PE - did it promote a life long love of sport or was it ritual torture?

[LuckyMum96]

Just that really, for me it was mixed - too much PE was focussed on the school teams though and not enough on general exercise and activity

My PE kit was stolen in year 9. My mum refused to replace it as I had followed the rules regarding kit storage and money was tight at home. School said unfortunately I would be unable to participate without a kit and would have to write lines in the library instead! Result! I missed PE for an entire term as my mum refused to back down. She knew I hated PE anyway. Eventually school grudgingly issued me a kit from the uniform shop and the weekly torment resumed. I was injured to the point that I needed A and E during PE and it was just a hotbed of bullying and self esteem destruction, I loathed it and it put me off exercise for years.

Torture.
Forced to complete a lesson with a broken toe.
Forced to complete cross country with a mild chest infection and a note from home excusing me.
Not encouraged when I actually found a sport I Iiked because i wasn't one of the favourites.
It took me until my 30s to re-discover fitness on my own terms. I now do 45 minutes of cardio 4 times a week and feel great.
My PE teacher was a sadistic cunt.

Over 20 years ago now, loved PE in primary and I enjoyed some aspects of PE in High School however when you're against a wing defense who is 2 ft taller than you and just as broad and their entire team is made up of the popular girls who are all mates, mostly with a bad attitude, then what's the point. You'd be guaranteed untold grief if you stepped out of line if they saw fit, humiliated and ridiculed along the way afterwards. Why it was too much trouble for the teacher to pick the teams was a mystery.

Cross Country was once a year so not too awful. I enjoyed badminton the most because I could play with my mate. Oh and the running test, can't remember what it was called but I came 2nd so, yay. Thankfully we didn't have to shower. If you forgot your kit then you wrote lines for the entire lesson, some girls never had their kit and missed every single lesson.

My High school was shite and was demolished eventually.

Hated it! Felt really self conscious, was always last. I have very flat feet and issues with my knees so not designed to move at speed. Hated team sports in particular as always felt I’d ‘let the side down’.

I now love exercise, especially running (the irony!) still hate team sports.

I can’t think of another subject in which it’s totally obvious to all the other students if you’re less able than them?

My kids' PE teacher is a torturer who belongs in the 1970s PE lessons. Cruelly humiliated my dyspraxic dc. Really sad. Don't know how people like this keep their jobs.

You only need to look at the C25K threads here. They always start "I'm not a runner" yet within a few weeks people who view themselves as not sporty have managed to train themselves to run 5k, and most of us would agree we are probably a whole lot less fit than we were at school.

Gentle gradual training reaps rewards far more quickly than shouting at people in a field to try harder.

The lack of actual teaching by PE teachers (in my day at least) is a disgrace.

My school PE lessons were a ritual of torture and humiliation. Especially at secondary school.

There was far too much emphasis on team sports, with the two best in the year being allowed to pick their own team members from the rest of us. Every single lesson, and itt was always the same two or three of us who were not wanted and last to be picked.

I also hated competitive team sports because I was one of the weaker links in the team. I would have been far more suited to a personalised cardiovascular workout regime in the gym that I could enjoy and do just for me. That wasn't available though and we were all told that if we couldn't play sports well as part of a team then we would be useless in later life. All bollocks, but it had a big effect on many of us who were less than sporty.

Hockey and netball in the freezing cold and snow in just skimpy t-shirt and shorts/gym knickers were normal, as was the dreaded cross country running.

Afterwards we were given hardly any time to change back into our school uniform, plus the dreaded communal showers where you had to strip off naked in front of everyone to walk through the showers, which usually only ran cold.

If not fully dressed in the (literally) 30 seconds we had left after that then we would be turned out of the changing rooms in just pants and socks, struggling like mad to get our school blouses, skirts and jumpers on while the rest of the school were running around.

Apparently it was "character building" for us. I gave it up as soon as I could get away with it. We weren't supposed to, but during my public exam years it simply didn't creep onto my timetable and the school didn't spot the error (theirs) until I was just about to go on study leave. By then it was too late, but I certainly hadn't been minded to point it out to them during that time. 😉

I have no fond memories of secondary school PE lessons at all.

I didn't like PE but it wasn't humiliation and torture, my worst subject was maths.

Humiliation and torture. As a result, I was almost 40 before I started getting fit, which is what PE should be about.

My worst experience was when my PE teacher was a former Olympic gymnast (can't remember which Eastern European country) and the only sport she believed in was gymnastics. I have an inner ear problem, meaning even just walking along a bench is complicated (I've only recently found out this was the reason). Boy did she hate me for being crap at her sport!

