Comments on Cranky Fitness: Gym Class Memories: Happy or Heinous?

Were mandatory showers in gym class common in high...

2008-12-31T03:14:00.000-05:00

Were mandatory showers in gym class common in high schools in the 1980's? We did have to shower at my school, and I'm just currious if most schools were requiring it at that time?

I thought you might enjoy reading the article at t...

2008-07-23T22:56:00.000-04:00

I thought you might enjoy reading the article at the website...

http://www.utne.com/2005-03-01/bathing-beauties.aspx

Please let me know your opinions on the article. I think every teen girl and even adult woman should read this wonderful article.

Annette T

Thank you Crabby and Chessiakelley.A few of my gir...

2008-03-16T21:59:00.000-04:00

Thank you Crabby and Chessiakelley.

A few of my girlfriends are at polar opposites of how they viewed the mandatory showers in school. One said that she hated it and wouldn't wish it on her worst enemy and two of them said that they would have never dreamed of not having showered after gym class and would have felt gross all day long if they weren't able to have showered. If I had to guess, I think I probably would have kind of felt like Chessiakelley? It probably would have seemed strange at first, but I probably could have gotten used to it.

Oh, and Chessiakelley, my friend who hated showering in school also complained that one of her gym teachers would stare at them in the showers, so your class wasn't alone in that feeling it would seem.

Jessica

I was made to shower in middle school, however if ...

2008-03-16T12:51:00.000-04:00

I was made to shower in middle school, however if you had your 'period' that particular week you didn't have to, and some of the girls always did. Ha. However, I thought it was really weird at first, being the first time any of us really saw another person naked, but I got used to it after about a year. I was also an athlete so was also sometimes volunteering to shower after a morning practice or something. Since everyone had to do it, it wasn't constricted to the 'popular hot girls', and it would definitely be too embarrassing for a 7th or 8th grader to make fun of another while in the buff. We pretty much just got it over with with little discussion, but many pokes of fun at the gym teacher who we all assumed was a lesbian if she was making us shower. very mature.

Good question Jessica--We weren't made to at our s...

2008-03-16T11:46:00.000-04:00

Good question Jessica--
We weren't made to at our school; only the really popular confident girls did regularly and many of the rest of us just went around sweaty most of the time. But I don't know what's typical.

I see that a couple of people mentioned hating the...

2008-03-16T04:52:00.000-04:00

I see that a couple of people mentioned hating the locker rooms. When I went to school we were never made to shower after gym classes. I'm curious as to whether or not most people who had to shower in school found it embarrassing or not. I have friends who have said that they had to shower in school, some of them said it didn't bother them, and some said it did bother them. I guess the idea of having been made to shower in school is so foreign to me that I honestly don't know how I would have felt back then? I think I could deal with it now as an adult if I had to, but I really don't know how I would have reacted back then?

Jessica

I don't have good or bad memories about PE. I do k...

2008-01-21T19:57:00.000-05:00

I don't have good or bad memories about PE. I do know that I hate bowling and softball because I was forced to play in church leagues for both, and I find them extremely boring and a waste of time. The one sport I did like was volleyball, but when I got to high school, tryouts were awful because all the girls were super mean about it. I had a really hard time in elementary school because I had exercise & stress induced asthma. I could never be the fastest at anything because I'd have to stop and use my inhaler, which made me all shaky and useless for 30 minutes. My school was so small that we ALL had to participate in basketball, volleyball and the track meet or else we wouldn't have a team. It was okay because I got to hang out with my friends and we were all on the same team, but we sucked. It's annoying going to a game knowing that you're going to lose. I did okay at the long jump at track meets because usually there were only three or four other competitors, so it was easy to place in the top five. The one thing that pisses me off to this day is that I wasn't allowed to do the shot put because I was a girl. It was the one thing that wouldn't give me an asthma attack, and they decided to be f'ing sexists about it (despite me CONSTANTLY reaming the principal over the unfairness of the situation).

However, I'm still proud that despite asthma, I was able to complete the one-mile race at the track meet. I came in second to last, but I did it.

Last summer, I ran my first 10K.

But I still hate bowling and softball.

I did do sports also, but that isnt actually part ...

2008-01-19T13:31:00.000-05:00

I did do sports also, but that isnt actually part of school... so during gym i could actually show the other kids that i could actually do something...

I was alerted by Dr. J that the subject was gym cl...

