Much as I hated PE lessons I’m desperate to get back to jogging 3 times a week but with 2 kids, a working wife and an eldest that goes to evening classes/ clubs I’d either be running at 6am or 10pm. I choose sleep.
DeviousFeline on
I really didn’t like P.E much at 12 but I’m considerably older now and live for exercise. People can change, this infantilising in the culture is very annoying. If you’re haunted by school burpees at 60 you need to get over it.
OutrageousRepair5751 on
My favourite story my dad used to tell me was of how his PE teacher in the 70s would get them all doing laps of the school field in their shorts and t shirts in the dead of winter, while he drove around the field after them in his car, smoking and hurling abuse at them all.
jibjap on
People need to consider getting over it.
Exercise is important, do it. It’s literally good for you.
JoeyJoJoeJr_Shabadoo on
Surely there’s an expiry date on being able to blame school for your problems
Warm-Marsupial8912 on
I was the fat one who was the last to be picked for the team. PE was not fun. With cycling, various dog sports and twice daily dog walks I’m probably more active than most people my age. Just got to find something you enjoy
No_Suit_9511 on
I hated rugby at school, so as an adult I don’t play rugby, I do other things. There are dozens of ways to be active, and disliking one sport, especially one you were forced into as a child, is no excuse to do absolutely nothing.
piua on
I do understand this is a problem. While I enjoyed PE lessons at school and didn’t mind getting stuck in I wasn’t very good. I became a teacher for a few years after uni and what always struck me is that I would have been in massive trouble if I taught my history and english lit lesssons the way the PE teachers taught theirs. There was no differentitation, no asking for personal goals, making any student not good enough or not interested in being on a school team irrelevent. This has made PE traditionally the preserve of the sporty kids. It never taught me how to control my weight, my body or body image, if you weren’t good at running it didn’t teach you to get better. It was only as I was leaving the school system that I got the education that helped me and it was from a mixture of the Chris Ryan SAS fitness book and online sources. The problem nowadays is that kids being driven to online sources are seeing influencers who are mostly using PEDS and focusing only on body building which isn’t a healthy sport. Obesity is still a big problem in the country and kids are not being given the information and instruction on how to control their own bodies.
High-Tom-Titty on
They really should have done a better job of making exercise a little more enjoyable back then. Cross country on a cold wet and muddy day, then having to go and do maths after. We had a bloody gym, but they seemed to mostly use that for assemblies for individual years. Always thought dodgeball looked like a laugh.
No-Mark4427 on
Friendly reminder that 1 in 2 women over 50 will suffer an osteoporotic fracture. If that’s a fractured hip, 20-30% will die within a year even if treated, and without proper treatment 75%. And in general for everyone, age related illnesses and injuries are (often) not just a natural thing you can’t avoid.
It’s honestly far easier than anyone thinks as fitness is surrounded by insane misinformation. You don’t have to kill yourself doing cardio, doing some basic weight lifting even 1-2 times for 30 mins – 1 hr a week gives massive health benefits and isn’t really unpleasant. Squats, romanian dead lifts, goblet squats, hip thrusts. You don’t need to become a gym fanatic or do high intensity muscle isolation exercises or things like bench presses or anything, just need to do a little bit of decent weighted exercises to get your muscles working.
Book in at a gym, some give you free short consultations and will give you a basic workout plan, or even do a few months of a personal trainer just to get confidence and know what you are doing with the kit, alternatively its all on Youtube nowadays and can be started at home.
Your body will thank you for it, and you will not be one of those people who get to their 70s and are shuffling around looking frail. I know several people who have gotten into it in their late 60s/early 70s and it’s completely change their health and outlook on life.
If I could only do a single exercise for the rest of my life it’d be back squats (Or some form of squats), strong legs and posterior chain + increased bone density are the difference, again, in being a shuffling zombie in your 70s vs still being active and mobile.
Able_Resident_1291 on
The only time I enjoyed PE at school was when they grouped us by ability, the same as they did with other lessons such as languages, maths and science. For one term only I was playing sports with children as weak and wheezy as I was instead of having to hide in terror as the 6ft 6″ kids came charging at me. We all actually enjoyed exercise for a while and actively participated in it, until a parent complained about their child being placed in “the weakling group” and that put an end to it.
