I had to wrestle a kid who was much bigger and more athletic than me. He had me in a headlock when I brought my elbow back and broke his nose (unintentionally). There sure was a lot of blood though.
@carnut there were various “games” that mostly involved standing in a circle holding the edges of a giant (to my lil’ kid eyes) parachute.
My eyeballs crossed figuring this one out.
My sole memory of triumph in elementary school PE was playing steal the bacon in 4th grade or so. It was my turn, and me and the kid across from me jumped up, ran towards the towel in the center of the circle… and prompty bashed into each other skull-to-skull knocking us both out. I was on the ground, blinded and writhing in agony, when someone yelled that the other kid was out too, and I somehow managed to grab the towel and stagger back to my spot with my eyes closed.
Since I didn’t get sent to the nurse afterward, I can only assume that the medical severity of concussions was not yet known in 1992.
I once played crab soccer in middle school PE. 5 goalies to a side, guarding the entire length of the wall; everyone else split up between two teams and kicking an enormous ball towards the wall to score points, while crab walking.
I was very good at it. I scored 3 goals in a matter of about 40 seconds.
I give up on cousins sister. So I agree.
unfortunately, schools today either stopped offering PE, or you have to pay extra to participate, and then people complain about youth obesity 
I do think child obesity is a problem today, and loss of P.E. may be a contributing factor, but not the primary factor.
When I was young, when we kids got out of school, and all day weekends, we played actively outside with neighborhood kids till the cows came home until dinnertime, then we played again after dinner till dark. Sometimes we even managed to fit in a little homework and a chore or two into our tight play schedule. We didn’t really need P.E. in those days, because we burned more calories in our backyards.
Granted, families are smaller these days and there are not as many children for kids to play with, but, there’s enough. The only way I know there are kids in my neighborhood is because I see their parents packing them into their cars on the way to McDonald’s.
Children should be taught and encouraged to stop cocooning so much and play outdoors…as long as they stay off my lawn! 
And we mowed the grass, helped paint the house, worked in the garden and a dozen other chores.
God help you if you complained about it.
Indeed, chores weren’t negotiable. You either did them, or you paid a heavy price. A heavily painful price.
In my current development, we have a large playground, complete with swimming pool, basketball hoops, large field (big enough to play baseball, soccer, or football) and a big, safely-built jungle gym.
But, I hardly ever see any kids using this playground. Except for a few adults sipping margaritas around the pool, or a few teens smoking weed behind the clubhouse, this play area remains virtually unused. It’s a shame.
Ohhhh, yes. I STILL tend to dislike coaches on first glance due to early childhood experiences with gleeful sadistic adults who’d tell me that organized torture was good for me, and that it was my fault for inviting it.
Still wonder if their lesson plans actually delineated nothing but “run laps” and “play football” for the entire year. As well as “having the entire class help punish that one kid.”
Based on my physiology I should have been good at, and enjoyed gym, but I wasn’t and didn’t. I (male) was tall and thin but because of my lack of self esteem and comparative shortfall in coordination I never liked doing any sort of fitness in groups or team sports in general.
Whenever I was in gym class I always felt like I was in some dumbed down version of the Roman games. Definitely not enjoyable.
Lessons plans… Give me a minute to get there.
As I said earlier, I was well trained as a PE teacher. I went to a college that has, and still has, one of the best programs in the country, and it was fairly rigorous.
What weeded people out was the science. We took the same anatomy / physiology as the pre-med students, taught by science people, not the PE department. I loved it, and it was some of the most challenging material I’ve ever had to learn. Then there was biomechanics and exercise physiology - also seriously challenging and it served as a big hurdle to those in the pipeline to be teachers.
When we went out for student teaching we spent the first week or so observing, then began teaching our own lessons, subject to approval of our supervising teacher. But starting from day one, we had to write and submit lesson plans for everything.
A typical lesson plan had to include about five elements (introduction, warm-up activity, main activity, cool-down and closure), we had to plan for transitions between them (this is often what separates well trained teachers from the rest), and provide goals for each lesson element within the three domains of learning (psychomotor, cognitive and affective).