2008-01-18T10:54:00.000-05:00

I was alerted by Dr. J that the subject was gym class. At first I wasn't going to respond.The more I thought about it I realized
that it might be interesting to find out if anyone else had the same experience we had in high school. Recently a few Evanston Township
high school (Chicago) alums were talking about a strange thing that happened in boys' gym class. At the time (late 60's)we never even
thought about it. Back then nobody questioned authority. So when we were told that when in swim class there would be no bathing
suits,we all went along with the program. Fast forward 40 + years to the present and we hear about all the perverts in society.
We all just wondered what the heck were they up to?

Great post, Crabby, but I hated it. Gym class, tha...

2008-01-17T23:03:00.000-05:00

Great post, Crabby, but I hated it. Gym class, that is. I was fat, pasty, hairy (let's just say my uncoordinated-ness didn't magically stop when a razor was in my hand), wearing the least trendy clothes, and most likely to smell and feel dreadful for the rest of the perfectly normal day.

Now I run. I lift weights. I walk everywhere, do yoga when time permits, and pride myself on being able to kick high-school-athlete butt.

But, God, I never would have predicted this. Never. If "being fit" required mandatory volleyball (aaahhh! My glasses!), rope climbing (um, no? My arms? Are weak?), and team sports conducted with little training on how to play, I'd be on the way to a coronary, as my fifth-grade PE teacher predicted.

Why didn't you join a sport? Don't you think that...

2008-01-17T10:52:00.000-05:00

Why didn't you join a sport? Don't you think that would have been a great way to express your love of competition?

When I was in high school I wasnt the most popular...

2008-01-17T10:40:00.000-05:00

When I was in high school I wasnt the most popular or pretty girl, and I was pretty shy. But I loved gym class, because I was good at sports and that was one of the only times I felt like I actually fit in. I know this is the opposit of what most people here experienced, but for some people like me competition and team sports in gym class actually made high school better!

Yeah, gym class pretty much sucked for me too for ...

2008-01-17T09:50:00.000-05:00

Yeah, gym class pretty much sucked for me too for all those slow-fat-uncoordinated reasons but I do remember having a SCARY gym coach...he was actually fired for throwing a clip board at a student!! He would always roll around the gym in an office chair (which he also threw at the wall on one occasion.) I guess pissing him off and seeing his reaction made gym class not soooooo dreadful.

Another hypothyroid teenager here. We had only one...

2008-01-17T09:47:00.000-05:00

Another hypothyroid teenager here. We had only one year of required gym in high school, and I hated it. I grew up despising competitiveness in all fields, not just sports. In elementary school I rotated with two other girls being picked last for kickball and softball, but I never minded that--I knew I wasn't any good at them and I didn't want to be. I got some mild enjoyment from playing. I was never picked on, or teased for being bad at games, not even in gym class which was over a hundred girls, hardly any of them known to me. It was just excruciatingly boring.
It was the year after gym class that my hypothyroidism was diagnosed--I think it was probably developing over the past three years. I remember in health class that year, we all took our pulse rates, and most people were around 70, and mine was 50, and then we did a few minutes of jumping jacks, and most of the class went up between 100 and 120, and I went up to 55. Didn't think anything of it at the time, but I used to run up the stairs so that by the time I ran out of breath I'd be on the level and could just pant without making much effort.
The children I played with were all active. We ran around the neighborhood, we rode bikes, we roller skated, we had tree-climbing races, we jumped rope. We just all hated team sports. The thing about gym class was, it made individual sports just as boring.

Mary Anne in Kentucky

Wow, I find these stories so amazing and moving--t...

2008-01-17T09:30:00.000-05:00

Wow, I find these stories so amazing and moving--thanks so much, everyone, for sharing those godawful (or not so godawful, depending) memories.

Junior high school and high school were a really miserable time for me too, being a geeky baby-dyke with no fashion sense and no clue about how to be less unpopular. (And being gay back then even in California was not considered just another lifestyle choice, but genuine freakitude.) But I wasn't the total bottom rung of the social ladder, and didn't get bullied or teased. And gym class was one of the few places I fit in better because I was pretty good at sports.

So I can relate, in general, to the adolescent emotional scars, but had no idea how creepy and sadistic those classes could be! Thanks again for giving me a clue.

I don't really know how things are/were in other c...

2008-01-17T04:29:00.000-05:00

I don't really know how things are/were in other countries, since my middle/high school P.E. classes were in France in the 1990s. But I can share my own experience as well, I suppose.

Oddly enough, I didn't hate P.E. class. There were sports I disliked, and sports I liked. Retrospectively, I realize that in fact, when I didn't like P.E., it was never because of my weight. (Hm, interesting... Now I need to think about that some more.)

