I lift weights, ride my bike, swim in pools and natural bodies of water, run outside, and do lots of yoga. I am a health and fitness nut, more ‘athletic’ than most I know, and of course I don’t smoke. I exercise mostly alone, and never in a competition.
Fitness and exercise don’t have much to do with sports. Although some people certainly prefer getting their exercise by playing sports, most professional athletes spend quite a bit of time doing the same fitness-promoting, non-competitive exercise that I do…
I have to agree that sports is not equivilent to exercise. I hike, do yoga and do a LOT of fast paced walking (about an hour per day) none of which I consider sports. BTW, of all of my friends and aquaintances I’d guess that 98% don’t smoke). Almost nobody smokes anymore and it’s probably to do more with being intelligent along with social stigma than playing sports.
The prevalence of smoking goes down with education level - people with university degrees are much more likely to be non-smokers than those without. So can you say the same thing about education? Being smart and knowledgeable is a good thing, not being that is a bad thing. Education promotes good qualities like discipline, hard work, and commitment. How can anyone not want to go to university?
Well, there’s lots of reasons people don’t go to university. They don’t have the aptitude, they don’t have the time, they have other interests or goals that are more important to them. Or they got turned off the educational process by parents, teachers, or other kids when they were young.
All those are the same reasons that people don’t pursue organized sports. Just because someone doesn’t go to university doesn’t mean they are stupid - just because someone doesn’t play a sport doesn’t mean they are obese and lazy. Just because I can’t imagine what I’d do with my life if I didn’t go to college doesn’t mean I can’t imagine why anyone else would choose not to go - just because sports are clearly very important to you doesn’t mean they need to be important to other people.
Ok, I get it. Different strokes for different folks.
However, sports do go hand in hand with exercise. Weightlifting, running, practices all occur throughout most sports seasons. I don’t see how anyone can deny that.
Sports provide exercise, but not all exercise comes in the form of sports. I think people are objecting to the idea that if you don’t like organized sports you are necessarily an undisciplined slothful pile of goo.
That’s true. I just think it’s unfortunate, especially in K-12 gym classes. If all you do in school as a kid is play competitive sports that you have no natural aptitude for, it can be difficult to disassociate exercise (a healthy habit) from sports (frustrating and painful embarrassment).
You may not know any sports players who smoke, but I never met any non-sports players who needed knee surgery before they were 20.
Sure there’s some obese kids out there, under 20, in need of knee surgery. What if those same kids played sports.
I guess I’m trying to say if sports were promoted more in grade and high school, you would have a lot less obese people, less smokers, and more health-conscious people. People just don’t understand how important sports really are.
If sports had been promoted more in grade and high school, I would probably have actually killed myself instead of just thinking about it. The only saving grace about them was that it was only a small part of my day.
And you are still not getting the part that while participating in sports requires exercise, it does not follow that getting exercise requires participation in sports.
If proper EXERCISE was promoted more in grade and high school, you’d probably have a healthier population. Sports shouldn’t be promoted at all, and exercise should be the default course. Sports classes should only be offered to those who want it.
We spent an awful lot of PE time playing various sports, which mostly consisted of the gym teacher’s pets getting to be captains and choosing up teams. The kids who had very little athletic ability got very little in the way of positive reinforcement. It’s like requiring ALL kids to take AP English or math, rather than having basic math courses for the kids who needed it, and then advanced courses for those who had the basics down.
Sports don’t guarantee health, they don’t even promote health, unless they’re combined with exercise. However, proper exercise can promote health, even when it’s not combined with sports. If people enjoy sports, great. That enjoyment might lead to them wanting to exercise so that they can become better. But if someone doesn’t enjoy sports, forcing it on them isn’t going to make them like it, and they’ll quit playing just as soon as it’s no longer required.
No, I get it. You can exercise all on your own without sports. However, how many people actually do? I can say my level of physical activity has gone down drastically since sports.
It’s the fact that you have to exercise when you play sports. There is no way around it. Furthermore, when you have a social structure like a team, it makes doing those exercises that much easier.
All the more reason to encourage kids and teens to be healthy rather than play specific sports. Team sports are common in high school and college but I don’t know many adults who have the time and opportunity to do them. So people who used to be active become couch potatoes. If people were in the habit of jogging or cycling or swimming or whatever from their teen years they may be more likely to stick with it since those things are generally easier to fit into an adult schedule.
Well, you’re incorrect. Sports are already over-promoted at the high school level. Sports teams are revered and the vast majority of gym time is taken up by competitive games. That means that those of us who aren’t good at sports never got any instruction or encouragement to try exercise that isn’t geared toward competition. You really think that associating exercise with getting picked last and laughed at will make non-athletic kids more interested in keeping up healthy exercise habits?
Sports are not important at all. Almost by definition. Exercise and healthy living is important.
Like others here, I found elementary and high school gym class humiliating and incredibly demoralizing. I had (undiagnosed) poor eyesight and couldn’t catch a ball or accurately throw one to save my life. I was relentlessly mocked for this (by other kids and sadistic gym teachers) and in my younger years ended many a gym class in tears. As soon as high school was over I promptly swore I would never participate in any sport ever again, and revelled in my new-found freedom. Unsurprisingly I gained a lot of weight and was soon quite out of shape. So in my mid-20s I discovered exercising on my own and I guess everything worked out. But it would have been a lot easier if I had found out in high school that you could be healthy and active without also experiencing soul-crushing misery.
I got very little exercise during sports - I just stood around watching the favorites get to do the fun stuff, while I was banished to the outfield or whatever to just stand there, getting religious and praying the ball didn’t come my way.
Apparently many people in this thread have mastered the ability to exercise without having their social network right there to keep them from going off track, so to speak.
If your level of activity has gone down drastically since sports - perhaps it is because you are lacking in discipline.
Sports are boring. I was a gangly, dorky kid who was always picked last or almost last for teams, so never got into them. Watching them is more boring than watching grass grow. Elephant polo is an exception though, I’ll grant that.
Sports are fun to play sometimes, but people get way too competitive. When sports get too competitive, it’s not even fun. People need to take sports a little less seriously. They are meant to be fun, but I hate how it sometimes brings out the worst in people.
There are sports people and there are comic book people. And we comic book people have too many memories of getting fucked over by jocks in middle school to ever warmly embrace them.