They were very, very serious about this. Lesson plans were looked over carefully by our college supervisor and would get bounced back to us for even small errors or omissions.
All this to say, once again, there are well trained PE teachers our there who were grounded in a philosophy very different from what people experienced before.
As for “running laps” or “punish that one kid”… unthinkable. We were drilled from day one in that program on a few items:
-
We never use exercise as punishment
-
We are there to teach everyone, not just the athletically inclined
-
The acitivites we teach should involve everyone, and the teacher needs to be actively supervising
-
There should be a learning goal for every activity we do. Sometimes it’s appropriate for that goal to simply be, have fun. But they wanted us to be very thoughtful about what we taught and why.
Quick story:
When I got to the high school portion of my student teaching they had a long-standing activity called “Murder Ball” that took place in a padded wrestling room. It was basically dodge ball with no safe areas or boundaries.
So I wrote a lesson plan describing this, but was completely stumped on what learning goals might be in play. I couldn’t think of anything positive anyone could learn from this stupid game, but as I said, you simply did not submit incomplete lesson plans at my program.
But, there was nothing for it and I wasn’t going to BS it. In the goals section I finally wrote, “I am unable to think of any learning goals for this activity.” To my surprise, it came back a week later from my supervisor with the comment, “Neither can I.”
When I was in high school, those on the college track could get the PE requirement suspended. My last year of PE was in 8th grade.
Good thing - that was the year we had weight training. So the first thing the teacher did? Weigh everybody, and call out each person’s weight. Not cool.
Wish this is what I had in elementary and middle school. And, even though I was glad to skip it at the time, I think I probably would have been better off if I had a good PE course during high school.
I actually got a ‘D’ in PE in my senior year in high school. All our gym teachers were creepy, and we didn’t do anything. But, again, I think I had senioritis the entire year. I don’t know what would have happened if I’d gotten an ‘F.’ Would I have had to go to summer school to make it up?
I was already taking classes at UCLA in my senior year, so I was considered a continuing student. I’m really sad to hear about your dropping out, @SCAdian . I was lucky.
I spent nearly half my childhood playing sports and games outside, like many of my friends. Out of dozens of coaches and gym teachers, I can only think of one whom was even mildly off-putting. I liked most of the activities, except for a couple that I was not very good at. But I agree some of them were strange in retrospect.
We did plenty of parachute games in elementary school P.E. class – occasionally in junior high, too. I remember the exact game gnarator describes here. Plus another one called “Popcorn” – shaking colored balls out of the parachute. For anyone unfamiliar with how parachutes were used in P.E. classes, this site is a quick-read primer.
Same here. I’m quite tall, always the tallest in class. So I should be a GREAT basket ball player, RIGHT?
Ummm, no, wrong. You’re gonna be sorry… The best basket I made was driving down the court, all by myself. And made two Points! For the other team.
Gym class (that’s what we called it at my HS) was a complete dog’s breakfast for me, but in university I apparently attracted the interest of the university basketball coach. Sadly, I am not a sports guy, but thank fuck I love riding a bicycle; here I am at 64, and probably in the top 10 or 15 percentile for my age cohort for fitness.
But never, ever expect me to perform in a team or group situation.
My 5’2" Wife decided she wanted to be an IronMan at 49 years old. She started ‘easy’ with full Marathons (at 5’2" running is not her strength) she went on to complete 4 full 140.6 mile IronMans over 7 years. We (I was driver) always drove the course a few days before. I remember commenting to her once that “I don’t’ know how tough of a race this is going to be, but it sure is a long drive” 
I was her ‘Sherpa’ I took care of her. That was my job. Had to call an ambulance for her once. Another time ambulances where already at finish line.
I did not race, but it damn near killed me.
To look at her, you would think a delicate flower. She’s not.
Jim Croce - “Don’t tug on Superman’s cape…”
Sincerely - kudos to her! That’s tough stuff.