There was a crew of savvy girls who knew the exact spot where you could break off the cross country course, nip over into the graveyard for a fag, then rejoin the course further along on the other side

One of them - Alison F, God love her - even showed me the proper technique for hiding matches under the bra strap in such a way that they did not rattle & give the game away. Not something I ever had occasion to use but I appreciated the confidence

Anyway, though catharsis is satisfying, I think the important point of Dr Elliott's research is that people who suffered corporeal disassociation as a result of school PE can still be helped to enjoy exercise in later life through bespoke training

Lots of you in the same situation it seems. This is the least isolated I've felt all lockdown

Don't reeeeeaalllly want to talk about my own PE teachers except to say that the decent one is still decent & the psychopath was not in the job for long; there are Stories about why & how his employment ended

He tried to pick me up, when he was no longer working at our school. Offered to take me 'for a shandy' in his car. Mm hmm.

Afterword: Dr Elliott offering to let people read the full research paper

Also, this excellent documentary is still up. Don't know if people outside the UK can listen to it but I'm sure there are ways and means

@Cavalorn My PE teacher at Sixth Form College banned me from lessons permanently when I told him he was being racist by making comments on the lines of: "Jump for the ball, pretend it's a banana" to the school's only black kid.

@Joannechocolat Bloody hell.

@Cavalorn This is very real. The only forms of exercise I can face without emotional distress are Walking To Get Somewhere and Dancing In Stompy Boots.

@Cavalorn Research is not openly accessible so can't check... could it be that other factors played a role? It seems easy to jump to conclusions there. But it seems that the experiments were not pre-registered, data was analysed with statistical significance in mind which is...

@Cavalorn I mathematically did as little as possible down to the minute in order to pass.

@Cavalorn Psst. @amandapalmer ... See?

@Cavalorn I was relentlessly teased for being a lesbian in PE after winning an award for doing more chin-ups than all the boys in the state. But really it was because I lifted bales of hay, practiced trick riding everyday after school, and was burgeoning into a gay-as-hell middle schooler

@Cavalorn @NeolithicSheep I was actively taught I couldn't possibly be in respiratory distress for years of mile runs bc no asthma diagnosis. It's actively dangerous right now because I'm not sure I'm capable of ever calling myself Short Of Breath to a healthcare provider without feeling like a liar.

@Cavalorn I've been saying my whole life that the purpose of phys. ed. is to elevate those who possess athletic gifts coupled with an eagerness to acquiesce to the authority of a moron with a whistle around his neck, because such people are needed by the rich to wage endless wars.

@Cavalorn @NeolithicSheep Yup. My PE teacher was sarcastic and belittled anyone who wasn't one of her pets. We were expected to run a mile without stopping with no training. I wore glasses and was two years younger than my classmates. As soon as I could drop PE in high school, I did.

@Cavalorn I hated PE so much that in high school when it became optional I dropped it immediately. Being forced to run a quarter marathon at 13, the beep test (), shit like that. It's a shame because I found out as an adult I do enjoy exercise.

@Cavalorn But I do wonder with we nerds who hated sport underestimate how humiliating the less academic kids found English or Maths lessons.