PE Memories

[amygarden]

DD has confided that she is starting to hate sports because of her secondary PE lessons.

What are people's own memories or experiences - did PE inspire you to love sports and exercise or promote fear and loathing?

Hated it beyond measure. I'm also dyspraxic.

I didn't love it or hate it. I was somewhere in the middle, ability wise.

What I do remember is that it was always competitive, always sports I wasn't very interested in, there was little actual instruction on HOW to do things beyond the rules - tactics and so on, improving technique, that would have been interesting, and the teachers massively favoured those who were really good. Or they ignored people who were blatantly breaking the rules (eg running with ball in hand when we played football...) because "at least they're putting in some effort" when a few people who really hated sport were doing nothing more than walking... as someone who actually did like football, which wasn't a priority at my girls school, that was bloody annoying.

Swimming was ok (we were lucky and had a new shiny indoor pool) but there were very few individual changing cubicles, and there was never enough time to get changed after, even if you used the communal area.

I didn't mind sport, but the actual teaching of it wasn't great. Especially when they let students pick their own teams.

Absolutely hated it and got out of it as much as I could. Yes to the hideous gym knickers and polo shirts and shivering outside while the teachers were warm and cosy. My absolute most loathed time though was the summer as that meant athletics and being short I was useless at it and I could never understand why I was forced to humiliate myself by being made to do the high jump in front of everyone. I was never going to be a high jumper. I didn't mind tennis so me and my friend used to flunk out as early as possible as then they'd let you go outside unsupervised and play tennis instead. until secondary I was actually quite sporty and active (doing things outside school that actually suit short people like skating and dancing) but school PE put me off exercise for life and I've only just started trying to get fit now in my mid-40s. Absolutely hideous.

I'm worried for my also short daughter if things haven't changed as it's bound to be completely humiliating for her too. At the moment she's too young to realise or care that her friends are all much faster then her.

I remember refusing point blank to run the 1500m. I do that as a warm up now.

Sports are good for kids. Really good, as is competition. It builds friendships too.

Ugh, revolting. Rarely did it though, but do have some vague memories and they're almost upsetting even now. It left me reluctant to do any sort of physical activity for a long time, except horse riding which I've always loved. It makes me annoyed because turns out I do in fact like exercising, at a level that suits me, when I'm not being ridiculed.

I found out I have dyspraxia in my late twenties though so it's no wonder I was fucking shit at bloody ball sports.

I was ok at swimming and long distance but no good at ball games and to add to the embarassment i didn't seem to be able to learn the rules so kept doing the wrong thing and looked like an idiot. I was ok at other subjects but something about the teaching of ball games didn't work for me.
Would have helped if I'd had a book about the rules as i think I'd have picked it up better that way than being expected to pick it up while playing.

When i say i was ok at swimming and long distance i mean i was average enough at them that i didn't look as stupid as i did at ball games. Not that i was great at them!

DS has dyspraxia... I suspect the apple has not fallen far from the tree...

Rounders... someone throws a hard object at you, so like any sensible person you duck, then stagger to first post and get declared "out". Where's the exercise in that. By secondary, I sussed out where the right handers and left handers were more likely to hit out to, so I went off "fielding" picking daisies in the far flung corner of the field where the risk of the ball landing was low.

Swimming... I got my 25m badge at adult lessons having failed to get as much as a 10m badge between y2 and y6. I did enjoy splashing in the water, but it took 5 months of 1:1 tution in the waterto show me how to swim rather than yelling and flailing limbs from the side.

Running... I remember the elation of getting to 8 minutes on C25k in my 30s because at school I'd always been crippled up by shin splints from my crap trainers, or stitches or hyperventilating. I was inevitably a lap behind everyone else. I fucked up the relays by running with my team mates.

When doing a skipping race on sports day in front of the whole school and families it is a good idea to actually ask if your 7 year old victims can use a skipping rope.

