Stick it to your PE teacher

Better kit would have helped (minging green gym knickers and skirts).
Yes! Was brown knickers and skirts for us - or just whatever knickers you were wearing if you didn't have your kit. But now I'm in my 30s I enjoy cycling.

Yes, it would have been nice back last century to actually have tuition if you couldn't do things first time like:

Can't do high jumps - skipping ropes and box jumps

Can't do chin ups - chin up progression

Can't do rope climbs - weighted rope pulls over a frame but no there was something of the 'you're short and wear glasses and only a girl so accept being week and feeble' type crap out there.

Strangely enough barking at people doesn't magically give them the skill. And we haven't started on those who have hidden disabilities, hypermobility etc...

Thanks, Geek, really helpful.

You can work up to chin ups (easier than pull ups at first) by inverted rows and if you can hold yourself up safely on the bar, negative reps.

Also for box jumps - don't jump down after jumping up - that will help preserve your Achilles tendon.

It took me 6 months to do my first chin up btw. I can do 6 consecutively now with a decent ROM and 3 pull ups now.

Oooh thank you. Gulp. I am not sure I can do a single pull up or chin-up! I do press ups, burpees and box jumps (low - I lose my nerve) that sort of thing at the gym, and some weights, and am going to try to do some TRX classes. Climbing centre - brilliant idea - I can get my dd to take me bouldering in the summer as she loves it. I am doing the race with my dd and dh and apparently it is fine to go round obstacles.

I'm an obstacle course addict now - got the Rat Race this weekend!.
In terms of practice - the best things you can do is use the climbing frames in children's playground for instance. Playgrounds are also useful in that you can use them to practice pull ups, chin ups, inverted rows, box jumps depending on what's there.

Also check if there is a climbing centre near you - climbing walls and bouldering rooms are excellent places for a good workout - they will help you get over your fear of heights.

A big thing is grip strength - this is critical for any strength/bodyweight exercise and a useful diagnostic tool for things like are you overtired or your overall condition. I'm doing towel chin ups and towel added inverted rows to increase mine off of the door bar. Heavy 'farmers walks' and plate pinch are other exercises you can do.

I measure my strength by squeezing my scales at home - I want to beat 40 kg equivalent - one target is to be able to squeeze your bodyweight equivalent but I am some way off that!

Bananana, I have signed up for an obstacle mud run too, in a rush of blood to the head! Supposedly for beginners. I am 50. I do circuit type gym classes and other stuff but I have never been a great one for heights - am much better now but I could do with some practise at slides or jumping or climbing over things. Other than the outdoor wooden things in parks, I can't think of anything. What are you planning to do, if anything? Sorry for hijack, OP.

Gosh I wish someone had actually taught me to exercise at school rather than the ritual humiliation of just teaching team sport. These days I am a competitive powerlifter and I run a lot. But none of this happened until my 30's thanks to a decade of being told that I was hopeless at sport because I couldn't hit a ball with a hockey stick, wearing a pair of knickers in the rain.

Good work, OP
I too was a PE hater in the late 1990s. As someone above said, if it didn't involve a team or a ball it wasn't done - despite the fact that our school had a swimming pool.
I was uncoordinated and never picked first and it was torture every week. By the time I was 15 my mum - a teacher - helped me get out of it via a series of notes as long as I promised to come and be a helper at her school's cross country club every week. Thats the only reason I wasnt overweight by 18.

The thing that got me was that they had the sporty girls, and there was an effort to involve the "chavvy" girls. This involved not making them take their makeup off and playing dire dance music throughout the session. This made it even more torturous for about a third of us! Why they didn't stream PE and let those of us with no ball skills do some circuits or something I'll never know. It's not like they bothered to teach the skills properly.

Only now I am seeing a personal trainer do I feel like I'm learning about exercise and fitness properly. I do still get panicky when she tries to make me do something too reminiscent of PE though!

Gosh that was a long 1am rant. Sorry. Also, fuck you, Mr Munn.

Thank you for this post. I think I still feel like that one who never gets picked or the one who everyone sighs about when you get put in their team. I find myself thinking "I can't" far far too much and "I'm not built for sport/fitness stuff" as well.

I'm actually very strong and I would like to try to work with my body and help it get stronger and leaner and fitter... you've inspired me.

Fantastic OP

PE really was so badly taught. It's not surprising so many people gave up on exercise.

I'm glad it's improving - I still remember out of all the subjects that are streamed, why isn't PE one of them?

Remember the bemusement of being expected to jump a 1.1m hurdle when 1.4m tall.

For me though it was the reliance on team games that was a pisser. stuff like badminton and athletics I would've liked but when you are small and a late developer there was no provision made for this. Naturally, there was no swimming offered at secondary school even though we were near two pools.

Turns out I have pretty good genetics for strength and hypertrophy and stamina for running and swimming - not that I'm fast for. Thing is, conventional PE isn't that good for people to whom these are strengths.