For instance, I didn't like the yearly "mini-marathon" we had in middle-school, but this was more because they always organized it in November, so it was cold, rainy, and did I say cold, and running in the cold makes my nose and lungs hurt. (Up until about 1 year ago, I would always catch 5-6 colds in the 6 months of 'cold season', and I always fell ill after such runs. :()

I was definitely at unease with climbing and gymnastics. I happen to suffer from a mild form of vertigo, and climbing on a 6-meters wall definitely frightened me to death, especially when the partner supposed to hold my rope was a 45-kgs little wisp (I was about 30 kgs more!) who kept on chatting with other girls and didn't pay attention to me. LOL

And I also hated swimming, again for a reason not related to my weight: when I was 8, the teacher found nothing better to do than to throw me in the 'deep basin' at the swimming pool to 'teach me to swim'. Right. What it taught me was to be afraid of any water that went above my chin. I only managed to win over that fear when I was 22, thanks to my then BF who taught me skin-diving and had, above all, the good sense to NEVER tell me "oh, beware, you're swimming in deep waters now!" (he told me afterwards only, when I wouldn't be afraid of it anymore).

On the other hand, I loved hurdles, triathlon classes and basket-ball. I was on the volley-ball team for one year before they dismissed it due to lack of attendance, and I played volley-ball again in high school for 3 years for the inter-classes matches. I was pretty good at serving, among other things, and people on the other teams would never take me seriously, because "oh look at the short fat girl, she must be crap at sports, let's not be worried about her". Hee hee.

Ah yes, high school was also when I first got good grades at running! We were graded not only on how fast, but also on how regularly we would run laps; I wasn't fast, but I have quite the inner clock when it comes to regularity.

Well, I guess that in short, I liked P.E. when I liked the sport we practiced? I never was great at anything, but I could hold my ground in several sports without being ridiculous, at least.

Oh, and those one piece gym suits in middle school...

2008-01-17T04:06:00.000-05:00

Oh, and those one piece gym suits in middle school, you nailed it, weren't they just too horrid????!! With no sleeves on ours, so when you put your arms up your pits hung out, and my best girl friend didn't shave, and girls would point and laugh. I finally had to tell her....

What misogynist came up with that crap? I hope their karma caught up with them but good. What the heck was wrong with t-shirts and shorts indeed? It was abysmal.

I had the one definitely gay gym teacher in middle school that I was madly in love with for two years because she treated me like a human being. She picked me to do the jump where you run and throw yourself up and over a bar and land on your back on a pad. I'd never done it, but she wanted me to demonstrate, I guess she could tell I was athletic. I nailed it in front of everyone. Nobody laughed.

Several gay gym teachers in high school, and my gay art teacher was previously a gym teacher... am I seeing a pattern here...? LOL!

mamacita is right to remind me that cheerleaders a...

2008-01-17T03:57:00.000-05:00

mamacita is right to remind me that cheerleaders are people too, and nowadays maybe some of them are even nice. Oh, hey, I just remembered I actually know one, and she lives in NEBRASKA. So maybe it's a California thing??? There actually was one nice girl at my HS, Sandy, and I remember her still because she was the ONE nice girl. But yeah, one can't paint everyone with the same brush, it's NOT fair or kind.

I still will continue to laugh when a cheerleader bites it in a horror movie though, it's a reflex after all these years, and I can't help it.

I had a great gym teacher in elementary and I love...

2008-01-17T00:15:00.000-05:00

I had a great gym teacher in elementary and I loved gym class. So did all my friends, and some of us were athletic and some of us weren't. She was just a good teacher. Looking back on things, I'm almost positive she is a lesbian...and sometimes people who are themselves diverse are better at nurturing diversity in others (like she was always really good at helping everyone find SOMETHING they were good at, and then having that kid give a demonstration). She was on of those teachers who made every kid feel like he/she was the best.

So yeah, I loved gym up until 6th grade.

Buuuut, then I got to middle school and our gym teacher favored the popular kids. I didn't start hating gym but I didn't love it anymore either.

I do respectfully disagree with Crabby on one thing...team sports are probably more important than you hear. at least for people like me. My parents got divorced, we moved, I had no friends, the teachers wanted to hold me back a grade because I wasn't "socially developed enough," I had low self-esteem, I was overweight and awkward. My mom put me on a soccer team. It turned my life around, and I'm not exaggerating. Sure, I was still fat and awkward, but I developed the confidence to love myself. I give 50% credit to my mom and 50% credit to sports. I wouldn't be who I am today without those two things.

