PE at school

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How did you fare in PE lessons at school?

As a child just because I hated most team games in PE, it doesn't mean I hated any group games. I remember when I was 10 we done dance in PE for a few weeks and we all had to get into groups of six and make up a dance together for a song. I enjoyed that project, even though I was never good at dancing, but I still found it fun. So, yeah, not liking team games like football wasn't because of lacking social skills, it was more down to shyness and just not liking competitive sports. I didn't always get the rules of those games and other kids would often shout and yell at me if I dithered.

I remember when PE teachers used to yell at you if you brought a note in to excuse you from PE. They'd lecture that PE was a lesson just like any other lesson you do at school. I felt like saying, "well, treat it like a lesson then, and not like a leisure activity." Children shouldn't be forced into competitive team games. It must have been even harder for boys, because they were forced to play really rough games in all kinds of weather, and not all boys like getting dirty. Not all boys are tough.
PE at the primary (elementary school) was easier because if we did play team games it was actually fun, not intimidating.

Overall I wasn't very interested in gym class, with limited exceptions.

I greatly disliked anything that seemed pointless, like jumping jacks, jogging, etc.
I don't remember any creative group games like you describe, but I wouldn't have wanted to participate in anything of that sort.

I didn't mind indoor soccer, basketball, (European) handball or flag football. I preferred indoor soccer because it had 'battling along the boards' like hockey. I had a fairly limited skill set in any of those, but they were enjoyable. We sometimes played 'foot hockey' or football at recess, and generally preferred playing full contact.

Outside of school, I played soccer for two years because my parents signed me up. Not a fan.

I always liked playing floor hockey in gym. I always enjoyed how much the teacher entirely lost control of the agenda.
No bending the blades.
Every single boy was bending a custom curve into the blade, some of the girls too.
No slapshots.
Clappers from halfway across the gym. It didn't matter, those COSOM sticks were too whippy to really transfer much energy.
No hitting.
The boys were laying hitting each other the same way they did during recess.

Even after hockey had long stopped being a special interest, I enjoyed playing it in grade 9 because the people who didn't want to participate were able to not, so they weren't in the way.

I agree with the idea that PE is a lesson, even if I didn't always enjoy it. Sometimes the lesson involves being placed in contexts where competition is part of the meta. Why? Because sometimes life throws you into those situations and you might as well practice in one where the boundaries are easily understood. Learning to compete and to understand the boundaries of a competition are both life skills, just as much as cooking is a life skill.

I don't think it's excessive to introduce kids to a handful of sports on a fundamental level. Not every kid likes math or languages or whatever either, but they don't get to refuse those classes on the basis of preference either. Everyone suffers through one class they like the least and they don't all have the same favourite.

It would be different if you were talking about being forced into participation on a greater level than just what's part of a regular school curriculum, like if they had to join a local sportsball team.

It's just in the other lessons I don't remember the teachers disliking the kids who weren't so good in those lessons. But in PE you could tell that if you wasn't into sports the teacher immediately didn't really like you and sort of made everyone feel they had to love sports. Also in other lessons you didn't have to get changed into a PE kit, which revealed my unshaven legs. I felt sorry for the fat girls who felt self-conscious having to run in front of loads of other kids. Not every fat child chooses to be fat.

I never liked cookery either but it still felt more like a lesson than PE did when we played those team games. PE felt more like a lesson when we done gymnastics or athletics. And as for learning life skills, we done that in group activities in the other lessons. In languages we often played competitive games in groups, but I didn't mind that so much. Yes it was a bit humiliating in lessons when you had to read out your test score when your name was called out on the register because mine was usually the lowest in the class, but that was still less humiliating than when it was my turn to bat the ball in a game of rounders in PE. I hated rounders most of all. It didn't feel like exercise or learning, it just felt like a humiliating game that all the other kids seemed to really love. I felt the center of attention when it was my turn to bat, and kids got a bit overcompetitive and would shout and taunt you if you batted the ball wrong and let your team down. But in group games in lessons like science nobody cared too much if you let your group or team down by getting things wrong, they'd just groan jokingly and you had a laugh. But in PE things often got heated and many kids took the game so seriously.

I was a fat kid, so I'm familiar with the experience of other kids noticing you're fat.

I think the experience of the teacher not liking the kids who didn't do gym varied. My gym teacher (in Grade 9, I never had a dedicated PE teacher before that) was actually pretty chill. When we did wrestling he lined me up with a popular, kinda preppy kid Ben who was often a bully to me as the demonstration.

A few of my bullies seemed to back off after that.

I think the teacher knew what he was doing.

