Buy Walking VideosWhat I Wish I Had Learned In Gym Class
I learned more about my body and muscles from Denise Austin than I did in gym class. Why is that? I took a weight training class in high school. Why didn’t I learn the difference between my hamstrings and quads there?
What should I have been learning in gym class? To this day, I’m a little unclear? Was I supposed to be learning the rules to the games that we were forced to play? They didn’t really give us any instruction on that. They just had us choose teams and everyone assumed that we knew the rules. Were we supposed to gaining strength, endurance and balance? If that were the case, why weren’t we tested on that. Even in the weight training class, all we had to do to get an A was attend every day and do one more repetition on our Max Test than we did when we started the class. Even I got an A in Weight Training.
Here’s what I would have liked to learn in gym class:
Why physical fitness is just as important as intellectual training.
The difference between strength, endurance and balance and why each one is important.
All the major muscle groups: the technical names and the abbreviated or nicknames.
How to stretch every muscle group in a variety of ways to prevent injury and ease muscle soreness.
How to exercise every muscle group to increase strength.
The difference between aerobic and anaerobic exercise and why each is important.
How to find an exercise that you will enjoy and fits in with your lifestyle.
It would probably take several years to teach all this stuff and the class would never have to choose teams. I used to feel angry that I had to take gym class. I was a straight A student and I felt that sports had no place in our schools. I thought they siphoned off money away from academic pursuits. I had to sell advertisements and candy bars to help fund the Literary Magazine, but the football team was treated to pizza lunches all the time.
Looking at my own mortality and knowing that all the 100% on tests will not give me one more year of life has shown me that physical fitness IS just as important as intellectual pursuits. Now I’m even angrier that I got such poor training in gym classes. It’s a sorry state of education when a straight A student learns the major muscle groups from a television show about aerobics.
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December 12th, 2005 at 5:21 am
Another thing that I think they should have taught is how to keep fit on your own time. Kids are usually good enough to run around on their own, but teenagers really need that. If you have gym at school, it’s usually not enough; you spend more time standing around or hating what you’re doing. I learned more about working out and doing it on my own time from dance classes and martial arts classes.
April 22nd, 2006 at 10:11 pm
I loved gym class in junior high and high school!
But I wish we had done more weight training and aerobics!
But overall gym class helped give me more self confidence since I felt better about the way I looked.
And even though some girls may not have liked them, I do feel that post gym class showers in a communal shower room helped me to see that we all have some flaws and that we need to be more accepting of ourselves!
Wendy