(A quick note: this is a bit long, but I really want to get this off my chest.)
I've seen a recent surge of articles and videos of people trying the Presidential Physical Fitness Test and seeing how they do on it as adults. This got me thinking about my own experience with the test...and how traumatizing it really was for me.
See, I wasn't an overweight kid when I first had to take it in elementary school. However, I was never very athletic despite trying several different sports in school. I'm beginning to believe that test ruined any positive relationship I could potentially have had with exercise. Every year, until my junior year of high school, I fell below the 85th percentile.
The mile run, in particular, was always the worst day of the year for me. I never finished under 9 minutes. In fact, I was always the last girl in my class to finish. I still remember the gym teacher, a snide and hateful old woman, yelling at me to keep going, and not to walk even if I was too tired. It was humiliating, and turned me into the stereotypical kid that always got picked last.
Gym class only pushed my self-esteem even lower. It was a constant reminder of how weak and rejected I was among my peers. I did eventually improve, but not until I was 17, and just barely enough to pass the test.
I have always wondered why I could never stick with exercise, especially high-intensity exercise, no matter what activity I tried. I now think my negative experiences in PhysEd, especially the PPFT, made me associate exercise with pain and depression, making me habitually avoid exercise as an adult to escape these negative feelings.
Does anyone else have a similar relationship with exercise, or bad memories of gym in school? Are there different workouts you've discovered that you really like? I'm hoping there's something, anything I haven't tried yet that could work for me.
Would really appreciate some suggestions. Thanks for reading!
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/frjtfo/the_presidential_physical_fitness_test_scarred/
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