But anyways, different tasks teach different life skills. The life skills that even a bare minimum of participation in a team sport teach are different from the ones taught in any other circumstance. Yes, there's overlap, but it's not perfect overlap.

I can see what you're saying specifically about rounders (or similar sports). If you're no good at batting in those sorts of sports it's kinda particularly stressful. The entire turn-based aspect really puts a high emphasis on the personal role.

I agree, some people can be kinda snobby/rude towards people who struggle in these contexts, but at the same time those people are sometimes used to feeling embarrassed in the topics where they struggle. Kids are mean, it doesn't mean teaching them the basics of team sports is a bad thing.

Maybe it's because there were other things in school I could consistently get good marks on, it never really bothered me to have to do things I wasn't very good at. If people were rude about it, oh well, either they also sucked at some things too or they were exceptional and should stfu towards regular mortals.

I remember a PE teacher partnered me up with my bully during this game we had to play in the gym with about 100 other girls that I had no idea what the rules were, but part of the game was to hold hands with your partner and run around the gym before the ball got to the center or something, I don't know. Anyway, having to run around a gym holding hands with my bully was, well, more humiliating for her than it was for me. In fact I felt sorry for her having to be shown up like that in front of everyone, running around holding hands with the pathetic, weak, wimpy "class ret*d". I felt sorry for her for the rest of the day.

Wow, was my self-esteem low lol.

PE in elementary was good but it was a nightmare in junior high and I had to do it in high school despite not wanting to.

I hated PE. I was always the last one picked.

I loathed PE with a burning passion when it involved team sports or running. I am hopelessly dyspraxic and the intricacies of organising a team are mind bending. I don't enjoy competition much, it feels too much like genuine war emotionally and it stresses me out. It's too real. I want to be equals! In year 9 I started hiding in the storage shed during PE when I could get away with it to avoid the humiliation of it all. Rounders should be considered a war crime. Netball was invented by Satan himself.
I was always picked last for teams and yelled at by other kids for not catching a ball or something. Teachers used to try to urge me to join in but they were generally very nice, I think they took pity on me. On the tennis court there was a wall for rallying with and if the teacher was feeling generous she'd let me play tennis against myself using that wall. Playing tennis against another person is horrible. I refuse to play any ball sports now. I don't think I learned anything valuable in those lessons, it didn't teach me to enjoy exercise.
At most it taught me my own limits.
I had forgotten about this but an old post from my previous account reminded me, there was a short time when I had a mentor/assistant join me for PE. I typically hated that sort of thing but I welcomed it in PE because it deterred bullies. The mentor stopped because they thought I didn't need it, I was doing fine. But I was doing fine because of the mentor, it went downhill again after.

I liked PE when it was something we could do solo or as a whole class, like aerobics or dance. Stuff like long jump or shotput was fun too. I'm not very coordinated at any of those but atleast no one is relying on me to be. I'm competing against myself. If I had freedom to chose these parallel/solo activities and lean into my strengths I would have learned a lot more. Other subjects taught me more group work skills than any game of rounders ever could.
As an adult I go to the gym solo and prefer it to having a workout buddy, I don't want to be watched. I've never enjoyed having someone with me, workout time is me time.

Our highschool had rowing machines and those were fun. In year 10, because 5 of us did our BTEC course outside of the school 2 days a week, we had to do PE as a mini class. Too small to make team sports worth it. So we had more freedom. Most lessons I spent either on the cardio machines or bouncing a basketball on my own and that was chill. I could unwind to the hypnotic bouncing lol. I didn't do PE at all in year 11.

I really liked swimming lessons but didn't like how regimented it was. I just want to play mermaids.

I remember one time in year 8 we were playing this complicated game on the school field in PE where you had to stand in a line with your legs apart and pass the ball backwards through your legs to the person behind, and if anybody goes wrong like drops the ball or something your team loses. If that was the only rule of the game then I would have found it rather enjoyable, but it was only part of a rounders-like game but not quite rounders. So as if the rules of rounders weren't confusing enough for me, this game was even more confusing. I focused on not letting my team down by holding my hands underneath the girl in front of me's legs so I could be ready to grab the ball when she passes it under her legs without dropping it. I succeeded - I did not drop the ball, but for some reason I did not pass it to the girl behind me under my legs, instead I passed it to her from the side. I heard the teacher say that our team had lost and everybody huffed and sighed loudly, which was when I realised what I had done. The other girls yelled things at me, calling me stupid and I felt really guilty and embarrassed. It was because I was so nervous to not let my team down that I still ended up letting my team down. It's why I couldn't cope in huge team games like that.

