Don’t discount the value of humiliation in some cases. I wasn’t fat as a kid, in fact, I was the opposite - classic skinny “98 pound weakling” with no athletic ability (I think I weighed about 130 on a good day, actually, at 5’10"). They forced us to do a mile at once a year in gym class. I came in way back with the fat kids, and was just about dying. Something about that struck me as just plain wrong, so I started jogging along the highway regularly. When they made us do it the next year, I came in third, with a time pretty close to six minutes. What was more interesting, word had apparently gotten around, and it became the one time I didn’t get picked close to last. One of the athletic guys picking the teams for the track stuff kind of squinted at me, said “you can run, can’t you?”, and picked me pretty early. Somebody tried to talk me into going out for cross-country, too, but I wasn’t about to. I would have still died, trying THAT.
So… what’s a fly ball, exactly?
OTOH, if you’re going to use humiliation, you have to use it very carefully. It can easily backfire and make a kid avoid all kinds of physical activity.
34 here, and me neither. I’m on a perpetual quest to find a form of exercise that I don’t hate too much (I at least dislike most forms of exercise that I’ve tried). Walking home from work is OK, at least when there’s not ice or snow (so haven’t been able to do it much for the last month). Team sports of any kind are completely out of the question for me.
It’s a ball that’s hit into the air that goes out past the bases into the grass (the outfield).
Lots of fly balls are caught by one of the guys playing back (the outfielders), in which case the guy who hit the ball is out, but lots land harmlessly in the grass, in which case you can run.
If the ball lands without being caught, you can just run like hell to get to the next base. If someone catches the ball, you have to touch the last base you were on before you run to the next base, which makes it riskier because you have to wait and then you have less time to run to the next base.
A ball that’s been hit into the air by the batter. If one of the fielders catches a fly ball before it hits the ground, the batter is automatically “out”.
This is as opposed to a “ground ball”, in which the batted ball hits the ground at least once before it gets to one of the fielders.
**What do gym teachers do these days with the hopelessly obese? **
Gym is not mandatory in public school here - I don’t know if that makes a difference.
P.E. was mandatory for me until 6th grade (graduated HS in 1977). IIRC it wasn’t mandatory for my kids at all (graduated in 2003 and 2005). They may have done some stuff in elementary school but I don’t remember buying special clothing or anything like that.
See, how many times did we do baseball in gym and I never understood that? I thought it was something special, not just “a hit that doesn’t hit the ground”. And I had no idea that if you caught one that didn’t hit the ground it was just out with no more throwing shit around that I could never catch in the first place.
The worst was when they told me I had to be shortstop, because I never understood what a shortstop is supposed to do. (Don’t tell me - luckily, once you turn 30 nobody ever makes you play baseball again.)
I wish I knew more about how they teach physical education now because I’m interested in the problem of obesity in general, including childhood obesity. I once heard a comedian say that the kids who were fat and lazy when P.E. started, were fat and lazy when it ended. But I wonder if there’s more to it than this.
For example, maybe those kids at least stopped gaining for a time. Maybe they were healthier just by virtue of being minimally active. Even better, it’s possible non-active people (at whatever weight) might find something they’re taught in P.E. to be hugely entertaining and take it up as a long-term activity.
P. E. was mandatory for me all the way through high school. I was an active kid and enjoyed most of that activity. Coming from a small school, I was able to be on every sports team available for girls. I also took dance lessons outside the school. I was a thin, fit kid. But when it came to P.E., I SO dreaded getting dressed and undressed in front of others, within an hour, then returning to class still feeling like I smelled of the locker room, that I would do ANYTHING to get out of it. And yeah, most of my P.E. time involved being smashed with rubber balls thrown by 6’+ boys. What IS the deal with that?
During my last year in high school a particular teacher wanted me to sign up for her class. I told her if she got me out of P.E. for the year, I’d take it. She spoke with the principal and I never attended another smelly locker-room session during school hours.
P.E. classes probably could REALLY be used to advantage in the fight against childhood obesity. They could help kids find activities they enjoyed. I have a morbidly obese friend who plays on sports teams and coaches high school and college level sports all the time. She’s ridiculously active…so much so that I wonder how she does it at her size (having been that size myself at one time). I’d hate to think that being humiliated would dissuade someone like her.
The problem with PE after elementary school, AIRC, is that it was taught by the damned football coach. I’m sure there are people who really want to teach PE, who really want to inspire kids to be active and have fun doing it and maybe learn a basic knowledge of common sports.
