Do you hate out adventure activities?

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I run an outdoor centre which is primarily for young people. The sort of place schools book in to for a week and the young people do climbing, mountain walks, canoeing and bushcraft etc.

The culture of outdoor activities such as rock climbing, mountaineering and paddle sports has traditionally been male dominated. Participation has traditionally been male dominated. British Canoeing’s web site and Mountain Training’s website have loads of figures about this. There is research… but no one seems to ask the women who don’t engage, or who got put off for some reason at a young age.

I want the activities my centre runs to be as appealing as possible and for the young people to have the best time.

Where do outdoor centres etc go wrong?

I am interested to hear from women who don’t like outdoor adventure activities. What was it that put you off them? What is it that means they aren’t something you would do as an adult?

I don’t think I am unreasonable to think there is a problem in my industry.

If your DC didn’t like their school residential, why didn’t it work for them?

Good idea or wearing an older pair with a strap

The horror and humiliation of games lessons in the 1980s / 90s did for me, as for some PP. Teachers who had no idea how to motivate or engage the non sporty, and didn't try. It took until I was in my late thirties to discover I actually liked some physical activity and am now fairly fit. I don't do team sports though.
I am not a huge fan of being cold / uncomfortable, and I am small and fairly cack handed and struggle with spatial awareness type tasks. None of which disposes me towards the sort of stuff offered by an outdoor activity centre.

Sunburn
motion sickness
not a fan of dirt and bugs

fear isn’t something that holds appeal as a recreational pursuit

When I was a young teen we had the week from hell at a local field centre. Hopefully things are different now. It was more than 45 years ago but I can remember every bit of it. The lack of privacy. It had originally been a TB hospital so the plumbing was Victorian. Whatever you put in the toilet went along a drain across the floor. The drain was very long and covered with a decorative grill. It meant that if you pooed /flushed a sanitary product it was clearly visible floating along the drain in front of all the other people in the toilet block. My bum clamped shut for the entire week and I prayed and prayed that my period wouldn't come . The food was vile. The drying rooms didn't dry anything and the cool kids thought it was funny to dump other people's stuff into the water filled trough below, so you put wet kit on every day. If you struggled to get wet stuff on you were laughed at.The female teacher who took us was vile, utterly vile. It was physical stuff all day every day. If you didn't join in you were laughed at. If you did join in and were not up to the standard of the sporty kids you were laughed at. The male instructors liked the pretty girls and gave them lots of attention. Those of us who were spotty and awkward and plain were invisible. We weren't allowed to be in friendship groups. They put us in groups of their choosing. Day 1 I was with the 2 girls who bullied me mercilessly through secondary school. Day 2 put with the cool , macho boys who couldn't have look more appalled if they'd tried. I didn't speak for the entire day, I just wanted it to be over. My mother thought it was character building. It put me off outdoor activities until I had my own children. I hope things are different but I bet a lot of the things above are just the same as they ever were.

You are my twin. I could have written exactly this.

And mine

I don't know if someone's mentioned it on here or not but it was often Sod's Law that this kind of activity would always occur when my period was happening. Feeling like there were good shower facilities, privacy in those places and so on would maybe make a difference. I loved these activities when I was younger but you could feel stuck in the middle of nowhere sometimes. Not an issue for everyone but was for me as a teenager sometimes.

Oh I see someone else has said this. So there's at least two of us.

It was also often the case that people who ran these activities often couldn't understand why some people didn't also love it. I did love it but wasn't naturally brilliant. Some of my school friends were very uncomfortable

This is the same for me - i have no desire to 'achieve' something like this, but i do love boats and the sea.
In general i would much prefer a national trust type property ,a gorgeous garden or a garden centre to explore in any precious spare time i have.
My 2 sons have enjoyed outdoor adventure when younger and my daughter is quite keen to have a go ie school trips etc ,but none of them have ever asked to pursue them regularly.

Yes it's all about getting everyone to join in - In theory. In practice it's giving attention to those who get in the school team to win cups and make the school look good 🤷🏻‍♀️

Nice changing facilities - heated floors, roomy cubicles with hooks and a bench, showers that are not push button, warm ambient temperature, etc.

Cosy space for afterwards - wood burning stove, comfortable sofas, excellent coffee, etc.

Opportunities advertised for the unfit. Gentle options - I am not fit enough to do much but I don't want to 'push' myself!

I absolutely love doing activities and always enjoyed residentials as a young person; however, there were always a couple of issues that caused stress and for me those were the toilet situation and periods. I absolutely hate having to do a wild wee and still have never got the hang of it even though I'm a geologist and sometimes have to be out on a mountain all day. When I was a teenager I didn't use tampons so if my period coincided with an activity weekend I wouldn't be able to partake in any water based activity which was gutting. These days I'd just use a tampon and that wound be fine so maybe education could assist with that. Other things I hated where using smelly damp clothes and not being able to dry things out properly.

I can only say that this kind of thing wasn't offered when I was a teen and didn't even think about this as an adult apart from the odd occassion going kayaking or ziplining.

I am also wearing glasses with high prescription, can't wear contacts and can't afford to replace them when they break.

DD is 15, started scouting at 10 and is now an Explorer. She loves these things but, it's not a lot of fun when the gear doesn't fit and you have E cup size breast, you can't change in the open, you have your period and even with decent swimwear nowadays, it's not the same.

Luckily her senior Explorer leader is female. She knows where to go, what to arrange for the girls in the group and takes their issues very serious. She herself was stuck without proper provision on a camp herself and hated it.

DD was a week in the Lake District last August, a week of watersport and absolutely enjoyed it. And the main reason - the organisation took females into account, had instructors who were supportive and not making jokes about some of them (incl. boys) being hesitant and - the important bit - offered proper changing facilities for both sexes with lots of hot showers.

