Your opinion on Gym Class

[fenrizz]

Gym is needed, with the epidemic of obese kids and all.

Also, gym is fun.

 

[Redfield2701]

Am an advanced sports movement coach and a bio mechanical specialist, basically I help athletes preform more efficiently. To do this, the athlete of course needs a baseline of minimal fitness to begin training with me. At this point I usually begin to cringe....I for one am all for PE/gym class/School sports but these things need to start being taken more seriously by both the teacher and the student.

95% of the worlds population has absolutely no idea how to properly squat, it's one of our most basic human functions! How is such a high percentage of failure possible??? I would love to see a change in the way Gym Class in run. Forget telling students the rules of basketball and soccer (not like they're hard to figure out)and spend some time teaching youth about themselves and how to use their own bodies correctly. These are the issues that make a difference in life, not how many points a touchdown is worth or whats referred to as icing.

Gym class, Hellz ya! But we really need to overhaul the system.

 

[Phantom Kat]

Gym class was fine for me, sure I have like no depth perception but it was good to exercise and most of the time I just got stuck in groups with other, less athletic people so it was generally quite fun.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

I think it's a good thing for a school to have. Schools without PE programs are usually underfunded. PE is just before the arts and after school programs on the chopping block. The thing I hated most about PE was that it was my first class during high school, every year. I was constantly late so I never really got along well with my PE teachers (though I crushed hard on several), and it was always cold out. And you wind up all sweaty and can't shower.

I think PE and health classes are all well and good for grade school. That's when such lessons and habits should be learned.

Everyone knows about gym, in one way or another, so, I want to hear your opinion about it. To me, it's a waste of time I could be using to learn about the nature of the universe, human mind, mathematics, or how to dance.

You, yes you. Drop and give me thirty push-ups, run a mile, then go lift some weights, and swim fifteen laps in the pool.

----------------------------

Now the place I don't agree with there being PE and health classes(at least not mandatory) is college. After my final PE classes(freshman year) and health class(sophomore) in high school, I thought I was done. I knew how to swim, lift weights, walk, jog, run, and count my nutrition intake. I had had almost ten years of the stuff, so that should have been enough.

But no, I got to college and found out that a semester of a combined PE and health split class was required. Seriously at that point, I'm an adult and shouldn't have to waste time going through the exact thing I did a few years ago as a young teen as well as the times before that.

At that point, I just say it is the university looking to rake in more tuition money and make more job positions for the health nuts or the people that coach their sports teams.

Though there is a lot more that can be done with college curriculums to make them more reasonable, make sense, and faster to complete(while still having the right amount of knowledge and skills learned that are needed), but that is a whole other stink pile of a mess, and doesn't need to be said here.

 

[Tdoodle]

Good luck getting someone to dance with you, fatty.

Now THIS shit is getting flagged.

It was gentle ribbing, don't be soft.

 

[OmniscientOstrich]

I liked it for the most part but it wasn't something that I took particularly seriously. I think a fair few people in this thread are exaggerating it's importance just a tad. :3

 

[YingDerpington]

Well down here in 'Straya we have P.E. and depending on the school and teacher it can vary more than the shape water drops will make when poured out of a container. I was lucky to get an awesome P.E. teacher that also doubled as the advanced maths teacher for Grades 8-10 (so he wasn't a brain-dead moron). He generally devoted 1/4 of the lesson to telling us about what parts of our body the following ATHLETICS (instead of sports, which only occurred rarely) would train, among other things relating to improving physique, overall health and building muscle. So I'd say that with the right teacher and teaching syllabus 'Gym' or P.E class (they seem to be different things from what i'm seeing though) they are probably one of the most useful lessons you can have in school.

 

[Redfield2701]

Good luck getting someone to dance with you, fatty.

Now THIS shit is getting flagged.

It was gentle ribbing, don't be soft.

"Don't be soft".......WIN!

 

[xshadowscreamx]

i liked PE, it was easy to pass. no homework. and it was a chance to beat the stupid jocks at the own game. it was also when it was confirmed i was a nerd when i was put in the nerd team for handball, and we won. im skinny and agile.

 

[Verex]

I remember high school gym class was a joke. We'd have required tournaments after running 4 or 5 laps around the basketball court. No one worked up a sweat. It's just a thing they need to check off their list. 2 creds of gym. Done.

 

[Yopaz]

I don't mind gym at all. But I do very much mind the way the grade is being set, at least here in Norway (don't know it is like in the other parts of the world).

Basically, the grade is being set based on your achievements, which is just ridiculous. I am pursuing a degree in physics, what if my gym character was just low enough that I wouldn't be accepted into the university?