I'm actually quite good at certain sports. I just never got the chance to find out

I remember doing cross country in a hailstorm, dressed in an airtex, cotton rugby shirt, PE skirt and pants and football boots. I can’t imagine a less suitable outfit to do a run in anyway, let alone in vile weather like that! Ironically I am now a very keen trail runner who goes out all year in just about any weather - but wearing long tights, proper trainers, hat, gloves, and a decent top. And I now know how to pace myself, which was never even mentioned at school - they didn’t even tell us how far the run was. I mean, no wonder people were put off.

I don’t know how they keep their jobs either, ours were pig ignorant too. If they took PE out of the curriculum would anyone even notice?.

Dh knew an ex-army trainer who said if he didn’t make at least one soldier vomit after a session he wasn’t doing his job right 🙄.

My DD is as clumsy and poor sighted as me. She is 15 and still finds PE to be torture. Not quite to the communal shower gym skirt extent of the 80s.

They do the bleep test now to assess them. She runs about as well as a one legged duck.

Hated it. Was more of a popularity contest when the mean girls got to choose their team. And will never forget the humiliation of trying to learn to swim in front of the whole class.

Are there any PE or PT trainers here?
Only if my academic career turned to shit I was thinking of re-training as a PT specializing in women and girls turned off by exercise.

For me, I am a physical person despite not because of PE.

I was fat and couldn’t see and hated school games. Everything was competitive and, as I unwisely told the PE teacher, I couldn’t care less who won.
If I’d had to bare my body in showers I would certainly have killed myself.

Torture. The teacher would always pick the same people in the class to choose the teams and I was always chosen last. It was just a humiliation every week.

Torture. I was very gangly and am very uncoordinated. I have no competitive urge, I don’t care who is winning at anything, I literally cannot imagine the sensation of wanting to win at anything.

What sportsy people don’t understand is the physiology and psychology of people whose happy place is curled up with a book. Like, I want to be slim and fit but the mental contortion I have to do to get towards moving - I’m not lazy, I’m just not at all rewarded by the physical movement of sport.

I’m relieved there’s more emphasis put on walking for fitness these days. I bet many people at last feel included 😂

@derxa

This was normal in the 60s/70s. Not really

It absolutely was normal in the 70s and 80s. You either loved PE or you were extremely lucky.

For those of you who wrote that you 'loved' school sport Ok I'll answer
Do you think that you were in one of the (apparently) few schools that didn't humiliate people
The teachers were strict but they wanted to teach PE
Did most people think like you?
No idea but people generally liked sport especially rugby. The boys teacher was exceptional at teaching and coaching rugby
Or were you basically the teacher's favourite sporty types who got to choose the teams
I was sporty but the teacher didn't like me at all and she did have favourites. However that didn't put me off.
Did you notice all the bullying going on around you?
There weren't any of the horrible incidents as described above. We didn't shower for a start and we didn't wear strange gym kit
Was your sportiness maybe something of a defence mechanism to avoid being picked on?
No I enjoyed sport and that was it.
Small Scottish HIgh School 1970's

It always amazed me that PE teachers have done actual teacher training.

No other subject was "taught" in a way that humiliates children as routine. Other performative subjects such as music and drama show how well ability differences can be managed.

Hope it's different now.

Sport can be fun for everyone. I hated PE. Thought I hated sport until I met a coach with a real passion for sharing the sport with everyone.

I know their are some who hated it, but what about the kids who hated maths / science etc but PE was their thing? All subjects are competitive with someone top of the class, and we all have our thing.

The difference at my school was you didn't get bullied for being good at PE (quite the opposite) but you certainly got bullied for being good at academic subjects.
And even more bullied if you were bad at PE.

Bit of a lose/lose situation for me.

I know their are some who hated it, but what about the kids who hated maths / science etc but PE was their thing? All subjects are competitive with someone top of the class, and we all have our thing.

Such fond memories of Math's Day at school. Having to perform mathematics in front of the whole school. The competition of which School House would win. The anger towards the thick kids who couldn't do long division as quickly as everyone else. Then getting naked in front of peers and teachers to round the day off. Smashing.

AldiIsla

Exactly

@Aldisla yes!

Torture. We didn't have gym pants, instead we all had to buy regulation blue leotards. I swear there was a lesson where the PE teacher picked out a few girls and invited the whole double class to comment on their bodies AND their development , under the guise of showcasing how this leotard really could work for all shapes and sizes and 'grow with us' and was therefore good value. I was picked and luckily got away with just a comment about my knobbly knees (have hated my knees ever since of course).