I’m getting on for as sporty as they come, but I do loathe things my other half enjoys because the changing and toilet facilities are damp/freezing/bordering uninhabitable. If it’s cold and wet outside you can bet I am now wearing a lot of cold and wet clothing, and if I have to then take that clothing off even a little bit in a portaloo to go for a wee it puts me off that activity even though I love the actual sporting bit, the boys don’t have to strip off nearly as much for a quick wee. I get that permanent facilities are harder to implement but so many of my winter outdoor activities are hosted by posh schools or leisure centres who then prohibit post event access to the muddy dirty participants leaving you with temporary outdoor facilities in December, or where they do have permanent facilities they are unheated so may as well just be a portaloo but happen to be a brick outbuilding instead.

Being cold and wet. Having somewhere warm and comfortable between activities to recuperate would be ace. Also, not a full program of 'active' activities. Some outdoor time that's not physically strenuous (building a fire, a leisurely walk with interesting sights, collecting wild berries) . I loved the adventure stuff as a kid but the exhaustion was off-putting to 'putting myself out there' and really going for it.

I'm a teacher who's taken many year six cohorts on trips to these sorts of places. As previous posters have said (though I haven't read the whole thread) feelings of embarrassment and awkwardness over their body plays a big part in girls' reluctance to take part. I also find that girls respond well to female instructors.

However the main thing in my experience that puts off some girls from (sometimes) enjoying the experience as much as the boys is too much focus on competition. So often I've seen girls who were perfectly up for and enthusiastic about an activity - say, climbing - get put off when the instructors introduce a competitive element. The focus then turns from challenging yourself, learning a new skill etc, to being the best and beating others. Girls who may not be the most athletic or naturally skilled in the activity become self-conscious because the focus is on how competent they are - which is even worse if in teams and their performance is likely to make their team lose.

I'm a volunteer with a fb based female only adventure group. We arrange all sorts of activities from hour long picnic walks, sup, indoor climbing, wild swimming , archery, day hikes etc. So the answers here are really interesting.

For anyone who'd like to have a go at any of these activities in a female oǹly, non competitive way there are several groups about (we're called Love Her Wild if that's allowed)

I'm risk adverse, so I'm scared of much of it and I don't get a thrill out of being scared.

I accept it's a generalisation and there will be exceptions, but I think enjoying risk (or not) is one of the key differences between men and women.

I do love outdoor adventures that aren't scary, so survival skills, camping, hiking, tracking, nature studies etc, but I don't enjoy anything with heights or being on water involved.

Love her wild

To join the Facebook group answer the question

"Do you identify as a woman or none binary ?"

So men included ?

Reading this thread has brought back memories of a work outing where one of the men I was grouped with moaned the entire time that he got stuck with someone as uncoordinated and unskilled as me in his group. It was a 2 hour competitive activity and he was actively hostile the entire time. I did my best to ignore him and just have fun, but it absolutely ruined the outing.

I am always going to be the worst at a sporting activity. We could have had an art activity. I would have done great at that, but the sporty people would complain to no end if the team building exercise was painting a mural or making a sculpture.

Oh yes I hate it. I’m not particularly strong, sporty or coordinated so I’m just quite rubbish at that sort of thing. Inside a hall is bad enough but outside is worse. Just all quite unenjoyable for me (I fully get that many people feel differently).

I can imagine my DS will also hate it but it might be just the thing for DD. It’s a personality thing probably.

I remember having to do an outside outward bound thing for work once and I just hated every moment. I cried in the loos a few times.

An issue I have is hair.

You need your hair back/ up for activities. So ordinarily I'd put it in a high ponytail. But they doesn't work with the hard hats etc you need for these activities.

So I have to put my hair in low pigtails and look like a 6yo! It's a bit embarrassing.

Then there's the physical strength. Kayaks are really heavy!

These things often assume an upper body strength I just don't have. I can't hold my weight on my arms for even one second.

But I'd actually really like to do more.

Also there's childcare. You can't take young kids so unless you have a babysitter you can't go.

It's cold and wet and I'm no good at those sort of things. I once tried kayaking in Turkey (so not cold) and managed to get the kayak wedged horizontally across the river. I remember the instructor staring at it in bafflement and saying "I've no idea how you managed to do that." Eventually DH and I fell so far behind that they had to send a rescue boat back for us to give us a tow the rest of the way.

I will say that DD, who is very like me in that respect, actually ended up enjoying her residential because of the support and encouragement she was given by the rest of the group. They were totally on her side and cheered on the whole time.

I really love all types of outdoor adventurey stuff despite on paper not being the right type - i.e. chubby and unfit.

I agree with everyone else, a lot of it is about facilities, weather, clothing etc.

The first time I tried paddleboarding was in a river in the UK and it was quite cold. I wasn't a fan - a mixture of big boobs, life jacket, and wetsuit multiple strangers had worn before me meant I looked like a sausage squeezed into its casing, wetsuit didn't fit properly and smelled, I managed to be both hot and cold at different times, took about half an hour and some undignified wriggling to get in and out of, couldn't pee in it, and meant I had no flexibility, or stretch when I fell off and tried to get back on the board. When we finished the showers were cold and communal so had to sit wet and a bit smelly until I got home.

I tried it again on holiday and loved it. Was in the sea so I was already wet so lost the fear of falling off, comfortable in my own clothes, was lovely and warm, and when I did fall off because I was just wearing my swimsuit got back on easily. Turns out I'm actually pretty good at it and now have my own board. However if I'd let my first experience put me off I'd never have known that.