When I was a kid, I was pretty much the stereotypical nerd. Okay…okay…I still am! But I’m wiser now. For one thing, I’ve learned that I can run…maybe not quickly, but I can do it. I’m not that kid hopelessly watching the natural athletes from the sidelines as I once again feel the dawning certainty that I have failed my Presidential Physical Fitness Test before I’ve even begun. Some of you may know that I’ve been working the couch to 5k program since November. Well, last week, I successfully ran for a full 30 minutes. By contrast, the first week, I could scarcely do 9 one-minute intervals with walking breaks in between.
It is amazing what I have learned about exercise as an adult, mostly through aerobics and strength training classes at the gym. They have taught me good posture, good breathing techniques, how to do push ups on my knees or if I can’t do that — against the wall. They have met me at my level and shown me how to reach for the next level.
When I think about all I have learned as an adult — all I have set out to learn by choice, because something in me wants to be healthy — I can’t help but wonder what is wrong with educators in this country when it comes to physical education. Do they even take it seriously, or is it just for show? Of course, it couldn’t possibly be as important as reading, writing, and arithmetic. Our children need to learn more math and science so we can stay ahead of other countries. And yeah…gym…whatever…just don’t let it take up too much of our precious time.
Isn’t there a staggering childhood obesity problem going on in this country? Isn’t it fast becoming a national health crisis? We’ve gone into the lunchrooms to replace the milk with skim and the toast with whole wheat. We’ve decided ketchup isn’t a vegetable. (Good call, really.) We’re learning how to eat…isn’t it time we learned how to run?
When I was a child, I was always in the advanced reading groups. I’m not sure I was aware of students in other groups, or of their needs, though as an adult I appreciate the fact that children struggling to read get special help and attention targeted at their level. An advanced third grader may be able to read Harry Potter on his own, but others still need Dr. Seuss.
I needed Dr. Seuss in gym, but I never got it. For that reason, I continued to need Dr. Seuss in high school and beyond. It was like they handed me Harry Potter and said, “Read this. What do you mean how? Just do your best.” So I sat there, watching the other students read, in awe of some of them, but utterly unable to perform the feet myself.
There are things children can learn about exercise to make them better at it. If you ask someone to run a mile and he can’t, you can put him on an interval schedule, steadily lengthening the intervals until he can run that mile. It’s not like I was alone in my needs, either. If there are reading groups in school, why not running groups? How about if you take those naturally athletic kids and challenge them, while you help the rest of us learn to breathe?
Everything I know about exercise today has been hard-won, and almost none of it came from P.E. in school. I’m never going to be an amazing athlete, or even a good one, but I am going to run. From where I started, that feels like a superpower. And maybe it is. It will keep me healthier, make me stronger, and even make me smarter. If I could go back in time to tell the younger version of me something, I’d tell her how to run a mile. Since that’s a fantasy, I’ll do the next best thing — tell my kids how to do it.