Every society has its own coming-of-age challenge that adolescents of that culture must pass before being accepted as adults. Some African societies force feed adolescent girls to fatten them up for marriage. To progress to manhood in the Amazon’s Satere Mawé tribe you have to wear gloves filled with stinging ants – ants whose sting is 30 times more painful than a wasp’s – for 20 minutes. American children have Middle School.
If your experience was anything like mine, you just had an involuntary shiver go up your spine. During those three short years I got loogies hawked into my hair (bonus points for spatter on my big ol’ plastic ’80s glasses!), sloppy joes dumped in my backpack and, in retrospect the most horrifying thing of all, a lecture on the birth control Norplant from my 12-year-old locker partner. But in the highlight reel of the horror movie that was my middle school, the scene that holds the most Carrie-like prominence is the day I not only threw up but also simultaneously peed myself in front of all my classmates in gym class.
It happened on the day of the dreaded Presidential Fitness Exam. Perhaps you remember it: sit-ups, push-ups, the sit-n-reach, the arm hang and the mile run. Each event had a certain number you had to meet to pass. Winners got an ugly little patch to sew on to something (I think – I never won so I wouldn’t know) and losers got a lifetime of bad self esteem. Well my particular gym teacher that year had an evil streak a mile wide and decided that the only way to pass his P.E. class (or “Phy. Ed.” if you’re Minnesotan) was to pass the Presidential Fitness Exam. (Side note: I always wondered who is this president they kept referring to? While President Obama could probably pass with flying colors, I doubt Bush Sr. – the president during my middle school tenure – could even manage the second half of a sit up without assistance.) Anyhow, being the straight-A student I was, I was horrified at the thought of a stupid gym class ruining my precious 4.0 G.P.A. My downfall every year was the mile run.
Well that year, Senor Satan decided to help me keep my G.P.A. … by chasing me around the track throwing footballs at my head and screaming “MOVE IT HILTON!” while my classmates roared with laughter. Terror stricken and jelly legged, I not only passed the mile run but beat the boys’ time as well – only to ruin my moment of wind-sucking glory by vomiting right on the finish line. And then peeing my blue polyester gym shorts while trying to run off the field to hide. After that I did everything I could to avoid P.E. in school, something I was fairly successful at.
This bad early experience with gym class not only gave me the best “My Most Embarrassing Moment Story” to tell at parties but it also had the unfortunate consequence of making me h-a-t-e running. And volleyball and soccer and basketball and football and pretty much every other team sport I was forced to play with the lone exception of archery. I kicked blue-polyester-butt in archery.
When I met my husband many post-traumatic years later, it took him months just to get me to play a little tennis with him. Despite enjoying dancing and gymnastics and hiking and rock climbing and many other sweaty pursuits I still thought I was a terrible athlete and moreover I hated anything that said “organized exercise.” This fallacy might have persisted had I not had a bunch of pregnancy weight and post-sexual-assault angst to work off. Thankfully I discovered fitness in my mid-twenties and it’s been a love affair ever since – something that one gym teacher came mighty close to ruining.
A new study out says I’m not alone in my middle school reaction, saying that negative interactions with physical education teachers can cause a lifelong hatred of exercise. One woman in the study wrote, “I am a 51-year-old-woman whose childhood experiences with sports, particularly as handled in school, were so negative that even as I write this my hands are sweating and I feel on the verge of tears. I have never experienced the humiliation nor felt the antipathy toward any other aspect of life as I do toward sports.” I feel for her. Even 20 years later I still feel nauseated remembering the gym class that inspired a 100 angst-ridden diary entries.
Fortunately, the converse is also true. If a bad gym teacher or coach can inspire lifelong bad habits, a good teacher is even more powerful. Thankfully there are many P.E. teachers (like our own Turbo Jennie!) who realize the importance of what they are doing and work long and hard to help the vulnerable kids in their care. These teachers do a lot of good and deserve more attention, respect and pay than we currently give them. In a day when childhood obesity is a mounting problem in the U.S. and many other countries it seems imperative to get kids moving. And the best way to get kids active is to help them find an activity they love – something you can’t do by belittling, criticizing or humiliating them. We can no longer afford to treat physical education like a throwaway class, the consequences are simply too severe.