Tennis... a game where the exercise is skulking off to fetch the ball from the back of the court every time it's hit in your direction. One time in y8 the PE teacher intervened to stop me and my two mates forming our usual left-over trio of inadequacy and sent me off to play against the wall. I was trounced by a fucking wall which without fail bounced the ball back so I had to do the ball retrieval skulk.

Netball... the last to be selected for the team. If there was an odd number I was substitute by default. For some stupid reason if I wasn't disposable, I'd be placed as goal keeper which was spectacularly dumb as I was a foot shorter than the shooters, couldn't catch and was scared of balls. In practice I always got the crap flat balls that couldn't behave properly in remotely competant hands.

Positions I have never held: centre, bowler, back stop, captain.

Bottle green knickers and skirts in all weather. Plain black tracksuit bottoms were permissable in sub-zero temperatures... they weren't avaliable in the leggings dominated in an era of 90s leggings, particularly for a child whose mum had also been hopeless at PE and saw no purpose in providing more than the minimal kit required to avoid detention.

Fortunately the showers had been retired at some point between the late 70s and early 90s.

I was so shit at everything excepting gymnastics and dance that it took the PE teachers 3 years to realise I genuinely was that inept because I did dogedly turn up with kit long after half the class tried to bail out.

Y11 was so much better as the rebuilding was complete and we no longer had to change between drip buckets, and we could use the fitness suite where there was no competition. There was some degree of choice presented which meant I could avoid catching sports.

I run half marathons now because a mobile phone could actually teach me how to run rather than a teacher yelling to run and accuse you of not trying. I can choose comfortable kit for the weather. I get rewarded by medals. My efforts are cheered not ridiculed.

I do suspect dyspraxia. Organisation is not my forte either and I was the worst at PE in the year group by a spectacular margin!

On the whole I loved it (except for cross country and 'dance' which consisted of standing around pretending to be a tree to something like Fleetwood Mac's 'Albatross'. I was quite sporty though, so usually among the first to be picked. I think those who weren't sporty probably had a dreadful time.

Pirates was fun but it was frustrating that the same people always won (those who could climb ropes, which I couldn't).

In the winter, I loved hockey, despite the fact that our clothing was completely inadequate (short skirt, aertex blouse, and canvas boots that used to get very squelchy in the rain). If we complained about being cold, we were told that we weren't running round enough. One particular memory was being in the 5th year (aka year 11) when we had a few hockey games with the boys. I was running for the ball, a boy got to it first and whacked it straight at me. It hit me on the forehead and I saw stars (I hadn't realised until then that people did actually see stars).

In the summer, I loved athletics, except the 1500m and anything that involved throwing. Unfortunately, because I was always in the team when we had matches against other schools, I used to get roped into events I hated, so that even if I came last, we would get a point. I ended up throwing the javelin and discus quite a lot, as well as doing the things I was actually good at (long jump, hurdles, 100m, 200m, 400m and relay).

I also remember teachers making us go into the showers (no curtains) unless we had athletes' foot, a verruca or our period.

I also struggled with switching ends halfway through the game!

From year 7-9 we had to do cross country and athletics in gym knickers then two new female PE teachers started, and clear said "fuck that!" and we got to wear proper shorts instead.

I was actually really sporty - loved PE, played on lots of teams. In my stupid self-obsessed teenager way, it never crossed my mind that others wouldn't enjoy it, or wouldn't be good at it, and it really annoyed me when some of the girls used to sit down and pick daisies instead of fielding properly in rounders.

I'm a nicer adult than I was teenager

Hated it, as did 75% of th rest of the school. The sheer awfulness was compounded by the fact we had to wear "gym Knickers" These were shiny black things with elasticated legs, shorter than shorts and hideous to the nth degree. But it gets worse.. wearing these terrible garments we then had to walk past not one, but two boys schools to reach the playing fields!! And endure the jeers from the teenage boys.

Traumatised for life I tell you..