Before that happened, in a real Hollywood Family Movie moment, the teachers (presumably for a laugh) pitted the stronger group against the weaker group in a softball match, and by sheer blind chance and several flukes, the weaker group actually won. The teachers and the stronger kids were not happy about that.
davepage_mcr on
I’m 46. I’ve always been fat. I hated PE lessons and saw them as a form of torture. I was expected to do the same number of reps / lengths / circuits as everyone else. I didn’t regularly exercise for most of my adult life. School lessons put me off it for decades.
About 3 years ago, I found myself in a gym class aimed at LGBT+ people. The people in the class had bad experiences with school sports, from teasing and bullying through to gender dysphoria. The instructor was really kind, talked about finding ways to move our bodies that we felt comfortable with, and established a strictly non-competitive environment. I learned an important lesson about weightlifting – that you’re aiming to do 10-12 reps and start hating it towards the end of that. If you’re struggling to do that, use a lower weight. If you’re breezing through it, go up a little bit.
I’ve been going back to those classes regularly ever since. I have a much better relationship with my body. I’m still fat, but I’m in much better shape physically. I can stand up from the sofa without using my arms. I can walk further without getting out of breath. I can do press-ups (not many, but still)! I enjoy finding out what I’m capable of.
mgorgey on
If you’re using school PE as an excuse for not doing exercise when you’re middle aged then you’re just looking for an excuse and don’t want to exercise.
Sometimes in life, you just have to get over things.
And if you don’t want to exercise, that’s fine. Just own that. Don’t try to come up with some bullshit to try and abdicate responsibility.
Legitimate-Leg-4720 on
I hated P.E. too, although nowadays I love sport. It’s funny because I seem to know lots of people who hated P.E. as kids, but now as adults they are fitness obsessed, playing multiple sports, doing triathlons etc…
Meanwhile many of the people I know who were amazing at sport as kids – competitive swimmers, football obsessed – now seem to hate it and have succumbed to the dreaded beer belly.
Particular_Tough4860 on
>Many mid-lifers are still held back by the emotional baggage of school‑day PE, […]or being picked last for teams (40 per cent).
40% remember being picked last for teams to the extent it is emotional baggage?
I’m not sure that can be right.
Lukeno94 on
The call to try and force more PE into an already overcrowded curriculum is heavily misguided, and this is one of the things that shows why. Making kids do two or three hours of PE a week will make absolutely no difference to the ones who absolutely hate it (as they’ll continue to stand around or do the absolute bare minimum), and it’ll make them lose out academically in other areas because it’ll eat into those lessons. Wouldn’t have been a problem for me as I was quite a sporty child (although running was never my thing), but I had plenty of friends for whom this would simply achieve nothing.
Serious_Canary_9723 on
As someone who wasn’t particularly good at sport but started playing a new one called Korfball which for a short run down is Dutch netball but fully mixed gender and beginner friendly as no one’s heard of it haha. It has honestly had such a positive mental and physical effect I really can’t recommend enough giving something you fancy a go at any age. I think most people can enjoy some form of exercise it’s just getting over that initial barrier and carrying on after inevitably messing up sometimes when doing something new.
5c0ttgreen on
If you lack the imagination to not realise that exercising as an adult isn’t the same as PE class in school then that’s on you.
No_Peach2280 on
They should get over it and prioritise their health
YungRabz on
I’m often baffled why sport isn’t a more core element of the curriculum. Every uni I’ve ever worked at blocks Wednesday afternoons out purely for sport, I don’t see why this can’t be done in schools.
Are we so desperate to teach our kids the iambic pentameter that we’ll deny them a little fun?
xylophileuk on
Remember the cool af climbing frame on the wall? That seemed to be welded in place because it never left the wall……
LadyFleata on
i was never fit and strong and hated PE and sports and running; had they done yoga and aerobics i would have found it much more enjoyable. at almost 50 i still hate exercise in anyway no matter how i try no matter what i try. Exerbeat on the wii was the most enjoyable ive ever found.
GabberZZ on
I ‘forgot’ my PE kit more than I got involved in winter PE at school in the 80s.
It was just football football football in all shitty weather and I had zero interest.
Come summer when we did volleyball, basketball, tennis, athletics and canoeing (school was next to a canal) I was in every lesson.