To me, team sports should be an optional component of physical education. Phys ed should be about learning about your body: its changes and development, what to eat, what not to eat, how to exercise, effects of various substances like caffeine and alcohol, changes in the senses and what will damage them, all sorts of things that are useful to know. Team sports might even be a separate class.
In my freshman year, my “Individual Sports” teacher was the football teacher. He had a perfect year as a coach until playoffs, and was in all respects a qualified, serious coach, in addition to being my gym teacher. He was an excellent gym teacher, and that was the best gym class I’d ever had, after disappointing experiences up until that time.
This.
The best gym classes I ever had was when one of the teams was away somewhere and our teacher, Mr Dick, who was a coach, went with them. Our class would then be taught co-ed with the girls’ class. Mrs. B explained rules and basic technique before setting up various games to practice. Some of it could be basic, some of it could be more detailed. She’d cover stuff like, how to properly hold a squash racquet, what “offside” means, what part of your foot should make contact with the soccer ball so you wouldn’t hurt your toe, etc. Yes, there’s a ton of stuff a bunch of us already knew, but it did us no harm to be reminded.
There’s a lot of stuff that Mr. Dick took for granted and would yell at guys for doing who wouldn’t know any better. Like the new kid who moved here from Lebanon to escape the war, he’d never seen baseball before, how the hell is he supposed to know what “tagging up” means?
As an obese kid in gym class through the tenth grade in the 70s, most of the time, it was torture. Some of the P.E. teachers went out of their way to humiliate those of us who were not star material. To be fair, I did have a few good ones too.
My junior high and high schools included sports like archery, bowling, swimming and dance as well as the traditional softball, basketball, volleyball, etc. Oddly enough, I was actually a fair player in softball, volleyball, bowling,swimming, dance and excelled in archery. I sucked in track, flagball, soccer and basketball though.
Looking back, I wish that we’d had units in aqua aerobics, power walking, golf and a few other activities that would likely be enjoyed long after my P.E. days were over.
I was always humiliated when we played softball. I could never hit the damned ball. It was always “a-swing-and-a-miss.” The coach was nice enough and tried to help me out with the way I was holding the bat. I think I hit the ball by accident one time and it sort of dribbled about two feet away from me.
It didn’t occur to me until years later that batting righ-handed when I was blind in that eye didn’t make a lot of sense. I had been born that way, so I didn’t consider my vision “abnormal.” Didn’t even think about it much. I’m sure the coach didn’t know what my problem was.
It explained my pitiful scores in tennis too.
Morbidly obese people are never hopeless. You can always do a little group therapy, talk about some success stories, then do some simple exercises, talk about nutrition, etc.
I agree with this, except for the “few good ones” part. Those never materialized for me. I could not run very fast. I was always the last across the line when we had to run laps, or run from one end of the gym or field to the other. I couldn’t jump rope for as long as the other kids without having to stop, or do as many jumping jacks. I didn’t have a lot of physical dexterity so obstacle courses, for example, were hell for me.
But I had a keen eye for catching balls, could’ve played third base, for example, in our rather slow-paced, co-ed softball games, but I was always relegated (with the other girls) to the outfield, where I’d still manage to catch balls that other girls didn’t, even though I had to run for them. But I didn’t have the strength or any sort of training to really get a good throw in all the way from the outfield. So I was never praised for my score-preventing catches, only grumbled at when I didn’t get the ball to the basemen in time to turn double plays or whatever.
Similarly, I was great at kickball, the rainy day in the gym go-to game. I consistently scored homeruns because I had a powerful kick with good aim, and the rule was, hit the far wall of the gym, automatic homer. I could get the ball up, over the heads of all the opposing fielders, and against that wall in almost every single “at bat.”
One smart boy in the class realized this and put me in a space in the lineup where my powerful kick would result in multiple runs scored. But I still never got any encouragement or notice from the teacher, or suggestion that maybe with my kicking abilities I might enjoy playing soccer, and that running up and down a soccer field in the way that kids do, might be good for me.
So any chance of a spark catching and an “a-ha” moment of finding a niche for this fat girl was lost. I was the fat girl. I didn’t get any positive attention whatsoever. Faults were magnified, assets ignored. I eventually got a medical excuse from PE and stopped trying.
Here’s (PDF) what they probably should be doing, or at least something similar. Team sports are okay too, but PE should be more about increasing fitness, teaching basic physical skills, and establishing a positive attitude toward all kinds of exercise and activities than about playing particular sports. The linked article is about a small-scale study of a particular fitness program (CrossFit) and its outcomes in boosting academic performance, as well as fitness, among elementary school students in San Diego.