Maybe sports are not "character building" for everybody. But for some people they are life changing. I studied Sports Management in college because I want to promote sports/healthy living/fitness for women.

Playing soccer turned my life around.

ps. I was a cheerleader in high school, and I was never mean to anybody. If you're gonna hate on people, hate on mean people because they're mean, don't hate on a girl just because she's a cheerleader.

When you are a nerd and a whimp, gym class was a n...

2008-01-16T22:31:00.000-05:00

When you are a nerd and a whimp, gym class was a nightmare. A nightmare. However, my last year of high school, coach got it right. Occasionally we did calisthenics. But the rest of the week, he'd let us group up and pick our own sport. I played volleyball with my girlfriends. No 6 foot overly hormonal boys cramming that thing down my throat!

Thanks for bringing up these scarring memories, Cr...

2008-01-16T21:58:00.000-05:00

Thanks for bringing up these scarring memories, Crabby! I'm kidding, but I do remember the Presidential Fitness Tests. One of the tests was to see how many pull-ups the boys could do. The girls' equivalent of this test was "The Bent-Arm Hang" They would lift you up to grab the pull-up bar, and then let go of you to see how long you could hold yourself with your chin above the bar. I hit my damn chin on that bar as soon as they let go of me. Every. Single. Year. Once, I even bit my tongue, drawing blood. I am an athlete, but my upper-body strength has still never been what it should be. I think my arm muscles are still scared I'm going to attempt the Bent-Arm Hang again, so they are hiding out.

Ah! Gym Class! I was always last one picked and t...

2008-01-16T21:32:00.000-05:00

Ah! Gym Class! I was always last one picked and the all time goalie. I hated gym class. Probably still would even without the emphasis on team sports.

I have to comment on the presidential fitness awar...

2008-01-16T20:59:00.000-05:00

I have to comment on the presidential fitness awards because I think about those a lot. I never could do any of the things that were required. I am sure it is because there was never any practice or training on any of it. I always felt like I was not and could never be athletic because I could not just magically do those things.

I have since learned that I can do anything with the proper training at my own pace and in my own way. I couldn't run one of those laps. I run half marathons now.

I'm with tk, bunnygirl, &chickengirl. I HATED gym ...

2008-01-16T20:58:00.000-05:00

I'm with tk, bunnygirl, &chickengirl. I HATED gym class.

I hated, Hated, HATED junior high and high school gym because of the reasons listed above - not popular, more academic so chosen among the last. Like someone else said, gym class seemed to be designed to have the athletic/team kids show the rest of us up. (Is field hockey really any fun?) And the teachers were also the coaches so they didn't think much of the non-athletes (thanks for lowering my gpa) and certainly didn't go out of their way to boost the self confidence of the non-athletes.

[One of the most interesting things we did do is archery. I actually enjoyed class for a week or two - it's not like we had an archery team or anything so for once we were all on equal footing.]

Most of my bad memories are not so much from the class but the snarky locker room cr*p afterwards.

No one has mentioned this yet, but we had to wear these ugly red "gymsuits" that were short sleeve cotton romper style outfits - basically a shirt with attached elastized bloomer panties that snapped up the front. (This was in the 70s & early 80s) They were hideous and and as an added source of humiliation also showcased pit stains. Why couldn't the girls get to wear a tee shirt and shorts like the boys? They would have been much more modest than the outfits we wore. I was extremely self conscious in wearing shorts that were basically really loose underpants and I was a normal weight kid.

Our school also had swimming starting in 7th grade and had hideous non-lycra school swimsuits to wear. To fit my rear, the top was always baggy - another self esteem booster. Thank god I picked up planter warts and got a doctor's note to get out of class for most of high school. The worst was having to try and fix dry your hair and put some makeup on in 10 minutes or less.

Because of my gym class experiences I didn't think of myself as athletic and shunned a lot of organized physical activity until I was in my twenties. I grew up skiing so I did do something physical but it wasn't until I started cycling and training for a century ride with some friends that I realized I could enjoy a sustained aerobic activity. I had always been a slow runner and got what I now know is athletic induced asthma when I ran as a kid. Now, I really like lifting weights and spin class.

I don't think gym class should be imposed on kids in school and certainly not GRADED. I never got a substantial amount of exercise out of it. My exercise came from after school play. Team sports can be introduced to kids through little league and AYSO where you voluntarily sign up and you have your parents around to advocate for you. [Those of you who don't have kids yet - sign 'em up when their 5 - the cliqueness starts early] Once you hit junior high and high school, maybe offer intramural sports and a workout room and various aerobics classes but I don't believe it should be required.