What was your school gym experience like? Did you have a particular physical education teacher who really stood out to you, good or bad? Can anyone top my embarrassing moment??
In Canada (well, at least Ontario for sure), they have this thing called the beep test. Its successively faster beeps and you have to run 10m or something before each beep. I HATED it. I seriously stopped first every single time.
I also hated sports because my parents pushed me into them for the sole purpose of having me lose weight. As a 6-12 yr old child, this is not exactly a great motivator.
Plus, any game that involves a ball usually ends up with me or someone else having an injury (and probably both).
However, I recently played a game called Kin-Ball at a law students conference thing, and it was SO much fun. I'm assuming I liked it because law students tend not to be the most athletic bunch, and because none of us had played before, so no one had an advantage. I included a link below, because it's just awesome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin-Ball
Charlotte you have so many stories that just cannot be topped!
I had an awesome PE teacher up through 6th grade. Good ones really can make a lot of difference!
Unfortunately the first day of 7th grade, looking all cute in my ruffle jean skirt that went to my knees, I forgot to bring gym clothes. The 2 schools in our district combined in 7th and a boy I didn't know thought it was funny to flip up my skirt. When I turned to complain to the teacher, who was standing right there, he said "What are you just going to let him do that, make him stop!" WTF? I got my exercise running from that boy the whole hour while everyone watched and laughed, teacher included. HATED gym!
I loathed PE. Loathed it. I was/am not very coordinated and the weekly cricket, tennis, synchronised swimming classes tormented me. I found every which way to avoid it.
Which is why I was skinny fat for years and years and then just fat. Now I enjoy the feeling after exercising but still avoid team sports.
good lord my gym experience was HORRIBLE.
for your consideration:
I suck at anything which demands coordination.
I still do except now I laugh…and before I could laugh I discovered the meager coordination required by weight training.
My gym teacherS (note the s :)) over the years loved to exploit this fact as for some reason (?) I think that THEY THOUGHT I was f*cking with them and not as wholly uncoordinated as I appeared.
(I shall spare you the rant here but there are studies which show that siblings of the severely learning disabled who are not learning disabled tend to have poorpoor hand/eye coord. I am not the learning disabled one in my fam :))
yada yada yada one example is a teacher who informed me I had to attempt to serve the volleyball over the net…until I GOT aforementioned ball over the net.
42 minutes later I never got the ball over 🙂
ahhh gym class. I didnt heart ye until I learned I could wrangle a dr's not if I made something up about my knees and always throbbing…
My grammar school/middle school gym experience was HORRIBLE. We had this extremely nasty, overweight gym teacher who would make us run laps while she, I swear to God, sat on her a$$ eating. She was a total Nazi about our gym uniform and I was so heavy as a child that even the biggest size was skin tight on me so not only was I uncomfortable because I was forced to run around in front my miserable classmates but I was also STUFFED into my stupid uniform. She would also make us do things like push ups (never modified on the knees — you had to struggle through 25 push ups even if you couldnt do one). We would run laps and we had to stay in the lined order, and of course I was always between two fast boys in line, which meant there would be this huge gap where I was struggling to keep up. It was humiliating. It was so terrible I would cry the night before I had gym and I would feel incredible relief when that horrible class was over and the humiliation was done for another week. And I remember the President's Fitness Test too and I also always failed, especially the pull-up section. PULL UPS!? We all have to be able to do pull ups? You need A LOT of upper body strength for that and they expect a bunch of 12 year olds to all be able to do it? Needless to say, I could not. This terrible gym class left a bad taste in my mouth for exercise for YEARS afterwards. Now that I actualy enjoy working out, I can appreciate even more how utterly STUPID my old gym teacher was and how she could have made it 1. More fun 2. More beneficial to our health 3. Less embarassing 4. Less uncomfortable by investing in better uniforms. Particularly, if I were a gym teacher I would make allowances for students who couldn't perform certain exercises by allowing them to modify it to make it easier. Why should someone feel bad about themselves for not being able to do 100 sit-ups?? Even though I'm fairly fit now, I still can't do more than 5 standard push ups, and I don't think I will ever have the upper body strength to do a pull up. My high school gym class was MUCH better, but I was still scared off from fitness by that horrible grammar/middle school jerk.
