wakor:

unpretty:

unpretty:

the older i get the weirder it is that not a single p.e. teacher in my entire school career was able to recognize the difference between “a child who doesn’t get enough exercise” and “a child with serious health problems impeding their ability to exercise in this particular way”

you know what else is weird? we had to do that fitness test every year but like… we never actually… learned how to do the things they tested us on…

like, now that i am an adult i have learned how to build up my strength so i can do pushups, but that seems like something they could have taught us? in school? in the class where they tested our ability to pushups? they never taught us how to work our way up to actually doing a chin-up, or whatever. even if i had just been “out-of-shape” (as a CHILD), nothing they did would have solved that problem. i did not learn how to exercise in a functional way until i was out of school and teaching myself, so i’m not sure what those p.e. classes were even intended to accomplish, really.

I had PE teachers who would have us run for like, 10 minutes right away at the beginning of class, no stretching or jogging or preparation. I struggled so much. I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t get better, even though we had PE every day or every other day. Why wasn’t I improving?

In my last two years of high school, I had this class called Personal Fitness. I thought it was going to be the same old. But this teacher sat us down, and talked about actual fitness. He taught us what exercises did what, he taught us about muscle categories, he taught us what REPS were, he had us keep logs and start wherever we felt comfortable. He gave us some loose categories that we had to do every day – some warmup, some aerobic, some weightlifting, some cooldown. This is the first time I actually found out what “leg day” meant.

I learned two things. One, I actually had very solid limitations that prevented me from improving beyond a certain point (every time I tried to get past 30lb weights, I would get badly injured. I tried for like a whole semester). Two, I learned that even if I had limitations, I could improve up TO those limitations. I couldn’t lift a lot of weights, but I improved my aerobics. I grew muscle. I didn’t lose any weight, but he never said it was a goal. In fact, he did not let it be part of the curriculum at all. We never tested BMI. 

That class put me in the best shape of my life, and it was so easy. I went slow, I was allowed to set my own limits, and nobody made me feel bad for not being good enough.

I thoroughly believe PE should be entirely replaced by this type of curriculum.