3 Reasons Why P.E Doesn't Show Improvement+Tips

I haven't posted anything in a while, so I wanted to write something useful. Everybody here probably has taken P.E in the past, and if you didn't do well with P.E, you hated it, and didn't improve at all. Some people will blame a lack of effort while in reality though that can play a role in lack of improvement, it is mostly because of the way P.E classes are set up.

When I started middle school, I couldn't run worth shit, sometimes couldn't even finish the warmup, and was trying every treatment I could to treat my terrible acne. My mile time was in the 9 minutes, and I was always one of the last students to finish. I just figured I wasn't athletic. That was until after my 8th grade year, I made the record board for one of the fastest mile times ever ran which I cut down to 5:06, made cross country and Track state championships as well as honor roll in the state of Michigan for track, began to go far above the P.E warmups at home, and actually went from having a pretty big gut to six pack abs, and just from being active, I quit using acne treatments and saw great results. I was eventually moved to and advanced P.E class, and I feel like P.E really didn't do a thing for me and here's why.

1. More Reps Is NOT Better

In P.E, if you can't do the set amount of pushups, you are penalized with points. If you don't run fast enough you are penalized. And there are plenty of students who don't have the ability to do the workouts, so they have to find a way to compensate, and that is usually by using bad form. Bad form will not only cause injuries, but it stops the athlete from building muscle in the area, which means that doing the workout with bad form is close to, if not pointless and will bring little to no improvement. If you do less reps with good form, you are actually building muscle, which will bring improvement. Though it maybe painful to add on more and more reps, doing so will continue to build more muscle and allow you to do more and more reps.

2. Slow and Steady Wins The Race

If a students runs the mile slow, they are often told to speed up. Well, when students are told to speed up, they take off faster, and they almost always discover they cannot run at that pace. There are actually 3 different ways to overcome this and not only chip off seconds, but slowly chip off minutes, and maybe even cut your time in half within a year. The first way to do this is to continue to run at the pace you were running before, and once it becomes less and less of a feat, speed up slowly, but don't take off super fast at a pace you can't maintain for the entire distance. The second way is to continue to add more and more miles, and try to hold a similar pace to your mile pace, though it will of course be slower. As you continue to chip off time from your average mile pace, and add more miles, you should discover after a while that your mile time has improved drastically. The last method is to believe it or not run a shorter distance, probably 400 meters (1 lap) or 800 meters (2 laps). This should be far faster than your mile pace though, but should be a pace you can manage throughout the sprint. This should build endurance, and will help you chip off chunks of your mile time just by improving speed for shorter distances.

I do also really want to share a personal story with this one. During one of our last races of the year, there was a lot of pressure to make it to the honor roll championships of Michigan. During the mile event, which I did make honor roll in, this one guy just would not let me pass him. I was running at a consistent pace, and every time I passed, he would just sprint back next to me. After a while, he was breathing extremely heavily, making noises like he was really struggling, and after about two laps, he fell far behind me from 2nd place to 6th, letting me finish in second. Though 6th is still a good place out of around 20 to 40 runners, he could have probably done much better if he didn't try to run at a faster pace than he had trained for, because once you slow down, that pace becomes hard to manage after a while as well.

3. Chunky and Unathletic People Are At A Huge Disadvantage

I know athletic people like to say "While fat people and lazy people just need to try harder" and being in that place in the past, I know that it just isn't that easy. Lets say there are two students and neither student has ever ran. A 120 pound student is racing against a 200 pound student. The 120 pound student would likely win. But what if the 120 pound student is carrying 80 pounds worth of weights on his back? The workout would be harder for him as well because he would be carrying this extra weight with him that some of the other students don't have, so he just can't perform to the same standards as the lighter kids. P.E teachers need to be more compassionate about chunkier people because they are working a lot harder than the other students.

4. So What Should I Do To Do Better In P.E?

Sometimes the teacher is wrong, and in this case the best option isn't always to go along with "The Teacher is Always Right" If you can only do 4 pushups in good form, don't do more with your butt in the air. Instead do 4 pushups, and when you feel ready, add more on. Instead of trying to run super fast only to slow down or even stop later, just run at the maximum pace you know you can maintain, and then you can head to the track after school, and run some sprints, or go for a long run.

Anyway, I really hope this information comes in handy for anybody who is having difficulty with improvement, or difficulty with P.E or any kind of athletics. If you would like to contact me, I can offer some information and put together a workout plan specifically for you that will show improvement rather than results you can't hit. Thanks for reading, and I wish all of y'all the best of luck

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