Oh God! The parents of the girls in my middle school gym class had to gang up and write a letter to the principal b/c we were all coming home with whelts and bruises from playing kickball in gym class. The boys were pegging us out (hitting us with the ball) as hard as they could and the gym teacher just let them.
I think he got fired a couple of years later b/c he was making the kids jump over a disconnected tether ball rope (with the ball on the end) that he was swinging around the gym. One girl tripped and knocked out a couple of teeth on the gym floor. Eek!
In high school we had a coach who had all of the girls playing touch football during gym (on the football field at least), which was fun until the senior guys on the football team came out to watch us during practice and decided it would be fun to start tackling people. Ouch!
I was always last to be picked for team sports. Always. And then I was put in a position to come in as little contact with the ball as possible, which suited me just fine.
But oh did I shine in the semester we did a gymnastics/yoga unit. I was the somersaulting, head-standing queen. Still am.
That did a little bit to minimize the damage from all the other miserable semesters of PE, but not enough. Took me about 25 years after that to discover that using my body can be FUN.
It wasn't my childhood experience with sports that scarred me. I started playing team sports at about the age of 3 and was a very active child. What scarred me during childhood was the children. Middle school kids can be seriously mean.
It seems to me that PE teachers should have mandatory sensitivity training. I hear too many horror stories like yours.
those stories make me sad! my gym experiences were fine-had pretty good teachers thankfully!
My son has played a couple seasons of baseball and soccer but it is apparent he isn't ready. Each time he wanted to sign-up but I think he is now realizing he isn't as good as the other kids. Don't want to scar him so early!
Initially this study bothered me! It's well known that experiences and examples come in positive, negative, and everything in between. If people want to be a victim their whole life, so be it, but we all have been given this voyage, and I hope we all can create our own positive destiny with it.
I was a victim. Girl with straight 4.0 GPA, 4’10”, under 100 pounds, was told everyone gets an A in PE if they try and always dress out. NEVER forgot my uniform, always participated even though the thought of being humiliated because I could not jump further than I was tall in the long jump made me want to throw up (Presidential Fitness test was not by height or size, but by age), and was rewarded with a C. I passed push ups, sit ups, but high jump and long jump destroyed it. I still remember with horror that that was the only C I ever got in school. Once I changed schools and found out that marching band counted as a PE credit, I joined marching band.
As a parent, petty as it may sound, when my son’s PE teacher called me, concerned that one of my boys just didn’t really try very hard in PE and he wanted me to talk to him about it, I told him I was not worried about PE. I told him if it was math, english, or science I would be more concerned, but PE just isn’t that important. It makes people never want to do anything physical ever again. I mentioned my experience in school and how it has defined my hatred of physical activity and that I will not do that to my child, so if he doesn’t put his all into it, then maybe he will be spared my distress. He had no counter argument for that.
For those of you concerned about my children and how they are doing, none are overweight, my daughter is a scuba diver, takes yoga and swimming at college, and took fencing last year. My oldest child is married with a child, and likes to play in the park with his little girl and walks or bikes to work. My middle son is on his way to Eagle Scout and loves the outdoors, and my youngest is working toward his black belt in TKD. You know how TV killed the radio star? Well, PE killed my desire for physical activity, but I saved my kids. By the way, the one the teacher called about is my youngest, and he is the one in TKD now, and loving it.
I do NOT support minimum standard requirements for PE. It is inhumane. It is not judged on an individual basis, but is a set of guidelines based on average size and gender. Those who are smaller than average suffer because of it.
We had the Canada Fitness Test (this wold have been in the 70s/early 80s) and we at least had the chance at either a bronze, silver or gold ugly patch. The most I could ever aspire to was the bronze.
There aren't really any stand-out moments, but I hated Phys-Ed class and dropped it as soon as I was no longer required to take it. And yes, I was convinced that I hated exercise, and that I was a total wimp, until my mid-20's.
I do have one good memory of my Phys-Ed teacher in junior high. We were doing a class on gymnastics and one of the things we were supposed to do was a reverse plank like pose where you were supposed to hold your body in a straight line, balanced on feet and hands, and the teacher pointed me out as a good example of how to do it. I can't help but feel that she must have waited for a long time to actually see me doing something well in class. Too bad they didn't offer yoga as an option for a Phys-Ed credit.
