I was the only non athlete in a very athletic family, which made things really hard for me. I was genuinely terrible at sports. It was a major source of anxiety and bullying for me because my team often accused me of losing the game for them.
Pretty much this right here. Not sure I was openly accused of losing the game, but I did suck. Although for awhile in high school I had a volleyball serve that dropped into the same spot every single time and if that person couldn't return it...we racked up the points. I could do very little else though.
My family is very athletic - mostly around team sports. I don't think they knew what to do with me. In retrospect, I should have been on a swim team. My grade and high school only offered things like basketball and volleyball though.
Anyway, now I run. I can't say I love it - I don't. It hurts like hell. I don't seem to be getting much better at it either. I'm training for another marathon and I just about want to die. Yet, I have gotten it in my mind that I should do an Ironman. I'm semi delusional. I also, before I die, want to be a decent surfer. This probably requires me to move.
I wanted to get into sports but my family couldn't afford it. As an adult, I've never had a good relationship with exercisig because I was uneducated about it.
I started getting more into researching it and learned to love the benefits of exercising. Since I'm unable to do what I love (weight training), I have a dislike for working out. Walking is boring and I'm limited at the moment (health reasons).
Post by sugarglider on Aug 4, 2015 10:25:37 GMT -5
It's complicated.
I was a joiner. I played softball for 7 years as a kid and also played soccer and basketball for a year each. I danced for 15 years plus a couple classes in college. So, I've always been active, but I always fell into the artsy category, not the athletic one.
I like working out. I don't like finding the time to work out and shower, etc. I loved my Pilates class during bar prep, but I'm too far from the studio now, and I think my teacher is now on extended maternity leave anyway.
So, I like working out, kinda, but I don't do it that often. And I played sports and danced but wasn't really an athlete.
Post by Queen Mamadala on Aug 4, 2015 10:28:19 GMT -5
I was a dancer. Does that count? I went to a performing arts middle and high school and majored in dance from grades 7-12. Two hours a day, five days a week. I also danced from age 4 to 11.
I don't particularly like to exercise. I have to be in the mood.
Post by downtoearth on Aug 4, 2015 10:33:58 GMT -5
Yes, I was pretty athletic - played all sorts of organized and unorganized sports. I was in gymnastics, soccer, tennis, golf, track/field, swimming, softball, volleyball, and more soccer. I also hiked, ran on my own for fun, trail ran (although it was really just running until I hit an uphill section, then I walked), backpacked, biked, XC skied, etc. Our family was pretty outdoorsy and did a lot of hiking, camping, and backpacking. I did sports from around age 5 and on up. I was very competitive (lettered in 4 different sports in high school and went to ODP for soccer), I also played walk-on soccer in college for the blink of an eye, was on the crew team, and also took up ultimate frisbee.
Then I broke my leg playing rec-league soccer when I was about 20 and started mtn biking almost exclusively. It was about then that I pretty much quit all other organized sports. I now only work out about 3 times per week and one of those is usually a mtn bike ride. I really should do more than that and need to lose about 10 lbs and gain about 5 lbs in muscle to be more fit again.
Post by secretlyevil on Aug 4, 2015 10:39:25 GMT -5
I liked softball when I was really younger. In middle school, my father forced me to play softball and basketball. I ended up hating both. I ran cross country in high school until I injured myself.
I like exercise and racing now.
ETA: I am not a naturally gifted athlete by any definition pf the word. I'm just a better human if I consistently work out. I like racing because it appeals to my naturally competitive side.
Post by picksthemusic on Aug 4, 2015 10:42:40 GMT -5
I was a cheerleader and dancer. Those are the only kind of workouts I enjoy, ever. Not cheerleading now, of course, but dancing/aerobics/Zumba style stuff.
I did no sports. I don't know if it was a generational thing (growing up in the 70's I don't know anybody who did organized sports eta: outside of school teams) or a regional thing (like, most people in my town didn't)... Or, maybe my mom's weird issues made it so I didn't do sport. Who knows.
Gym class was it. And I sucked at it. Maybe the kids I didn't know well WERE all doing sports and I wasn't...
In adulthood, I've struggled to find something athletic I like to do.
I'm quoting all this for ditto-ness. I grew up in a small, rural town in the 70s/80s; there wasn't a lot of sporty activity going on, and less for girls. I did try to play volleyball in 5th grade and was relegated to the bench because I wasn't very good at it. Because I'd never played before and "practice" consisted of allowing the girls who were good to get all the playtime and coaching and those who weren't good didn't play.
Gym class was wretched and universally loathed.
I know I need to fix this, but other than hiking, which I don't do often enough to count as regular physical activity, I hate pretty much all of it
I played softball and volleyball in middle & high school but I've always hated working out. I would still play sports if I had the time but I don't imagine that I'll ever love working out.
I played softball and basketball in a little local recreational league in elementary school. In 10th grade, I joined the cross country team because a couple of my friends did. I did that for three years. I tolerated it mostly for the social aspect, I really hated the actual exercise. In 12th grade, the high school had its first ever swim team (a town pool was just built two years prior). I did that. Of all the sports I did as a kid, I liked that the best. I really hated how gross my hair and skin got though.
I hated gym in elementary school. Gym in high school sucked some years, but got a little better later. One of the two gym teachers was diagnosed with MS when I was in 9th grade. In response, they changed gym around. Rather than segregate by gender, they made two types of gym classes, and people could pick which one they wanted. The result was that the athletic people all chose the non-disabled man, and they did normal gym things. The dorks all chose the woman in a wheel chair, and gym became really silly and fun. We did a lot of team building exercises, and even though we'd still play normal gym things, it was way less intimidating and a lot more ridiculous when everyone around you was uncoordinated.
