bar and knocking out pull ups. And it’s and it’s not what I love about it is this principle that for the teacher, you are the lesson. Always, whatever class, including in PE. So in physical education, the teacher actually is the lesson. And so you don’t have to be the fittest person in the room. You know, I’m getting older. If I’m dealing with high schoolers, many of them are probably in better shape than I am. But what they will see is I am unafraid to get up on the pull-up bar and still push it and still go all the same way that I’m asking them to give it all and really chase after excellence. I’m doing it too. I’m not just telling them to do it. I am also doing it. And that’s just, I love that example that he said, like, I’m not just talking about health. I’m, I’m demonstrating it. And he’s in his seventies.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah. I mean, it was amazing. And he actually, he came to Colorado for the holidays and he was skiing and I was like, yeah, that he’s living his best life. Right. And so you think about, mind, body, and soul, and those things all tied together. And for me, it’s such a breath of fresh air to see in this current administration that there are individuals who talk about all those things, mind, body, and soul. And so you, I know you’re, we’re part of Hillsdale. I know it’s a university that is doing a lot in the education space and that individuals are just full of faith. And a lot of my listeners are people of faith. How do you embed your faith in the work that you’re doing?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. Well, yeah, it’s a great question. Thank you. So the way I think about the body is this is something that I’ve been given a responsibility for. And so I think every student that comes to our class is responsible to be a good steward of the body. And just like any other thing, when you’re given children, you have to treat that with care. That’s a serious responsibility you have to treat with care. And I think the same of our bodies, in part because, one, just the dignity of the human person merits it. Two, and I think this because our bodies are God given and we’re made in his image and likeness. And so in my view, and it’s not our curriculum is not explicitly religious, but to answer your question, how do I think about this? So we have to be a good steward of the body and in part doing so allows us to be a good neighbor. One of the big parts of our PE curriculum is, I call it training in civic virtue. We look to the example of first responders, firefighters, police officers, military personnel, and there’s a section of the PE curriculum that we call field fitness. It’s where we take these physical capacities that we’re working on developing and we use them in real-world scenarios. One of the challenges, one of the exercises that we do are called rescue carries. where we practice feeling what it’s like to grab another human being and drag them to safety, get another human being out of harm’s way. And it’s very physically demanding, but it’s one of the things that we cultivate physical strength for. It’s not just so I can feel good and, you know, be my best self. Part of me being my best self, being strong means having a sense of responsibility and service to my fellow human beings. So anyway, sorry, that’s the question.
SPEAKER 01 :
Was a beautiful explanation. I’ve never heard anyone explain it like that. You always hear people say, well, yeah, you know, my body was given by God and I’m to be a good steward. But to connect that then in a real world scenario where we should be fit enough to be able to take care of one another. That is that is such a beautiful explanation. So talk about your website where people can go to learn more.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you. Yeah, so we are online, www.illiadathletics.com. There’s just one L in Illiad here. It’s on my shirt here. But we’re also on LinkedIn. You can follow me on LinkedIn. You can follow Illiad Athletics on LinkedIn. We’re on Facebook, Instagram, X. So yeah, would love to connect with everybody. Everybody who really cares about giving this generation of children the tools that they need to live free and peaceful lives knowing that that freedom and that peace come through strength resilience uh integrity of character and that we can train that in physical education class so patrick real quick um if the apocalypse comes do you have enough animals on your homestead and enough gardens that you could like survive Great question. We’d be pushing it. We’d be pushing it. We you know, the freezers are stocked. We do chickens. We do pigs. We’ve got a good garden. We’ve got an orchard. But they’re all I don’t know. I don’t know. We’re not self-sufficient.
SPEAKER 01 :
know that’s a goal that’s a big long-term goal yeah i uh well i used to live in alaska and i every time i see these alaska shows i think man you would have to have a lot in order to be self-sufficient but my dream is to have a homestead one day to have a lot of acres to have a lot of gardens and some goats for the goat milk so i can make my soaps like Yeah. I’m kind of like that at heart, but I really appreciate you sharing more about your curriculum. I would encourage parents to check out iliadathletics.org.com. Okay. We might want to make sure, but if they Google you, they’ll be able to find you. Patrick Whalen speaking with a lot of authority and experience and heart about the next generation. So thank you so much for taking your time to share. And we will be in touch because I think Excalibur Classical Academy students would benefit greatly by learning what you have to offer. So to my listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. Catch me next time. And remember, educating the mind without the heart is no education. So seek wisdom, cultivate virtue, and speak truth.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thanks for tuning in to Restoring Education in America with Priscilla Rahn. Visit PriscillaRahn.com to connect or learn how you can sponsor future episodes to keep this message of faith, freedom, and education on the air.