My horrifying gym moments came in high school. On the first day of my freshman year, the new PE teacher (who happened to be a football coach) made us all run sprints for an hour. I was in a denim skirt and sandals…
I spent most of my time, trying not to expose myself to my classmates and afterwards had hideous blisters on my feet.
I will never, ever forget my humiliation in PE. Why do teachers ask two popular girls pick who they want on their team I was always the last one one standing there. God how awful. To this day I can’t forget that feeling.
omg! i don't think that story can be topped! i've never had a bad PE experience and all my teachers were really great — well weren't mean and heinous in any case. still i didn't really like gym because i was active on my own and own various sports teams(esp in high school when i loathed gym)
All of my gym teachers were bad. Most especially the Varsity football coach my freshman year; he had been demoted and assigned to freshman P.E. after doing something incredibly stupid. Horrible experience.
Avoided whenever possible. Paying for it now.
-Joshua
I HATED gym class from elementary through high school. I am not very coordinated, so most team sports were really hard for me, not to mention I was overweight as a child, so exercise was hard, too. I always finished last in the mile run for the president's fitness test.
Thankfully, when I was 18, our doctor suggested my mom and I lose weight together, so we hired a wonderful personal trainer who got us into exercising in the privacy of our home. Then I discovered workout videos, got over my fear of going to the gym, and now work out almost every day.
PE programs have changed a lot since we were kids (if the school even offers PE)– I actually taught an intro to PE college course, and now the "New PE" is suppose to be much better for children's self esteem.
Can't top the story but can relate the grades thing. I was skinny and short and stunk at gym. I recall in 6th grade getting straight As except for a D in gym – I refused to change my socks so they deducted for that each gym class. Thankfully (huh?) I blew my knee out in 7th grade and pretty much got a gym pass after that. I got to watch, keep score, be the manager of the volleyball team in HS – stuff like that (btw – blew my knee out when a friend? decided to trip me while I was walking up to ask the teacher a question to make me look stupid, instead, I launched in the air, landed on my knee and did unmentionable damage that is mostly still there 3 operations later – gotta love middle school).
With my daughters, we started them in sports early and thankfully, one is decent at sports and the other takes after my husband and can excel at anything she wants to (is is mean to grrr at my own daughter?). For my eldest, she tries really hard but is just so sensitive. She almost quit volleyball this year because of a terrible coach – during a game he told them that they sucked – nice way to motivate a bunch of teenage girls! I made my husband go talk to him – have found that coaches, teachers, administrators listen much better to Dads than to Moms. He told my husband that we were wrong and that his techniques work (this is the first year that he has coached girls and we are hoping his last). I have challenged my daughter to stick with vball and hopefully become a coach someday so that she can turn this negative into a positive.
I have just gotten into tennis the last few years, for me, not even being exposed to sports past 7th grade plus my bad knee really affected me. I do love running and weight training and am so thankfully that I married a health nut who encourages me to get and stay fit.
I totally feel for your experience. I never had anything that embarrassing, but I hated every minute of gym. I could not hit the ball in softball, dodgeball was horrifying and basketball was a mess. And the Presidential exam? I walked my mile as a big screw you to the gym teacher. Luckily I still passed gym!
Now my kids are doing such varied activities in gym that seem to have something for everyone. They do floor hockey, basketball, etc, but also yoga, jump rope and other activities. I hope that this continues so kids really start to feel like there is something they can be good at.
Oh, and the thought of communal showers in high school traumatized me for a few good years.
Those state physical fitness tests were terrible! It was just great to hang from a bar while the whole class just stares at you for 60 looong seconds because you cant do one pull up. It didn't help that the gym teacher was a macho Magnum PI wannabe who had no sympathy for the less than athletically inclined. I hated middle school gym so much I picked my high school based on the fact that it had modern dance/yoga instead of sports to meet the state phys ed requirements. I love to work out but I still stay far far away from sports.
I enjoyed gym well enough all through school – and did choose it as one of my optional courses through high school. Our teacher was pretty cool, although the jock males always got higher marks than the girls, even if we were also on sports teams and worked hard. I guess his reasoning was that their skills were better than ours.
So, when we did cross-country skiing in grade 12, and myself and my friend (who had been skiing all our lives) discussed this situation and I approached the teacher and informed him that we had better get higher marks on that segment of the course than the jocks, who couldn't stay upright! No, I'm not too shy 🙂 He agreed completely that we showed the highest level of skill and we aced it.
