> due to an association of exercise with team sports
And intrinsic competitiveness. I remember from my school PE classes (UK) that even distance running was always practiced as a race.
Anyone who runs knows that unless of course you're very elite, your performance vs other people is almost entirely unimportant to you. It's your own personal performance that matters, and this is as true on a solitary training run as it is taking part in a massive 'race' event such as a marathon.
Competing against yourself (trying to improve) is incredibly rewarding in a totally different way to competing against and beating other people. In a solitary sport like running, nobody gets to judge you but you, the motivation and joy that comes from the exercise and fitness improvements is almost entirely internal - to put it bluntly nobody else cares when you shave 5 seconds off your PB, but to you it's a wonderfully satisfying experience.
I always wondered why PE teachers never seemed to approach exercise and sport from this angle. They're really missing a trick as I believe discovering this would really encourage a lot more kids to keep exercising throughout and after school as a result.
As it happened I was always reasonably competent at sport, never the best at anything but good enough to be competitive at all the sports I played (at least vs other amateur kids). So for me it was OK to have a competitive element, but I can completely see that that if sport and exercise is always focused around competition, and a kid is consistently losing at everything they try, that's going to be a huge long-lasting turn off from exercise. Focusing more on 'this is intrinsically fun to do on your own' might change that significantly.
In the United States, in my experience, PE teachers are generally employed primarily as coaches for the schools' sports teams. As a result, they're not especially interested in exercise for its own sake.
And intrinsic competitiveness. I remember from my school PE classes (UK) that even distance running was always practiced as a race.
Anyone who runs knows that unless of course you're very elite, your performance vs other people is almost entirely unimportant to you. It's your own personal performance that matters, and this is as true on a solitary training run as it is taking part in a massive 'race' event such as a marathon.
Competing against yourself (trying to improve) is incredibly rewarding in a totally different way to competing against and beating other people. In a solitary sport like running, nobody gets to judge you but you, the motivation and joy that comes from the exercise and fitness improvements is almost entirely internal - to put it bluntly nobody else cares when you shave 5 seconds off your PB, but to you it's a wonderfully satisfying experience.
I always wondered why PE teachers never seemed to approach exercise and sport from this angle. They're really missing a trick as I believe discovering this would really encourage a lot more kids to keep exercising throughout and after school as a result.
As it happened I was always reasonably competent at sport, never the best at anything but good enough to be competitive at all the sports I played (at least vs other amateur kids). So for me it was OK to have a competitive element, but I can completely see that that if sport and exercise is always focused around competition, and a kid is consistently losing at everything they try, that's going to be a huge long-lasting turn off from exercise. Focusing more on 'this is intrinsically fun to do on your own' might change that significantly.