I liked badminton in PE because you played in groups of four and so I felt more relaxed if I was with girls I got on with. I remember one time in PE I was doing badminton with three other nice girls and they showed me how to swing the racquet gently to be able to hit the shuttlecock, which worked and I was well into the game, but as we played we all talked as well, so it was fun and I was having such a great time, that I didn't want the lesson to be over lol. So it's not that I wasn't social or anything like that, I just became anxious when having to play one large game with the whole class or half the girls in your grade (which in my school was like over 100). I found it intimidating and nerve-triggering because of how aggressive some kids got when it came to games.

I didn't like PE I was no good at it and always got laughed at, when they had teams I was always the last one to be picked, it was better at the Special School we had an American PE teacher and she used to take us bush walking sometimes, other times she would make us do relay races and all the fun things.

OK, so I know I'm meant to be on break but I'm just popping in for now.

I was terrible at almost every sport except field hockey where I was the star player. People did not want me on their team unless we were playing field hockey, then they'd fight over me. The switch-up was quite funny.

In my school, dance and PE were two different subjects. However, there was one time PE made us square dance.

For context, I was a lanky underweight asthmatic girl who had about as much natural grace as a baby deer.

Admittedly, I was struggling with depression, anxiety and stress through my teenage years. I wasn't eating properly and I was constantly restlessly fidgeting. These days I am a healthy weight but back then I was not.

Throw in the fact that I was being physically bullied, teased for how I looked and isolated due to rumours about my sexuality (which were true), along with my general lack of athletic abilty, it's not surprising that I didn't like PE (except field hockey).

People did consider me a nerd but I wasn't academically talented at all. I was in the lower sets for most of my subjects and I usually scored a C. I was disorganised and barely passing my classes. I felt depressed, I was constantly losing my stuff, not focusing and just struggling in general.

It wasn't until later, when I realised how to study and work in a way that actually works for my brain, that I started to improve. I realised that I wasn't a moron, I was just using methods that weren't right for me. It's a shame that I didn't have any support or therapy at the time.

My art teacher used to give me a hard time due to my lack of eye contact and I'm still annoyed at that guy. He also limited what I was allowed to draw and I wish I'd told him to go take a hike. I have no issues with eye contact now but I did back then.

I liked PE because it was a break from typical classwork. I majorly struggled in lots of classes due to dyslexia, ADD, & other related issues. My high-school required two PE credits & I took it three years; my Sophomore, Jr, & Senior year. I took it my Senior year because I got to chose three electives & PE seemed like the easiest class I could take. However I've always been majorly out of shape due to a very sedentary lifestyle except for the 38 months when I was employed doing menial labor & I always had very unhealthy eating habits. I participated the most in PE when we walked track or lifted weights but I was always the weakest one in my class. The rest of the time I mostly just stood around like when playing sports with a ball but I was born with a rare low vision disorder so I kind of had an excuse. I got all As in PE mostly because I always changed into my gym cloths when we were doing something & I didn't cause problems/disruptions & participated with the two mentioned activities.

Just standing around when playing sports with balls

Well I was ADHD but I just didn't like large team games, as I wasn't really into sport. But some games with smaller teams, like badminton, was okay.

I struggled in class too but it didn't really show me up like large team sports did. I could read, but I didn't like choosing a reading book each week from the school library, because I wasn't really interested in reading, but the schools forced you to appreciate reading. But being forced to play a game you don't like in a large team that took the game seriously was more of an anxiety-inducing ordeal than being made to read a book. I guess those games in large teams felt like being on stage - all eyes on you when it was your turn and having to be perfect otherwise you'll make a fool of yourself and ruin it for everyone.

I enjoyed playtimes and recess and swimming. I couldn't swim because I was scared of getting my head under the water, plus I was prone to ear infections, but I still loved swimming more than anything else in the world. I loved playing with my friends in the pool. I was a social child, but I just didn't do well in large team games, due to anxiety and not understanding the rules of some of the games.

When I was in elementary-school the boys & girls had PE together & it was a couple times a week. When the boys played sports with balls, the girls were often told they could have recess like play. I always asked to play on the swings with the girls & I was to allowed half the time. It's one of the many factors for why I developed gender dysphoria/gender identity disorder. I wanted the treatment & prvileges the girls got instead of being treated like one of the boys.

I did not like PE, probably for two reasons:
1. Decades-later-diagnosed Autism.
2. I was bad at it. Why was I bad at it? Decades-later-diagnosed heart problem and only recently discovered started-school-a-year-early so was always young compared to the other kids.