Jennifer (in Newfoundland)
The president of the physical fitness tests fame is John F. Kennedy. I know – I was in elementary school when he was president and those dastardly things started.
Thanks to him, Jack LaLanne on TV, and ex-Marine gym teachers in elementary school in the 1960's there was a whole generation of people who learned to hate gym class. We never did anything that wasn't geared towards that fitness test – no games, no sports. Our school didn't own any gym equipment except for a pommel horse, pull-up bar, and a rope attached to the gym's ceiling.
If anyone tells me today to do a jumping jack I would probably pull a knife on him.
I disliked school gym class, but I think primarily due to the teasing of the more athletic students. I think my hatred of organized-sports came more from a demeaning swim coach. It doesn't get much worse than being ripped apart by a coach while wearing nothing more than a swimsuit!
I had to take two gym classes during my senior year of HS to fulfill graduation requirements. Which means I had to do the Fitness Test twice in one day. Somehow I got an A in one class and a B in the other???
I am so sorry that happened to you! I had wonderful P.E. experiences beginning with my first grade teacher Mrs. Ward. She was super old to me (probably in her seventies, but it seemed like she was 110), but she played with us. She would play tag and red rover-she just jumped right in with us. She fell & skinned her knee once which was fairly catastrophic because she didn't have a whole lot of flesh to cushion. We could see her bone… but she cleaned it up and came right back. Eleven years later, she was still playing tag when my little sister had her for first grade. Thanks Mrs Ward!
Yikes1 I can't believe he threw footballs at you while you were running! My moment isn't really an embarrassment, just a mean teacher. In 6th grade, we were walking back to the portables and some boys were goofing off and ran into the back of me. I fell on my side and when I got up my arm was throbbing and I was crying. Told our gym teacher who told me to quit boo-hooing and line up. Yeah, my shoulder was dislocated. My mom momma-beared his ass and I got a formal apology 😉
Let me just give Middle School You a hug, first.
OK. I HATED gym all through elementary and middle school. Our elementary school gym teacher had a big, booming voice and a large adam's apple, and he scared me. It wasn't his fault. He wasn't mean, just loud.
In high school we had a female gym teacher who was GREAT! She taught us aerobics (it was the late 80's) and took us into the locker room to show us a movie about AIDS prevention, asking us to please not tell anyone she was doing so because she'd be fired if the administrators found out. (Again, this was the 80's.)
I think the reason I hated gym class and never got anything from it was because gym teachers never explained how to do anything or worked to actually improve skills. I remember the first time I played basketball–I was 7, and it was in gym class. I got chewed out by my teammates and by the teacher for traveling. I had never seen a basketball game, no one had told me any of the rules, and never played before. Dribbling was hard (bad eye-hand coordination aside, no one showed me how to do it or did any drills before throwing me into the game) so I just ran with the ball a couple of steps and suddenly had ten people shouting at me.
I think gym class is the reason I hate running, too. Every year, K-12, we got throw outside on the track and were told to run around it four times and be back in 10 minutes. No thought to explaining run-walk strategies, no building up endurance. Just–go run a mile, and if you can't do it on the first try, there's something wrong with you. I was a reasonably fit kid, involved in ballet and gymnastics, but I couldn't run a mile or catch ball. I'm trying to learn to like running now, but it's hard to break out of the mindset.
I did have one good gym teacher. He explained the rules of the sports we played, gave us written information, and gave us written tests on them. He did drills to build up basic skills. Best of all, our skill grades were based on improvement, not meeting a universal number. He'd test us on our skills on the first day of the unit and told us he wanted to see a certain amount of improvement on the last day when we'd been practicing for a few weeks. It was the only time I can ever remember liking gym class–and the only time I every remember benefiting from it.
Add me to the hated Phys. Ed. (pronounced fiz-Ed) crew. Moved to a small town in Grade 6 and was the ONLY new kid (which meant I was THE candidate to bully). Not only did gym class consist of a lazy teachers who just sat around while we played murder ball (I swear it wasn't called DODGE ball where we lived, the emphasis was on the holder of the ball to MURDER you) so lots of whipped balls at your head by the boys in a very very small room like gym (so the ball has no chance to slow down as its whipped at you and there are 8 being thrown simultaneously that you have to watch out for). Repeat until class is over.
