Mandatory Physical Education

[Secret world leader (shhh)]

I don't see why everyone bitches and moans about P.E. It can be a bit shit when you're doing something you don't want to do but when you get to choose fun stuff it's great and you're not working.

Besides, in what other class can you nutshot a guy from the other side of the hall in dodgeball?

 

[imperialwar]

I'm also pretty sure that doing power exercises (like sprints or mid-heavy weights) for about thirty seconds then having a minute or two break (rinse and repeat) can improve your cardio/endurance, simply because your body is forced to utilise oxygen for the subsequent sets (you can't replace all the ATP, you need oxygen to remove the lactic acid build-up, and eventually you end up getting most of the energy from aerobic respiration). So if someone is resistance training, they may as well push that little bit extra and improve their cardio at the same time.

So our 3 energy systems are: Phosphate, Lactate, and Aerobic. Phosphate energy is stored in the body cells and typically lasts 10-15 seconds for most people. Lactate kicks into until about the 2minute mark after that we are doing the fat + o2=energy equation for fat loss. So officially if we had the intial lung capacity we could run for 2minutes without needing o2 to make energy. Obviously though it is a genetic imperative for us to keep breathing so we ignore that effectively.
Lactate isnt removed from the system until 30 mintues after the engaged activity is stopped, the average complete removal being around 2hours.
There are several training methods that focus around Lactate Thresholds.

 

[thathaloguy117]

Ok they can have their PE, as long as they take out the whole "healthy" food thing to balance it out.

 

[Lazier Than Thou]

I don't believe in any mandatory education, but if it's absolutely going to happen and it has to be physical education, I think the most important thing would be to teach people how much effort it takes to burn off a set amount of calories. How hard do you have to work to burn off 250, for example. This would give everyone an idea of just what eating a big mac or drinking a 32 ounce Coke would mean in terms of exertion.

Seems the most reasonable to me. Then you show people what they have to do if they want to eat bad food and allows people to make more informed choices.

 

[Brandon237]

For us it is just a small part of Life Orientation. Most people here are of a decent weight, and the stuff we do is fun and relatively easy. I do karate outside of school, and I can eat like an absolute pig for a day, do nothing for the next two days and weight the same as before I ate like a pig. I have a damn fast metabolism, and burn fat so quickly when I exercise I am also wiry strong, not a heavy lifter, but I get few sprain injuries despite jumping and climbing like a madman.

I think something should be done, but nothing too heavy, and DO NOT FORCE ME TO PLAY BALL SPORTS. M'kay? I hate dem.

 

[dkyros]

If there are talks of mandatory physical education, then its probably not a bad idea.

 

[XHolySmokesX]

I have nothing against PE, but i don't like the options i was given at my school.

First off we were put into 4 groups;
All boys: for the sport obsessed, and the kids the teachers iked more than the rest of us.
All Girls: for the athletic girls, keep all the fit girls in one place kinda thing
Mixed 1: for the better of the worst
Mixed 2: the group for the people who the teachers thought were hopeless.
(we had a very fascist school as far as classes went)

We were put in one group and weren't allowed to change or choose.

Then 80% of the time we did football(soccer), with our teacher being this brain dead football obsessed sport science degree strict weird that got payed more than the head.

10% of the time we did netball, probably becasue they thought we were to retarded to play basketball, with this tracher that was so strict and didn't understand children to the extent that she would give you a detention if you moved with the ball too much.

the rest of the time, if we were lucky we would do athletics, which i enjoyed, but we had to do what the teachers wanted us to, so it was normally run round the field 4 times (400m x 4, yes thats a mile), and then do a series of 100m sprints.



IT SUCKED

I was so gutted about the choises we had, i would have loved to play tennis, basket ball, cricket, rudby and other sports, but we were forced to do these. bad times.

 

[Randomologist]

I was about six foot tall, last time I had a proper PE lesson. There were two other guys of my height and general build in my year, one an asthmatic who would last about 5 mins before becoming dizzy, the other had learning difficulties and rather than throw a ball would slam it into the ground to see how high it bounced. When PE was available to take as an option, the compulsory classes degenerated into endless games of basketball while about half of the class "forgot their kit" and were sat talking on the benches.

Yeah. Compulsory PE was a complete joke, and any increase in discipline led to a huge increase is passive aggression. Woops, where'd the key to the sport supplies go?

 

[Bassik]

So many hatred towars PE here... it was one of my favorite classes in high school tho, and yes, it should be mandatory, especially in the USA. Have you seen the size of some of dem kids?

 

[Da Orky Man]

If you are in America, The theory is that the majority of our youths are idiots and will be morbidly obese without forced exercise.

Well, if you look at the trends...

 

[BlackStar42]

I hated PE until Years 10-11, when they let us start doing karate instead of pointlessly running around. Our teacher for that was great! Plus, we invented karate basketball, quite possibly the most dangerous game allowed in a school.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

There are plenty of reasons for a school you are already forced to go to forcing students to engage in some form of physical activity. Aside from the obvious health benefits, there is a significant body of evidence that suggests physical activity helps people learn new skills and ideas. Beyond that, there are the various social skills and personal skills that are often best improved in a setting that fosters competition. Sports have been an important part of every society in recorded history for good reason after all.

 

[smithy_2045]

Despite being a nerd, I always enjoyed PE at high school. Pretty fun, not too competitive, and a nice break from sitting around not paying attention to teachers.

 

[Phenakist]

Well no, it shouldn't, I didn't do it in school for my last... 4 years and I was never fat, just a bit unfit, I walked to/from school everyday roughly 2 miles, so 4 miles of walking each day? that's plenty to keep healthy, particularly if that's on a daily basis, obviously not gonna be running marathons, but keeps the man bra away.

More recently, due to the holidays, I've taken to offroad mountain biking and have a daily routine going with that, so you know, half an hour to an hour each day (depending on how many laps I want to do) of intense exercise, that gets you pretty damn fit pretty damn fast, and doesn't take up much time. Oh and a few weights and sit ups.

I'm no health freak, it's just strangely addictive and hey, I'm sitting around all day, gotta keep a balance right?

So I guess what all that was trying to say was, it doesn't need to be inforced on students, if they care, they'll do something about it, and if they're too ignorant to listen to anyone about the dangers of being wider than they are tall, their fault. Not hard to get some kind of routine going.

 

[StBishop]

Hey, I'm studying Education at uni currently. One guess as to my Major...

Ok so did you guess HPE? If so you're correct.
If not, that was kinda silly, unless you thought it was a trick.

Anyway, the idea behind HPE (in Australia) is that, through sport and physical education, students can be given opportunities to learn skills that are valuable in society (teamwork, self management etc.) and also learn about how to maintain a healthy and active lifestyle once they are finished high school and are no longer able to rely on their teenage metabolism and lack of time consuming responsibilities to keep their body in a healthy state.

If your teacher is simply making you do physical training, I hate to say it (considering they are experienced in the field and I'm merely a student) but they're doing it wrong.

The idea of HPE is to educate you on how to be and stay healthy and give you opportunities to learn to love exercise.

 

[Zantos]

I used to really like my 3 hours a fortnight PE. I'm not fit, by god I'm not, but it was a nice break from the usual slog.

Before you get to PE though, there were quite a few mandatory subjects I think could take the axe.

 

[Bigsmith]

As much as I hated PE/ Games/ whatever you want to call it I know that that's what stopped me from becoming a total fat ass. That was until I started cycling to school.

I don't think it should be optional, but I think we should get more choice of what we can do and by that I mean things like cross country racing...

God I HATED that.