They had no interest in nurturing winter alternatives which fostered my hatred of team sports.
kobrakai_1986 on
PE at school was horrible. Go out in the freezing cold to play hockey and get your shins battered by malicious teenagers, then back to the changing rooms for ritual mockery and cold showers? No thanks. Also, beep tests can bugger off too.
As an adult, I see the appeal of exercise and love to do it.
BillyBottler on
This is such bollocks. You don’t need to play sport or run to be physically active. And if you’re feeling that self-conscious there’s plenty of ways you can exercise without leaving the house.
Any excuse for poor health other than self-accountability…! MID life adults? Sort yourselves out.
filbert94 on
It’s weird as I cross into midlife my fitness and BMI compared to the average man skyrockets. I’m just maintaining what I had in my late 20s. I can’t run mega fast but I can do a 25-26 minute 5k. But compared to other blokes late 30s/ early 30s I could be a rocket. Key is just maintaining that lifestyle.
I didn’t enjoy PE and actually exercised more after leaving school. Stay as healthy as possible and don’t be a burden to your family.
FearLeadsToAnger on
I was put in the spaz group pretty quickly in secondary school, definitely less troubled than most of the other kids, but this was my first formal acknowledgement of neurodivergence.
fifteen years later I figured out I was ASD.
Kinda wild a PE teacher clocked something was up and nobody else bothered to mention I should get an assessment the whole time.
griffaliff on
I was haunted by the consistent bullying largely, fucking hated PE, I used to play truant back then as opposed to being consistently ripped on and chosen last. I wasn’t athletic at all back then but at 38 I’ll be running my first marathon in September so not all bad.
helpmaboabjings on
I’m just remember girls always “forgetting” their kits. It’s no wonder our PE teacher favoured the athletic students who actually tried.
Virtual-Baseball-297 on
“ Look after your body now so it will look after you later “
tunisia3507 on
In school I thought I hated sports. It turns out most sports just suck. I picked up ultimate at university and am still hooked nearly 20 years later. First world championship this season (fortunately there are age divisions…).
DragonEagle88 on
Loved PE but I unfortunately have crap genetics and have a connective tissue disorder that makes a lot of exercise insanely painful. However, I do walk every day. Almost everyone can do a little bit of walking daily and it has enormous benefits. If the weather is shit, get a stepper or a something or find a friendly local gym. Anything really. When the weather is lovely like right now though, I can’t wait for my walks even when I’m feeling crap.
snakeoildriller on
Our (secondary) school only recruited borderline psychopaths as PE teachers. Without exception they routinely terrorised us, and yes, it did have an effect. If you younger Redditors want a taste of what it was like, I recommend [Is That Your Body Boy?](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVV1RQ2yoZM). Sums it up well.
mosh-4-jesus on
i was a skater, but i was a skinny queer geeky emo kid. 9am rugby in mid-December did not endear me to team sports. getting two-footed from behind by my bullies during football did not endear me to team sports. getting yelled at for not going hard, when i was saving my body to go skate after school, did not endear me to PE. school was torture for a lot of us, and apparently having a life outside of school as a kid was a problem. honestly, there’s prolly a bigger problem with how education is structured, and people being discouraged from sports is a symptom.
like, for instance; i’ve already said i did a sport not supported by state education. i was also a musician, but hated music at school. i was an avid reader, but hated English class. my reward for being good at maths, but not liking it, was more maths work. i got yelled at all the time for not doing the reading for English *with a book in my hand*. i basically flunked music class, then went and got a *fucking degree in it*, because the second i left the highly structured environment of school into higher education, i was able to engage with my interests in my own way and not be punished for it. what school instilled in me is that i could never do anything right, and i will be punished for anything i do. this is what highly structured education systems do.
redboneisagoodsong on
As others have said, I find it really infantilising. I was definitely the “picked last at football” kid at schools and now I go to gym 3-4 times a week and can make my pecs dance.
People change. Yet the UK press is incredibly pandering when it comes to exercise.
Lucifer_606381 on
Sorry, but this is a bit ridiculous, a bloke in is 50s refusing to do exercise because of some shit PE lessons .
The UK is horrifying overweight overall, due to lack of exercise and poor diet.