As for afterschool team sports such as volleyball and basketball, they were filled with my worst bullies… the thought of spending even more time with these ladies scared me.
Fastforward to now, I only practice solo sports and while I have decent mastery of my body, I have no hand-eye coordination whatsover (probably cause most of the sports that develop this are group oriented — except maybe darts — but that doesn't really feel like a workout.)
First-time commenter, I believe! I also had horrible gym experiences all through school because I was the underweight weak kid. So many horrible memories of trying to avoid serving the volleyball and getting caught (never could hit it over the net), standing right by the "out" kids in dodgeball so people would think I was out too, etc. I couldn't jump rope to save my life, either, never mind do a pull up! I don't remember having one nice or encouraging gym teacher, only ones who made me feel more awkward.
I would have never exercised again had I not started yoga with my mom at 18. That gave me confidence to keep on working out, and now I love to be active.
I thought I hated running, too, due to that stupid mile in PE. What in the world makes gym teachers think they can throw kids out there and tell them to run a mile without working up to it??
Also, can someone please explain to me the obsession PE teachers have with volleyball, basketball, and football? Three horrid sports, I say. You've never seen me so happy as the semester we got to do weight training and the semester we went bowling instead.
I thought I hated running, too, due to that stupid mile in PE. What in the world makes gym teachers think they can throw kids out there and tell them to run a mile without working up to it??
Also, can someone please explain to me the obsession PE teachers have with volleyball, basketball, and football? Three horrid sports, I say. You've never seen me so happy as the semester we got to do weight training and the semester we went bowling instead.
I thought I hated running, too, due to that stupid mile in PE. What in the world makes gym teachers think they can throw kids out there and tell them to run a mile without working up to it??
Also, can someone please explain to me the obsession PE teachers have with volleyball, basketball, and football? Three horrid sports, I say. You've never seen me so happy as the semester we got to do weight training and the semester we went bowling instead.
Charlotte, holy cow! Your stories amaze me! I really can't remember bad gym teacher stories. For me, it was my own inferiority along with how mean kids can me. Being fat as a kid, juts getting out in front of other kids & having to do something in those gym, clothes when I know I looked fat was hard. Also, in high school, the whole having to shower before the next class when you are not happy with the way your bod looks. Self imposed BUT as we all know, kids can be cruel when it comes to weight stuff.
Oh Charlotte, I feel you. I, too, was in Junior High during George Bush, Sr's reign. Or whatever. I have so, soooo many bad gym experiences. I remember during the Presidential Fitness Challenge during high school I walked the whole mile. I just didn't give a crap. The teacher, Ms. White, the she-mulletted gym teacher of yore, yelled to me that I wasn't going to pass, that I was in the "unhealthy" zone, blah blah blah blah. Oddly, I'm now training for a half marathon (my second) and it's shocking that my entire gym career didn't permanently ruin me.
Well, except that I refuse to play volleyball, no matter what you do to me. In third grade Leon Akovalas made so much fun of me for not being able to hit, or spike,or serve, that I was forever embarrassed at the thought of even being near a volley ball. Thanks, Leon.
OH lord. That stupid President's Physical Fitness Test = the only time I ever farted out loud in school. Damn stupid sit-ups!!
My PE teacher throughout 4 years of high school was Mrs V. She was the most horrible person I've had to deal with. She'd abuse students until they cried, every class. Then in the showers if she didn't think you'd dried yourself off well enough she'd strip you in front of everyone and dry you herself, whilst yelling abuse and belittling you. She'd rip open the shower curtains and scream "What are you doing in there" at random intervals, or yelling "are you peeing in the shower ?" I was an expert at avoiding PE. I was so bad that my school allowed me to do whatever sports I'd actually do. I ended up doing roller-skating for Sport for about 3 of the 4 years (it was the 80s). We were only supposed to do each one for one term (semester in the US). We used to have one class a week of PE and one afternoon a week of sports.
I've often wondered why PE teachers are allowed to get away with abusing students. If an English or Maths teacher did the same thing they'd be before a disciplinary hearing quick smart.
I hate sports with a passion, won't watch them, won't play them. I also hate gyms, won't go near them. Absolutely hate sit-ups, break out into a sweat thinking about medicine balls, and to this day totally refuse to run.
