Favorite/least favorite P.E. activities

In My Humble Opinion
1

Grade school Physical Education, i.e. P.E. or “gym” class. From early elementary school through high school graduation, we all had to do go through it. There were lots of different games/activities.

I’m thinking mostly about elementary and middle school, as you typically were not given a choice of activity like in high school (my high school at least, YMMV).

Thinking back through my school days, the ones I enjoyed:

Archery - my all-time favorite. Only occurred once a year, not even every year, but it was a great couple of days. Bows, arrows, blisters, what’s not to like?

Rope climb - thinking back on it I’m shocked we were not only allowed to do this, but actually encouraged or even required to. But I guess at that age the PE teacher must have been confident in his/her ability to catch us were someone to fall (which I would imagine is rare). Anyway, while I’m certain I could not do it today, at age 7 and like 45 pounds, I could easily climb to the ceiling. Great fun.

Parachute - even as a child I questioned both the physical and educational value of this activity, but it was fun, so I liked it.

Trampoline - bouncing really high and flipping around. Who doesn’t like that?

Field Day - I kind of sucked at all of the events, but hey, it was a full day playing outside, so it was fine with me!

My least favorite activities:

Wrestling - at my middle school, mandatory for all 7th grade boys. I’ve always been strong for my size and probably would have been a good wrestler, but they made us do it in front of all the girls and I just wanted to hang out, so I basically just gave up in the first round so I could sit out the rest of class.

Square dancing - seriously?

Volleyball - hated this. I sucked at it. PE teachers love this because, I assume, they didn’t really have to do anything except set up the net.

Ping pong - despite my Asian heritage, I was (and am still) terrible at this.

I’m sure there are more, those are just off the top of my head.

What were your favorites? Which ones did you hate?

2

Least favorite? All of them except square dancing.

I was a skinny, nearsighted kid, youngest in the class by far, always the last one chosen for team sports. My nearsightedness was not diagnosed until far too late for me to develop hand/eye coordination.

Dancing was OK because I knew the steps and you don’t need any particular strength to do it.

We didn’t have archery, trampoline or parachute (whatever that is).

3

I liked dodgeball, though I’d have preferred better melee weapons than rubber balls.

4

I liked most activities. We didn’t have fancy stuff like archery or trampoline. We did all of the sports - softball, basketball, soccer, volleyball, tennis, flag football. We played dodge ball and did gymnastics.

I was always good at team sports but my best was badminton. My other best was weight lifting (I was/am huge for a woman).

I guess my least favorite was having to run - see parenthetical above. I also was not very good at gymnastics. I could catch anything you throw at me but hurtling myself around was not my strong suit.

5

Hating gymnastics. Mostly because I was always horrible at it. Loved playing softball. We never played baseball.

6

I hated every bit of PE with every fiber of my soul. But the one that I hated the most was Track and Field. I was a short, overweight out of shape kid who hated sports. When T&F came, it was the worst. First, they wanted me to ‘try’ and jump over hurdles that were up to my chest. I refused, knowing there was no way in hell I’d make it over and would more than likely break something in the attempt. Then, the backwards vault or whatever that was. Failed that miserably, though I did try. Finally, it was time to ‘run’ a mile. We got two attempts. The first day, I tried my best, I ran till I was about to pass out and made it in like…13 minutes? I dunno, it was bad but I had really given it my all. Well not good enough. Teacher said if I didn’t make it in 10 minutes or under I was getting an F in the class, because of how poorly I’d performed in the other parts. Well that just pissed me off cause I KNEW I’d tried. So the next day when we had our second change, I walked as slow as I possibly could. The entire class had to stand there and wait for me to finish. Total time? 34 minutes. So yeah, my only F in my entire academic career was that report card.

7

I used to hate to run, which causes my family no end of amusement since I now run for fun, completed my fourth half-marathon last Fall.

Loved everything else, square dancing, gymnastics, sports and especially parachute!

8

Liked pretty much everything but running, it’s just boring.

9

In my final year of PE, we got to choose a focus for a term. I chose juggling. I really like juggling - I view it as basically a form of meditation.

Archery, also cool.

Non-stop cricket was okay, but nowhere near juggling or archery in terms of favourites.

My least favourite…running. Cross country. I hated endurance-based activity. When it was speed, in short bursts, yeah, that was fine. But endurance? Fuck no.

10

Parachute is awesome. Its educational value consists in getting a group to cooperate: it really only works if everyone is doing the right thing and is synchronizing their movements. At least, that’s the best rationalization I can think of :).

Our school’s PE teacher is fantastic, and he brings in activities like archery and skateboarding; he’s currently teaching the kids to play hockey.

Even though I was a tiny kid, I could move pretty quickly, so I enjoyed games like dodgeball and tag. And I got to do archery in high school, and I’m not too bad at it. But my aim with balls (including, tragically, snowballs) is terrible: for some reason I always through about 2 feet to the left of my target. Also I can’t throw correctly to save my life. So when it came time to play games where throwing a ball was important, I hated them.

11

That is a very good point.

12

I would play pickup basketball for all 7 periods if they let me.

Everything else just took too damn long. 10 minutes to get dressed, 5 minutes to set up/get out to the field, 5 minutes to explain the rules, 15 minutes to play, and then 10 minutes to change back into civilian clothes.

13

Best: Swimming. I got to see my classmates naked.
Worst: Swimming. They saw me naked.

14

Loved basketball, loved blocking shots and passes. Got in a few shoving matches because I frustrated some people so much. Loved Volleyball (still do), loved being in front row and blocking shots. I just love playing defense, no matter the sport.

Hated softball, but ironically my one High School sports highlight is when I really shifted my stance and smacked the ball the other way towards the weakest person stuck playing right field. My only home run ever, I think I was a freshman.

Hated wrestling, gymnastics, running, swimming. Couldn’t do pullups to save my life. I just have a sweating problem, having a early gym class meant I was still dripping while I was in my next classes, I wasn’t going to be the only one who showered. It never occurred to me to not exert myself.

15

I hated PE. Pure torture for the girls. I went to school in the 80’s. Big hair, lots of makeup, layers and layers of complicated Madonna-esque clothing, and huge dangly earrings and bangles. (gag!) We never had enough time to dress and primp ourselves again. Swimming, or any activity that made us sweat made it even worse! Back then looking good was all we were concerned with.

16

My favorites were swimming, dancing, and gymnastics. Really, anything that wasn’t a team sport was fine in my books.

As for least favorite, probably running. That was just plain torture. After that, any team sport where I was inevitably teamed with the jocks who took sports way too seriously and would freak out if I made the smallest of mistakes.

All I learned from gym class, was that if you weren’t any good at sports, don’t bother trying. It was less embarrassing to fail when it was obvious you weren’t trying, then to fail while giving it your all.

17

I hated PE, all of it. :mad:

We did not have:
[ul]
[li]Archery [/li][li]Parachute (don’t know what this is)[/li][li]Trampoline [/li][li]Square dancing or any dancing[/li][li]Ping-pong[/li][/ul]

18

I liked swimming, kickball, and street hockey (no skates).

My least favorite activity happened once every few weeks in high school. They posted a list of all the crap we had to do that period: it was something like 10 laps around the gym, then 100 jump ropes, then 5 stair laps, and so on until we ran out of time.

I’m glad we never had to do square dancing, or that would have been my least favorite.

19

Say, do these things (colored plastic boards with casters) look familiar to anyone? What were they for again?

20

For those of you unfamiliar with the parachute: Fun with the parachute! - YouTube