It is easy to do 30 mins a day exercise, it doesn’t have be intense, but they could start of walking and build
Univeralise on
I just wish I had time for excerise , work, kids , wife , gotta keep everyone happy means no time for me really. The time I do get I’d prefer to sleep or just mentally shut off.
It’ll probably get better in a few years.
LadyMirkwood on
I discovered a love of lifting at 40. I went to the gym four times a week and loved it. Its the only exercise I’ve enjoyed
Then the fees kept going up and up and I got priced out, which was ashame as it did me so much good physicality and mentally
38 commenti
Much as I hated PE lessons I’m desperate to get back to jogging 3 times a week but with 2 kids, a working wife and an eldest that goes to evening classes/ clubs I’d either be running at 6am or 10pm. I choose sleep.
I really didn’t like P.E much at 12 but I’m considerably older now and live for exercise. People can change, this infantilising in the culture is very annoying. If you’re haunted by school burpees at 60 you need to get over it.
My favourite story my dad used to tell me was of how his PE teacher in the 70s would get them all doing laps of the school field in their shorts and t shirts in the dead of winter, while he drove around the field after them in his car, smoking and hurling abuse at them all.
People need to consider getting over it.
Exercise is important, do it. It’s literally good for you.
Surely there’s an expiry date on being able to blame school for your problems
I was the fat one who was the last to be picked for the team. PE was not fun. With cycling, various dog sports and twice daily dog walks I’m probably more active than most people my age. Just got to find something you enjoy
I hated rugby at school, so as an adult I don’t play rugby, I do other things. There are dozens of ways to be active, and disliking one sport, especially one you were forced into as a child, is no excuse to do absolutely nothing.
I do understand this is a problem. While I enjoyed PE lessons at school and didn’t mind getting stuck in I wasn’t very good. I became a teacher for a few years after uni and what always struck me is that I would have been in massive trouble if I taught my history and english lit lesssons the way the PE teachers taught theirs. There was no differentitation, no asking for personal goals, making any student not good enough or not interested in being on a school team irrelevent. This has made PE traditionally the preserve of the sporty kids. It never taught me how to control my weight, my body or body image, if you weren’t good at running it didn’t teach you to get better. It was only as I was leaving the school system that I got the education that helped me and it was from a mixture of the Chris Ryan SAS fitness book and online sources. The problem nowadays is that kids being driven to online sources are seeing influencers who are mostly using PEDS and focusing only on body building which isn’t a healthy sport. Obesity is still a big problem in the country and kids are not being given the information and instruction on how to control their own bodies.
They really should have done a better job of making exercise a little more enjoyable back then. Cross country on a cold wet and muddy day, then having to go and do maths after. We had a bloody gym, but they seemed to mostly use that for assemblies for individual years. Always thought dodgeball looked like a laugh.
Friendly reminder that 1 in 2 women over 50 will suffer an osteoporotic fracture. If that’s a fractured hip, 20-30% will die within a year even if treated, and without proper treatment 75%. And in general for everyone, age related illnesses and injuries are (often) not just a natural thing you can’t avoid.
It’s honestly far easier than anyone thinks as fitness is surrounded by insane misinformation. You don’t have to kill yourself doing cardio, doing some basic weight lifting even 1-2 times for 30 mins – 1 hr a week gives massive health benefits and isn’t really unpleasant. Squats, romanian dead lifts, goblet squats, hip thrusts. You don’t need to become a gym fanatic or do high intensity muscle isolation exercises or things like bench presses or anything, just need to do a little bit of decent weighted exercises to get your muscles working.
Book in at a gym, some give you free short consultations and will give you a basic workout plan, or even do a few months of a personal trainer just to get confidence and know what you are doing with the kit, alternatively its all on Youtube nowadays and can be started at home.
Your body will thank you for it, and you will not be one of those people who get to their 70s and are shuffling around looking frail. I know several people who have gotten into it in their late 60s/early 70s and it’s completely change their health and outlook on life.
Also relevant: [https://youtu.be/xEh1akDooZc](https://youtu.be/xEh1akDooZc)
If I could only do a single exercise for the rest of my life it’d be back squats (Or some form of squats), strong legs and posterior chain + increased bone density are the difference, again, in being a shuffling zombie in your 70s vs still being active and mobile.