Thanks for this article, I've never really correlated my hatred of sports to Mrs V, it's food for thought and perhaps the beginning of healing.
Check it out if you like being fit:
http://trainedtoconquer.blogspot.com/
Although my childhood and teenage experience with gym class were never a huge issue, my experience in grade 11 fitness class was at times less than enjoyable. In Ontario in addition to a gym class, a fitness class is offered. The difference between the two classes is gym focuses more on team sports and fitness more on personal fitness goals. However to determine where a student should improve in their fitness, a series of test are preformed a general fitness test (12 minute run, push-ups, sit-ups, flexibility, ect.), the beep test (mentioned in M's post), and lastly a body fat percentage measuring.Whose idea it was to get a bunch of teenage girls to stand in front of their peers and stand on a body fat scale, I'll never know. Like many young girls I was self conscious about my weight, although never over weight I wasn't the smallest in my class. So after freaking out about three weeks before the test and restricting myself, the dreaded day came. I was completely terrified, although the test was fairly private (we all were to busy talking to sneak glances at other girls results), I'll never forget how much I dreaded that day and how uncomfortable I, and everyone else in the class, had been. And while the class taught us so much and we had a great teacher, I have alwasy felt the body fat test was unnecessary.
Hilton…someone force fed me for marriage. Over 25 years ago.
My worst experience would be the presidential fitness b.s. we had to do. I could never get that mile finished under two weeks.
I don't think anyone can top that story. That's traumatic.
I also hated gym class growing up. It's the reason I never stepped foot in an gym until freshman year of college. I think it's safe to say that you're either a jock who likes playing stupid ball games in the middle of the day or you're everyone else. Oh, and I hate, hate, hated that we were forced to change into gym clothes in the middle of the day.
Oh, and why are all gym teacher creepy fat old men?
I loved P.E. (except the running, which is quite ironic now) and was sad when I would have to sit out of some stuff during gymnastics season so I would chance an injury. Honestly, what turned me off serious sports for years was how INTO gymnastics I got and still didn't feel like I was good enough. I just didn't see how I would ever be successful at anything again sport-wise if I didn't dedicate the 30 hours a week to it, so I just didn't bother.
Now, I spend about 6-7 hours per week on fitness pursuits and while I'm just working to beat my own times, it's making me happy.
I hated gym, somewhere around the time it stopped being game playing and started involving activities like climbing a rope that went up the the 50 foot ceiling, dodge ball (I always was good at dodging, bad at hitting and would be the last person left on my team while the entire opposing team bombarded me). Sadly teachers like these are abusers and they should not be tolerated, whether they're teaching gym or English.
WoW Charlotte I'm impressed: Beating the boys' mile time, barfing and peeing all at once- you were multitasking before it was even cool to do so!
I hated PE. I was always the slightly chubby, always slow girl who was picked last for every team sport. That alone stings.
It wasn't until several decades later that I realized that I am somewhat coordinated and something of an "athlete"- (in quotes b/c I never said I was good- I just said that I could attempt athletic pursuits).
I wished I had known that I had an inner athlete inside me a long time ago. I may have never had to gain then lose 100 pounds! What a waste!
I remember my gym teacher, Mr. Olshansky in his last year of retirement would just yell at us from his chair. While playing street hockey, one of the "fat kids" fell and made a thump sound which made Mr. Olshansky promptly yell, "The Titanic has sunk" That asshole is now collecting a big fat pension. I hate sports still to this day and that experience in the 7th grade was 17 years ago.
This is one reason why I LOVE Teresa Tapp! She inspires and gets you to work hard by smiling and saying, “Yes, you can!”
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I had a very nice gym teacher who would allow us to play what we wanted to play (team sports) with WHO we wanted to play with even if we were loners. He would even allow us to listen to music. Then, because there was an imbalance of kids in each class, I was involuntarily switched into a different female teacher’s class. Never in my high school experiences had I received as many bad vibes as I got from her. She forced us to go outside in the heat, which really couldn’t be any better even though the school had no AC. There was no shade whatsoever where we had to run. To top that off, her voice was like nails on chalkboard and no one really favored her as a teacher. I think she disliked me because I was not so much a rebel, but I kept to myself and didn’t need to follow the crowd. I didn’t want nor need to play by the rules either.