I did non-traditional stuff when I was a kid, so I didn’t know most of the rules for team sports and hadn’t practiced the same skills as many other kids. I can empathize somewhat with those of you who were obese or clumsy even though I wasn’t either. I learned archery, firearms shooting, and horseback riding when I was about 5; did gymnastics regularly from 10–13, and off and on for another couple of years; started swimming as a freshman, and did both that and springboard diving for the next three years, eventually competing at state-level competitions for both. I was athletic even though I wasn’t a “jock.” And I didn’t like PE.
The times I remember as being most enjoyable were days we couldn’t go outside because of crappy weather, and had to play inside doing weird games like crab soccer (you run around on all fours, stomach side up, and have to use your feet to move the ball) where the kids who did soccer, baseball, or basketball with friends or junior league organizations didn’t have much of an advantage. It wasn’t just me, either. Everyone, — including both the team jocks, and the clumsy or chubby kids who normally looked like they’d rather be getting a root canal than playing — thought things like that were a lot of fun.
The positive social aspects of CrossFit that I think are responsible for the effects shown are similar to those in Outward Bound. Participants tend to support each other, because they’re working (or suffering) as a group. Individual responsibility is encouraged, and excuses are frowned upon. You’re pushed to work at the highest level you can personally handle, and continually encouraged to improve. Some amount of peer teaching is almost inevitable, while at the same time a qualified instructor/facilitator is present and has already established safe and correct guidelines for the activities. The attitude is, if you can’t do X yet, you will be able to eventually; meanwhile, do Y instead since that will help you work up to doing X. That’s a pretty good model for progressive problem solving.
The other thing that distinguishes this kind of exercise from team sports is that you all find out what your strengths and weaknesses are and you’re all working to improve some aspect of your performance. The guys who dominate football because they’re bigger or stronger get their asses handed to them on metcon (short for “metabolic conditioning,” primarily aerobic, though not exclusively) workouts. People who can keep running for hours are humbled by the strength requirements of other workouts. The influence of specialized skills acquired in sports is limited in the performance of the workouts, though there is some benefit from kinesthetic awareness acquired in doing other things. On the other hand, the fitness acquired through the workouts has a huge effect on the ability to learn new sports or athletic skills. Standout athletes who show up at the top of the ladder in all fields are very rare and get lots respect because everyone is doing the same workouts, but that person is doing it better than most. They become role models, but their heads can’t be too big because there’s almost always something in the workouts that they’re not the best at.
My experiences exactly (except I wasn’t skinny, I was about average size).
Interestingly, sports were Strongly Encouraged at my school. I hated (and still do) Rugby, and although I played a bit of Cricket, people took it a bit too seriously for my liking.
Fortunately, my school a public school, not a swanky private one) had a Shooting team. Yup, Target Shooting was offered as a sport at our school (I graduated in 1999). We used .177 calibre Feinwerkbau Air Rifles and would set up special pellet-target boxes at the far end of the school gym (20m away?) and shoot at them using proper Competition rules and scoring. So, despite my extreme dislike of most team sports, there was still a sport that I could participate in at high school, and that I’m still participating in a decade after I graduated.
But yeah, general PE is a colossal waste of time, IMHO.
PE shouldn’t be about trying to get the fat kid in shape. It is supposed to be teaching kids about PHYSICAL FITNESS. This is where they are supposed to cover all the physical stuff (everything else at school being cerebral I guess). They have to cover hygiene, sex-ed, diet, exercise and on and on. At the same time they give PE the lowest budget and, sorry, the worst teachers I’ve ever experienced. PE should have been a golden opportunity for all kids to learn how to play different sports, what to do in a gym and how to become physically active if they want. Maybe we won’t all do it but getting the knowledge would be nice. Instead, everybody just has stories about how useless the whole process was.
I was a fairly athletic kid - ran track in HS and did other stuff - and I hated PE too. The only thing I learned in years of PE was that you must always call the teacher “coach”. Well, I did also learn that I was a “spaz” and that “coach” found me to be usless. Good information.
I had pretty much the same experience (except I was the fat kid), and I’m about the same age (28 now).
I’m no longer the fat kid (or adult), and have found that there are some sports and exercises I’m actually good at, but gym class at school never taught me that.
These things are usually covered in PE classes? We had a completely separate class, (Health) and teacher, for this.
Apparently, I went to a school with goldmine of a PE system since it offered golf, snowshoeing, weight training, bowling, and swimming segments along with the more traditional choices.