The only time I enjoyed PE at school was when they grouped us by ability, the same as they did with other lessons such as languages, maths and science. For one term only I was playing sports with children as weak and wheezy as I was instead of having to hide in terror as the 6ft 6″ kids came charging at me. We all actually enjoyed exercise for a while and actively participated in it, until a parent complained about their child being placed in “the weakling group” and that put an end to it.
Before that happened, in a real Hollywood Family Movie moment, the teachers (presumably for a laugh) pitted the stronger group against the weaker group in a softball match, and by sheer blind chance and several flukes, the weaker group actually won. The teachers and the stronger kids were not happy about that.
I’m 46. I’ve always been fat. I hated PE lessons and saw them as a form of torture. I was expected to do the same number of reps / lengths / circuits as everyone else. I didn’t regularly exercise for most of my adult life. School lessons put me off it for decades.
About 3 years ago, I found myself in a gym class aimed at LGBT+ people. The people in the class had bad experiences with school sports, from teasing and bullying through to gender dysphoria. The instructor was really kind, talked about finding ways to move our bodies that we felt comfortable with, and established a strictly non-competitive environment. I learned an important lesson about weightlifting – that you’re aiming to do 10-12 reps and start hating it towards the end of that. If you’re struggling to do that, use a lower weight. If you’re breezing through it, go up a little bit.
I’ve been going back to those classes regularly ever since. I have a much better relationship with my body. I’m still fat, but I’m in much better shape physically. I can stand up from the sofa without using my arms. I can walk further without getting out of breath. I can do press-ups (not many, but still)! I enjoy finding out what I’m capable of.
If you’re using school PE as an excuse for not doing exercise when you’re middle aged then you’re just looking for an excuse and don’t want to exercise.
Sometimes in life, you just have to get over things.
And if you don’t want to exercise, that’s fine. Just own that. Don’t try to come up with some bullshit to try and abdicate responsibility.
I hated P.E. too, although nowadays I love sport. It’s funny because I seem to know lots of people who hated P.E. as kids, but now as adults they are fitness obsessed, playing multiple sports, doing triathlons etc…
Meanwhile many of the people I know who were amazing at sport as kids – competitive swimmers, football obsessed – now seem to hate it and have succumbed to the dreaded beer belly.
>Many mid-lifers are still held back by the emotional baggage of school‑day PE, […]or being picked last for teams (40 per cent).
40% remember being picked last for teams to the extent it is emotional baggage?
I’m not sure that can be right.
The call to try and force more PE into an already overcrowded curriculum is heavily misguided, and this is one of the things that shows why. Making kids do two or three hours of PE a week will make absolutely no difference to the ones who absolutely hate it (as they’ll continue to stand around or do the absolute bare minimum), and it’ll make them lose out academically in other areas because it’ll eat into those lessons. Wouldn’t have been a problem for me as I was quite a sporty child (although running was never my thing), but I had plenty of friends for whom this would simply achieve nothing.
As someone who wasn’t particularly good at sport but started playing a new one called Korfball which for a short run down is Dutch netball but fully mixed gender and beginner friendly as no one’s heard of it haha. It has honestly had such a positive mental and physical effect I really can’t recommend enough giving something you fancy a go at any age. I think most people can enjoy some form of exercise it’s just getting over that initial barrier and carrying on after inevitably messing up sometimes when doing something new.
If you lack the imagination to not realise that exercising as an adult isn’t the same as PE class in school then that’s on you.
They should get over it and prioritise their health
I’m often baffled why sport isn’t a more core element of the curriculum. Every uni I’ve ever worked at blocks Wednesday afternoons out purely for sport, I don’t see why this can’t be done in schools.
Are we so desperate to teach our kids the iambic pentameter that we’ll deny them a little fun?
Remember the cool af climbing frame on the wall? That seemed to be welded in place because it never left the wall……
i was never fit and strong and hated PE and sports and running; had they done yoga and aerobics i would have found it much more enjoyable. at almost 50 i still hate exercise in anyway no matter how i try no matter what i try. Exerbeat on the wii was the most enjoyable ive ever found.
I ‘forgot’ my PE kit more than I got involved in winter PE at school in the 80s.
It was just football football football in all shitty weather and I had zero interest.
Come summer when we did volleyball, basketball, tennis, athletics and canoeing (school was next to a canal) I was in every lesson.
They had no interest in nurturing winter alternatives which fostered my hatred of team sports.