And I have never picked up a rounders bat in the last 25 years - long may that continue. Why anyone mistakes a game of rounders for a workout is beyond me.

Similar story here. I was hopeless at PE. I couldn't run more than 3 minutes without agonising stitches and shin splints. I've never mastered catching and throwing, but I'm proud to say that I swam my first length at 16 in adult lessons, my first mile at 17, learned to ride a bike at 19, did C25k at 32 and my first HM 364 days later

Gymnastics/ dance wasn't so bad, but athletics/ team sports were hopeless. I was always small for my age so wasn't fast and had a lot less reach than the others. The queen bees chose the teams, and I was inevitably substitute or goal keeper. There was no chance to improve.

I was that bad that it took the PE teachers years to realise that it was genuine. My first secondary PE was the MN cliche. Fortunately in y11 we finally got some choices and had a new fitness suite so it did get better.

Better kit would have helped (minging green gym knickers and skirts). As an adult, I can choose the right level of clothing to be comfortable. In the middle of winter, I can choose long sleeves, gloves, hats and thermal leggings.

There really was a gap in explaining the absolute basics for those of us who hadn't walked in already physically equipped, and that's not a common practice in any other subject.

It has improved in the last 20 years. When I used to do casual supply, I didn't mind a day on the fields in PE if I was dressed appropriately, and the kit, attitude and options are generally better than they were.

Yes! Also went to an all girls school. PE was hideous. I really hope, for the sake of my DDs that things have changed. I was 'useless' at PE at school. Hated it. 20 years after leaving I've run the London Marathon and exercise most days.

yes! went to an all girls school, 2 horrible female PE teachers, always made us wear short hockey skirts whatever the activity including running along pavements. The skirts were very short, some of us, myself included were overweight teenagers and I was always made to be the goalkeeper in hockey because I (being nicknamed Walrus) was apparently big enough to block it. Was also made to do shot put and discus as was big. Hated PE. Now I exercise all the time, I run half marathons, do body pump, body combat, body step, body balance, hips bums & tums classes, always out walking dog as well as walking those at the local dog rescue. Get twitchy when I can't exercise.
PE was just humilation as I recall. Horrible horrible!

Secondary PE was pretty much an exercise in humiliation and hanging around. Communal changing rooms, Queen Bees getting to pick teams, PE skirts and knickers and waiting in the cold.

Now I work out at least twice a week, either gym, classes or parkrun. No team sports but I might try them when the dc's are older.

I was average at PE up to year 9 but the PE teachers vey much had favourites and I wasn't one! Year 9 I suffered a bad knee injury (playing rounders for the school!) and year 10 I had glandular fever so I did very little PE the last 3 years and when I did I struggled. Looking back the way I was treated by the PE staff would be very much frowned upon now (getting up in my face in front of the whole year calling me a liar etc). I learnt to hate exercise thanksto them.

Fast forward 17 years and I have just ran my first half marathon. One of the teachers still works at the school and a public footpath runs through it near the sports pitch - it takes every inch of inner strength not to walk past sticking two fingers up to the bitch to her

Meant to say I am short sighted, not diagnosed until adulthood so that can't have helped. Also I really hated the kit - short short skirt so my fat white legs were on show. If I could have worn joggers it would have gone much better

I hated PE, freezing cold on a hockey pitch, open air unheated swimming pool, only best students got nice treatment (all girls school 40 years ago!).

Now I train every day, either swim a mile or run 5-10k, sometimes both. Have run 10k races and my first half marathon last year. Love how I am fitter now than ever, exercise is my escape. I guess team or competitive sports were and are not my thing:)

My PE teachers were horrible (and my mum, herself a teacher agreed with this due to their totally negative attitude). I thought I was rubbish at all sport until I did C25K and learnt to run.
9 weeks it took, thats all, and if I'd been taught at 11, the next 30 years I could have been running happily.
Now I've run a marathon, do triathlons, and am very much looking forward to another season of open water swimming.

I wasn't good at PE but our PE teachers were always positive, enthusiastic and encouraging. They also planned PE so that we could try different sports - telling us that they hoped we would find one we liked. This was in the 90s.

I had one very supportive PE teacher but the others were awful. It was a girls school and I have no coordination so things like hockey and lacrosse (bastard game) beyond me. I started senior school overweight and unfit and left it 7 years later the same way.
Bizarrely now aged 47 I find myself fitter than I've ever been in my life. I run, spin, Zumba and do weights. None of which involve balls or teams.

@BertrandRussell like OP, I have also been a teacher.

I love your thread title!

In my school the known asthmatics were actually v sporty as they were properly treated so were on all the school sports teams.

I was unco-ordinated, couldn't catch and got out of breath. I now know I'm hypermobile so my joints hurt and have exercise-induced asthma - I wasn't unfit after all, I just never had a chance. If I'd been bad at maths I'd have had extra support but instead I just got picked last on the team and spent most of PE avoiding it.

Now belatedly trying again with the nice people of FitnessBlender and a lovely supportive physio.