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, handed in excuse notes as often as I could get dm or dsis to write one. I was hopeless at it and there was no encouragement only mockery. My dd's hated it as well so I wrote them notes whenever they wanted tbh. We all exercise regularly now but not competitively which makes it enjoyable.

Hated it. I have hypermobility syndrome (only diagnosed at 18) so I was rubbish at everything but gymnastics and trampolining, and most other activities just left me in pain. I was also an early developer so exercise was just downright uncomfortable in the days before proper sports bras. At the age of 14 I just refused to participate any more. They couldn’t force me. I didn’t do anything remotely sporty for the next 20 years.

There is absolutely no other subject in school where the teachers would get away with so little teaching and with such shitty behaviour to less able learners.

My favourite memory of PE was when the doctor signed me off for a whole year because of bad knees!!

I hated rounders and always volunteered to be a fielder and then milled about at the back of the field....then didn't ever bother swap, there was no point anyway as I've never managed to hit a ball with any kind of bat

I liked netball but never got to play properly as the sporty/popular girls always the best positions. Same with hockey, I liked it but never got to be in on the action.

And swimming in the last year of primary school, that was just incredibly awkward, I was the only one to be wearing a bra and started periods....we had to line up by the pool in the public swimming pool in just swimsuits (not allowed to take towels poolside) and wait our turn to get in. I was mortified and tried to cover my chest the whole time.

I hated cross country running too, running through the town in PE kit carrying a hockey stick, wearing football boots....we looked ridiculous! I only did that a few times though!

Hated PE for all of the reasons quoted above (and I will never understand why all the indoor sports were only available in summer whilst we had to chase balls in the fucking snow in winter....the feeling of the ball reverberating off your hockey stick into your numb hands (or the netball bouncing off your frostbitten fingers) was excruciating).

Highlight of my PE career was throwing up on the sports teacher when she didn't believe I was ill

I still reckon you have to pass some sort of psychopathy test to be a sports teacher.

I loved pe. I didn't have to do written work

Yes we had the communal showers although I don't remember any teachers enforcing it beyond y7. We also had the gym knickers and netball skirts, not great on thunder thighs me. And the dreaded bleep test. I used to stay in until the smokers had dropped out then drop out, gasping for air! Ritual humiliation, nothing less! The best year was the year I was in the bottom group, which was mixed sex. Funnily enough we all had a great time - we were all as crap as each other so the pressure was off and we just had a laugh.

I really hope schools have rethought their PE teaching these day. When you read all these posts (and my experience was not much better), it's not hard to see why so many women are reluctant to exercise. I only learned to enjoy physical activity when i started doing it just for me and not as part of a team. I can't throw or catch a ball for toffee and I was always a slow runner (the shame of the only nice PE teacher cheering me really hard as I came in last on the 1500m. She meant well but I just wanted to disappear). Most PE is based around team sports, presumably as it's the most obvious and straightforward way to organise a class full. I'm not saying all team sports should be banned in schools, just that a wider range of options given. If I had found something I enjoyed doing earlier on in life I don't think I would have had the confidence and weight issues that plagued me in my 20s. It was only as I approached 30 that I began to discover running, the gym and fitness classes, hiking etc and the weight came off and I felt tons more confident.

I really hope that the two sadistic PE teachers that tormented me and my class mates are burning in their own corner of hell. For eternity.

DH's memory: having his arm broken when the PE teacher kicked the sodden leather football at him.
He was then forced to continue playing while holding his broken arm.
Unsurprisingly he still hates sports 50 years later.

We had to have a shower in an open cubicle with about 6 showers in a row & the teacher used to rip your towel off and shove us in. The changing rooms were at the boys school & were portacabins & had daddy long legs crawling everywhere.
We were also forced to do dance for a lesson a week. Hated it 🥺

The only thing I liked was trampoline which I took out of school too and was damn good at but we hardly got to use it.

Hate ball games/team sports... I always got picked last and didn't understand most of the rules. And I was a chubby kid until year ten so was self conscious. If I'd been allowed to wear trousers rather than shorts I think I'd have tried more.

Out of school though I did all sorts like assault courses (held the teen record for the course in my village for over ages), horse riding and gymnastics.

I
Could have excelled at long distance running.
I am dyspraxic and can't throw or
Catch.
Instead I recall my pe teacher dragging me across hurdles which terrified me.
I recall ridicule and embarrassment.

I can run distance. They should have let me do that.
Pe put me off sports for life. I'm 47 now and won't do a class or group sport.

On my first day I went to join the netball club which was something I’d chatted to my mum excitedly about.

The PE teacher lined us up and said “who’s played before?”. So a bunch of girls stepped forward and they were the team. None of the rest of us even got a trial.

Being made to walk a quarter of a mile along a busy road in our regulation navy pants with loads of cars going past to get to the sports field.

Loved it all
Even the stiff pe tops, nylon knickers and I loved my pleated name embroidered pe skirt.

But I was very able and was usually the captain choosing the team.

These stories are awful though.
Our teachers were quite nice, changing rooms were fine, no nakedness, no-one got in the shower! and no bullying

I hated PE throughout school.

What was worse was at secondary school, you had the joys of cross country, athletics with a 1500 m run, competitive netball, tennis & hockey. I really didn't get on with it at all.

The only two sports I was vaguely good at was orienteering & some kind of running where it was in short bursts.

I remember forgetting my PE knickers, which is all we wore with a white top to go running on public roads, my punishment was to run in the knickers I had on. My parents went a bit loopy at that.

Some bits were ok but most of the time I hated it!

Loved it despite all of the above. I possibly need to consider the fact that I may be a masochist. I'm a bit of a "have a go" hero though. I wasn't brilliant at anything but usually scraped into the B team which had the added advantage of not getting beaten up by the bullies as they were generally also in the B team and even they had the grace to realise that you couldn't really stand in the netball circle next to someone you just punched in the tits. I was good at athletics (track) but we only did that once a year on sports day.