sucking the joy out of physical activity, exhibit n

[anotheranon]

Storm or not, I did my "homework" from club: stretching for my lunge plus... 100 jumps with a jump rope every day I don't fence.

Until coach recommended this I hadn't jumped rope since...oh....first grade, and with very good reason. I would always trip on the rope and sometimes fall down, leading to giggles from my classmates and yet another reason to hate public school phys ed.

I hate(d?) jump rope, but I also knew that if I didn't do it V. would be able to tell. Besides, he's not steered me wrong yet...

Lo and behold, a quick surf through YouTube reveals that I've been doing it wrong all these years! Evidently you're supposed to keep the rope moving from your wrists, not your elbows! And no one ever thought to tell me this.

I could be charitable and suggest that my PE teachers were so familiar with this relatively trivial exercise that they simply didn't realize that not everyone was, but I strongly suspect it was another example of American public school phys ed* favoring kids who were natural athletes and leaving everyone else humiliated.

So, I *CAN* jump some rope. 10+ at a time without tripping up, and no falling down thus far. I can't say I love it, but at least I don't hate it.

*I add all these qualifiers because I try to realize that my experience may not be representative. Having said this, informal polling among acquaintances suggests humiliating PE class was not an isolated phenomenon.

Comments

[hrj.livejournal.com]

*ack!* You're giving me traumatic flashbacks to 1st grade recess. Everyone else "just knew" how to jump rope. They never taught any aspect of it; just provided the ropes. Of course, the assertive girls grabbed all the available ropes off the bat, so there wasn't even any way to try to learn by oneself. I brought my own private piece of heavy cord to school so that I could try to figure out jumping rope on my own anyway. It wasn't heavy enough to work properly, but I was going to give it a go. Except I got called on the carpet for going off by myself and not playing with the other children. And they took my piece of string away.

So there you go: not only failing jump-rope, but punished for attempting to create my own remedial jump-rope program. In first grade.

Let's not even start on four-square.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Yep, your experience sounds like mine :( I sincerely hope American public school PE has improved in the past few years.

Your punishment for trying to do the assignment on your own illustrates my other pet peeve about public school, namely that it tries to squash creativity. For a nation that prides itself for rugged individualism we sure try hard as hell to wring that out of our kids, don't we?

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

Rope skipping is some hard core cardio, I used to do it long ago, quite a bit, before I became the out-of-shape wreck I am now.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

No kidding. My coach says he finds it equivalent to ten minutes of running, and I tend to agree. Which is good for me as I find most cardio building activities to be boring and jump rope allows me to knock it out quickly. I can even do it indoors on bad weather days!