I hated PE (1970s) with a vengeance. We had navy knickers and a PE tunic which barely covered said knickers, could only wear a thin nylon jumper over them even if the temperature was sub-zero.
I was last to be picked for both netball and hockey - had no idea of the positions or what each should do and no-one explained it. I was fit and agile (horse rider every weekend) so gym with apparatus was fun and running was good as I was fast, but the dread wondering what we were going to do still haunts me.
We had communal showers too.

Loved it. Was always the winner of the beep test.

Went on to teach sports and swimming

Genuinely hated every second. It's the reason I avoided 'organised' exercise in any form until my late 20s

PE late 80s / early 90s. Unfortunately just before sports bras became widely available meaning I was too embarrassed to run anywhere.
So always picked last for teams.
I hated boring team games anyway and hated athletics.
I wanted to do dance or aerobics or gym but our school never did that.
The pe teacher was a bitch & overheard me calling her a bitch but I didn't get in trouble as she knew it was true!
As revenge she got me & a girl called Lorna to jump hurdles in front of a group of 16 year old boys to 'practice' because our technique was crap.
So we went on strike & refused. She couldn't do anything with us & we knew it.
Then I got really ill just before GCSES & got excused pe in the summer term. Amazingly pe teacher bitch was really nice to me when I had to (happily) sit watching the others do pe. How strange.

My recollection is that school PE was designed to put people off exercise. Which is a shame really. As an adult I discovered sporting activities that I actually like!

Hated it. It was truly awful.

The PE teacher would tell me constantly that I wasn’t putting in any effort and that I was stupid. Here’s the thing. I was a straight A student, more or less across the board. At my y8 parents evening this teacher told my mum how awful I was, and that I was stupid, and that I put in zero effort. My mum, who was fairly hands off as far as my education was concerned put her right. Thankfully it worked.

Weirdly though in y9, having endured years of being picked last, I realised I was a pretty good hockey goalie (very fast reaction times) so was actually quite useful. And I was no longer picked last!

Ah yes... playing hockey in fucking sleet, in polo shirts and skorts, whilst the teachers stood around in warm ski-type gear!! Thankfully that game was eventually stopped, but it was ridiculous.

It’s funny how, if you’re bad at any other subject, the teacher usually tries to help you to get better (I remember going to a couple of “maths surgery” type sessions, for example). With PE, teachers cannot be fucked to help you, they only care about the sporty ones/those on school teams.

Yes competitive sport can be good, but it shouldn’t be the entirety of school sports lessons. Kids should be exposed to a variety of activities, not just competitive ones where the super-sporty types are frequently horrible to the non-sporty ones.

Absolutely loathed it.
The ritual humiliation, the sadistic, sarcastic teachers. The cold, the mud, the sheer pointlessness of it.
Then the communal showers, with "Miss" watching.

Apart from the showers, little seems to have changed.

Despite playing multiple sports for years they never actually bothered to teach us the rules. No wonder the majority of us were shit.

Also, cold, wet, and bored. Running in the snow is not character building.

I loved it - favourite lesson of the week. But I loved playing team sports and still do as an adult. Didn't enjoy the odd lesson where we had to do dance or aerobics though. Reading some of the previous posts, sounds like the PE kit has got a lot better than it used to be - and no communal showers either!

Highlight was year 9 when I was overweight, awkward and extremely unpopular.

The teacher screwed up the note my mum had written excusing me because I was having a very heavy period and told me that I would feel better with the exercise. I was told to do it in my uniform because I had no kit.

Within five minutes of the ‘warm up’ which consisted of running round the room, I had a huge haemorrhage and bled all down my leg. There was no sympathy or apology and I had to sit at the side as all the girls giggled.

Spent the rest of my day walking round school trying to hide my bloody sock. God PE put me off sports for a long, long time. I thought I hated exercise but no, I hated PE.

Mrs Taylor was an utter, utter twunt.