PE at school was horrible. Go out in the freezing cold to play hockey and get your shins battered by malicious teenagers, then back to the changing rooms for ritual mockery and cold showers? No thanks. Also, beep tests can bugger off too.
As an adult, I see the appeal of exercise and love to do it.
This is such bollocks. You don’t need to play sport or run to be physically active. And if you’re feeling that self-conscious there’s plenty of ways you can exercise without leaving the house.
Any excuse for poor health other than self-accountability…! MID life adults? Sort yourselves out.
It’s weird as I cross into midlife my fitness and BMI compared to the average man skyrockets. I’m just maintaining what I had in my late 20s. I can’t run mega fast but I can do a 25-26 minute 5k. But compared to other blokes late 30s/ early 30s I could be a rocket. Key is just maintaining that lifestyle.
I didn’t enjoy PE and actually exercised more after leaving school. Stay as healthy as possible and don’t be a burden to your family.
I was put in the spaz group pretty quickly in secondary school, definitely less troubled than most of the other kids, but this was my first formal acknowledgement of neurodivergence.
fifteen years later I figured out I was ASD.
Kinda wild a PE teacher clocked something was up and nobody else bothered to mention I should get an assessment the whole time.
I was haunted by the consistent bullying largely, fucking hated PE, I used to play truant back then as opposed to being consistently ripped on and chosen last. I wasn’t athletic at all back then but at 38 I’ll be running my first marathon in September so not all bad.
I’m just remember girls always “forgetting” their kits. It’s no wonder our PE teacher favoured the athletic students who actually tried.
“ Look after your body now so it will look after you later “
In school I thought I hated sports. It turns out most sports just suck. I picked up ultimate at university and am still hooked nearly 20 years later. First world championship this season (fortunately there are age divisions…).
Loved PE but I unfortunately have crap genetics and have a connective tissue disorder that makes a lot of exercise insanely painful. However, I do walk every day. Almost everyone can do a little bit of walking daily and it has enormous benefits. If the weather is shit, get a stepper or a something or find a friendly local gym. Anything really. When the weather is lovely like right now though, I can’t wait for my walks even when I’m feeling crap.
Our (secondary) school only recruited borderline psychopaths as PE teachers. Without exception they routinely terrorised us, and yes, it did have an effect. If you younger Redditors want a taste of what it was like, I recommend [Is That Your Body Boy?](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVV1RQ2yoZM). Sums it up well.
i was a skater, but i was a skinny queer geeky emo kid. 9am rugby in mid-December did not endear me to team sports. getting two-footed from behind by my bullies during football did not endear me to team sports. getting yelled at for not going hard, when i was saving my body to go skate after school, did not endear me to PE. school was torture for a lot of us, and apparently having a life outside of school as a kid was a problem. honestly, there’s prolly a bigger problem with how education is structured, and people being discouraged from sports is a symptom.
like, for instance; i’ve already said i did a sport not supported by state education. i was also a musician, but hated music at school. i was an avid reader, but hated English class. my reward for being good at maths, but not liking it, was more maths work. i got yelled at all the time for not doing the reading for English *with a book in my hand*. i basically flunked music class, then went and got a *fucking degree in it*, because the second i left the highly structured environment of school into higher education, i was able to engage with my interests in my own way and not be punished for it. what school instilled in me is that i could never do anything right, and i will be punished for anything i do. this is what highly structured education systems do.
As others have said, I find it really infantilising. I was definitely the “picked last at football” kid at schools and now I go to gym 3-4 times a week and can make my pecs dance.
People change. Yet the UK press is incredibly pandering when it comes to exercise.
Sorry, but this is a bit ridiculous, a bloke in is 50s refusing to do exercise because of some shit PE lessons .
The UK is horrifying overweight overall, due to lack of exercise and poor diet.
It is easy to do 30 mins a day exercise, it doesn’t have be intense, but they could start of walking and build
I just wish I had time for excerise , work, kids , wife , gotta keep everyone happy means no time for me really. The time I do get I’d prefer to sleep or just mentally shut off.
It’ll probably get better in a few years.
I discovered a love of lifting at 40. I went to the gym four times a week and loved it. Its the only exercise I’ve enjoyed
Then the fees kept going up and up and I got priced out, which was ashame as it did me so much good physicality and mentally