I picked it's complicated. I played all kinds of sports as a kid and I loved it. I continued playing until we moved to the middle of nowhere and I can't find adult leagues. Now I exercise at a gym. Do I enjoy the actual physical exercise? No, not really. I'd rather do one of 10,000 things. But I do like the high or maybe proud feeling I get knowing that I am trying to take care of myself better than I have been.
I was most definitely not an athlete. I actually had slippers shaped like tennis shoes with a "NAL" logo - Non-Athletic League.
It wasn't until well into college when I even thought to go to the gym. It just didn't occur to me as a place for me, ya know? I went through a fat-lete period in my mid-twenties running sprint triathlons, and since then have not had a great relationship with exercise. It really rarely makes me feel good, I generally don't have that mental/emotional benefit that everyone talks about, I just feel out of shape, fat, and bad about myself. I'm more likely to get benefit out of something that's more organic and less "exercise" like hiking or biking vs the gym. Walking is my jam.
I've gotten really out of shape and I'm trying, but it's not fun.
I've often wondered how things would have been different if I'd grown up in sports.
Post by pinkdutchtulips on Aug 4, 2015 11:17:39 GMT -5
I was a 3 sport athlete in HS and a 2 sport one in college ... I'd love to exercise more but 1- don't have the time for a regular intense workout bt dd and the dogs and 2- lack of child care options - as a single parent who's going to watch dd while I work out ? If I do join a gym w child care, it's not like they're going to feed her dinner or help her w her homework ?!?
I finally convinced my parents to let me take dance when I was 12 or so. I wanted to do volleyball, but I couldn't stay after school for practices. I also finally convinced my parents to let me do summer soccer once, but I sucked, and I didn't make the team in 8th grade, either.
Basically, my parents were not supportive or encouraging when it came to organized physical activity, even though my mom was a swimmer in high school and my dad is really outdoorsy. Oh, and my brother did karate for like 9 years. I think this was kind of a failing on their part.
By the time I was in middle school/high school, I just didn't want to put the effort into getting good at sports, if that makes sense. I was inexperienced. If something was hard, I felt I wasn't good at it, so I stopped.
Now I know better. I can't say I ENJOY exercise, but I do it, and I know the feeling of it being hard and pushing through is the point - if it's easy, it's not effective.
Post by meshaliuknits on Aug 4, 2015 13:29:02 GMT -5
I don't think I was an athlete in school. I mostly enjoyed PE b/c I like playing games. I joined the tennis team to get out of running in PE in middle school. In college I took up martial arts b/c I like kicking and throwing people.
I don't HATE most forms of exercise (running and burpees are the most notable exceptions, as I hate both with the fire of a thousand suns), but I don't love it either. I like yoga, I still really like to kick and throw people, weights are OK. Walking isn't exercise, it's transportation. But, really, given the choice between kicking people and knitting with Supernatural on, we have no contest.
I started swimming as an infant, swim racing at about 4/5. Downhill skiing is these deal. I raced swimming until about age 11. Downhill turned to cross country skiing in middle school. Picked up cross country running in high school, and track. Still ski and swim a lot. Running is my main form of excercise now. I started doing yoga sometime in high school. My family is also big on hikes. We do that all the time. We're bit outdoorsy people.
I've tried a lot over the years, too. Tennis, horseback riding, soccer in elementary school.
I was never athletic, but every year, my elementary school did a 5k together (the kids version of a major road race in the city). I hated it with a passion. They started it by age groups, staggered by like, 10 minutes or something, and I always finished with the kids 3-4 years younger than me. It was so embarrassing. I always got these terrible side stitches and it was absolutely miserable. I also had zero heat tolerance so I was constantly getting lightheaded or fainting.
I did do figure skating for a while, and I loved that with a passion. I would have spent 10 hours a day ice skating if they'd have let me. But they closed down the ice rink when I was 12 so I had to quit I played racquetball in college for a year too, which was lots of fun, but it's hard to find racquetball courts anymore.
I still pretty much hate exercise. I hate running/jogging with the fire of a thousand suns. I've been trying to get a little more into shape and my mom suggested "oh, why don't we try to do a road race, like a 10k! That would be so fun!" She might as well have said "oh, why don't we cover ourselves in spiders and cockroaches and then go get root canals! Wouldn't that be fun?"
Yes and yes. I have always loved exercise, both organized sports and independent activities. I learned to ride a bike when I was 4 and basically never stopped. I spent all of my summers as a younger kid playing outside, which pretty much was always biking, playing basketball, kickball, and all of those versions of tag/hide and seek/red rover or whatever it was called. I took gymnastics and dance for a few years, and then started playing softball, but until middle school it was one per year because that's all my parents could afford. Once middle school started, I played anything and everything at least once. I continued playing softball and volleyball and ran track for all of middle and high school.
During college, I moved away from organized sports and went back to cycling, running, skiing and rollerblading. But for rollerblading, these are my main forms of exercise still today. I take a few classes at the gym, and I lift on my own, but I prefer long cardio best. Even a nice walk does it for me.
I was an athlete in high school (field hockey, basketball, tennis and soccer) in high school, also played travel field hockey and soccer, and I played field hockey in college.
After college, for a while, I was just running and playing in a field hockey league. Then I dropped hockey and ran and did tris. I recently picked up soccer again, though some of the girls are more than 20 years younger than I
"Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
I didn't like running but I was team sports all the way. My dad was a baseball coach so I learned how to play with a glove, bat and ball as soon as I was able to stand/walk. I ended up being voted best athlete of the year and played Div 1 field hockey in university.
I still play field hockey, softball, lift weights (wished I had done that as a youngster) and do some running for training. I like being active in general though I also enjoy being lazy. But team sports are my thing and always will be.