In my opinion, gym shouldn't be graded unless you know you'll be working with sports after you're done with high school (which I assume is where gym is a mandatory class). I know a lot of courses in the best universities require you to have top characters in every class from high school. Why should how fast I can run have a say as to whether I am allowed to follow my dreams or not?

The way I see it gym grades were usually just randomly scattered 4 then an occasional 5 or 6 to those who were exceptional. I was better than most in all areas and better than everyone who got a 5, but I ended up with a 4. So yeah, I agree, pointless grading.

OT: I do in theory love it. I work out 6 times a week right noe and I love physical activity since it clears my mind and helps me focus on my studies. However I have had bad teachers in it. We did not cover half of what we were supposed to because the teacher only made a list of a few basic sports.

 

[iLazy]

I liked Gym class. Didn't like some of the people in it, but I liked it nonetheless.

I mean, an hour of running around, playing soccer, basketball, volleyball, floor hockey, dodgeball, badminton (okay that's up for debate), spongey-polo, etc, etc, sounds like fun to me.

Wasn't a fan of the fitness tests though.

But yeah, I get how it can be a nightmare for some kids :/

 

[Jfswift]

I always found it hard to take my gym teacher seriously when I was a kid because of how overweight they were.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

Kids in my country are getting too fat. They can't learn when their too busy monitoring their blood sugar levels. Let gym stay.

This.

You summed it up nicely.

To be honest, I myself enjoyed only bits of PE. I hated soccer, and almost all our gym teachers were soccerheads. They hated, say, basketball with a vengeance. One made us play basketball in a hundred-year-old structure with seemingly no right angles. We had to box each other with brown leather gloves that seemed to be filled with straw. We were so frustrated, at times, we went to great illegal lengths to make up excuses for not having to take part in the drill.

Looking back, we were idiots. Any - free! - physical exercise you can do with friends, buddies or just peers is not only free, it's a serious asset for your well-being. Like me, I guess, most people only cherish it once it's over and gone and things cost money, as in membership, machines to put in the workout room or - my least favourite - medical bills.

With age, the body starts to fall apart quite readily. A lot of healthcare costs could be reduced if people would get the very basic idea and purpose of PE. A lot of healthcare issues would be absolute non-issues if people would maintain their bodies like some maintain their germ-free homes, their expensive gaming rig computers or their overly complicated special diets. There's no diet that will keep you from being in pain because you're lacking the basic muscle mass to keep your body together and protect the more crappy bits from harm. Without any scientific data to back my claim, I say I feel like a whole lot of chronic pain, back issues and plenty more just plain wouldn't be if people understood how the human body works, or would at least exercise properly and not just ruin their joints and annoy people and dogs by running around aimlessly taking their iPods walkies.

 

[Bocaj2000]

PE is necessary. So is art. The sun is your friend.

 

[Angie7F]

I hate sports but enjoyed PE as time to hang out with my friends and chat and have a good laugh.
It was especially cool in high school in japan because it my school was not competitive in sports.
When I was in Australia the school was quite competitive so it was more high pressure.

 

[thraza]

i hated it, mostly because the teachers would end up putting things to a vote and we would end up playing hockey over and over again.

 

[rosac]

I loved it, and I can't understand why people hate it so much. Thanks to gym class, everyone found a sport they were good at at my school, even my mate who hated sport found he was pretty damn good at the high jump.

Also, it seems like people don't seem to enjoy it because they have the mindset that since they are bad a certain sport they aren't going to even try, which makes them seem even worse at the sport, and generally annoys everyone else on the team. I was crap at football (Soccer) and basketball, but I put effort in, which people respected me for. And I had a few flashes of glory every now and again.

The other argument I disagree with is the "but we could spend the time studying science/maths/insert subject here!" Physical Education is still useful, as exercise can help stimulate the brain and remove stress.

Just my two cents. I'm typing this argument whilst knackered, so I fully expect it to be ripped to shred in a few posts.

EDIT: re-reading some of the posts here, it seems most people have problems with their teachers rather than the actual subjects. I guess I was lucky to have teachers that rewarded the amount of effort someone puts in rather than their overall athletic ability. I remember one teacher nearly crying with happiness when the second stream rugby team (consisting mainly of skinny people like me) managed to do a maul correctly. It wasn't perfect, but it showed we were putting effort in. I also remember said teacher bollocking one of the "stars" being lazy because he was playing against people who were objectively worse than him at football.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

I didn't really like it until this year when I got to go in a recreational pursuits class.
The teacher is extremely nice, the people in the class are fun and the stuff we do even more so.
I don't like the normal gym/sport classes though because they are more about basketball or football and stuff. It would be better if they just have a selection of things to do and just be about getting active.

 

[Woodsey]

It used to be either tortuous as fuck (football, rugby, whatever in the fucking winter) or gut-wrenchingly hilarious (athletics, orienteering, dodgeball).