I was told "you will go outside / you will play s ports and you will like it or you'll be in your room with no bedding"\ ... from when I was five. Perhaps that led to my apprehension of exercise. But anyway I was forced to play a sport, as long as it wasn't hockey (which was naturally the one I wanted to play) - initially it was soccer, but the running and fact soccer sucks led me to switch to baseball (which was still kind of boring but I was good at it and it involved far less running)
I joined Cross Country my freshman year. We had one of the best runners in the state, about 5 other good runners,, and the rest of them sucked. Somehow they all sucked worse than me, and I was the last one to make the Varsity team. We ended up going to state, which was a pretty big deal for a school our size. So the day of the race, my Father shows up (it was the first time he had ever showed up) and I came in dead fucking last. Out of like 220 runners. He never showed up to another event again for the rest of my sporting history.
My dad mostly told me I was too chubby to play any sports, and that my siblings would embarrass him less. So they got to play all the sports, and I got to watch. After that, pretty much anyone who offered to put me in a sport was a god in my eyes. One of my mom's boyfriends took me to golf lessons, which I loved (but only lasted the duration of their dating time), and eventually I put myself into horseback riding lessons by doing double chores around the house. The unfortunate part is that every sporty person I've met says I have a lot of natural athletic ability, but since I thought I wasn't supposed to play sports, I never did. Edit: I was, of course, quite fantastic at the oboe. But the oboe never got anyone laid.
Soccer was real big where I went to school (yes, in America), but I absolutely refused to play, or even watch it. My main argument was that no real athlete has to fake an injury. And then this article came out today. Fuuuuuck. Doesn't change the fact that the games are boring as shit. I want no part in putting a spectator through that.
I was never a fan of baseball. When I lived in Georgia all my friends played it but that shit seemed boring as hell to me. You stand around in a field and then you go take a seat and wait your turn to bat. Oh and you can't even hit anybody. Fuck. That.
I wanted to refuse to play lacrosse after the first practice, but my parents wouldn't let me quit. Something about learning how to follow through on things. Whatever. I was not fast, and I hated running. Hated running. So they stuck me in the zone in front of the crease, and told me to hit things. And I did. Kids who play soccer in the fall and lacrosse in the spring aren't used to being blindsided in the neck with a cross-check by another kid with a couple dozen pounds on him. That small pleasure still didn't make up for Indian runs every day and a particular shot on goal that left a grapefruit-sized bruise about 3 inches from my nutsack. Stupid fucking sport. Comfortable shorts, but a stupid fucking sport. Case in point: these are their "biggest hits"? Jesus Christ.
Is anyone else besides me in this group? The group where you hated any kind of sports and gym class SO MUCH growing up that you couldn't wait to get the minimal credit hours in high school so that you'd never have to take it again? Neither parent played any kind of sport whatsoever, so I wasn't exposed to it at home. I have a clear memory of being in kindergarten, realizing that we were going to gym class and having my stomach plunge with dread. It's a shame, because I'm 100% behind the idea that kids need to be way more active than they are. However, forcing physical activity on them can backfire (as it did with me). It took years to unlearn the notion that it wasn't being physical that I hated, just the organized structure and being in a team. I've also never found a burning passion athletically. I like to run, I like doing yoga, but only if I'm in the mood. If you could take a pill and be fit I'd be all over it, just because I have no natural predisposition to liking anything well enough to play it consistently.
This. Growing up, my "sports" were dancing and horseback riding. There was a year or two of soccer somewhere along the way, but besides that I was really never a fan of team sports. Well, I was never really a fan of teams. I actually quite enjoy when it's just a couple of friends playing a barely-organized game of soccer or badminton or baseball and everyone's just playing for fun. What I never could stand was being screamed at for failing to pretend like I gave a shit about high school gym class football at 8 in the morning. CALM THE FUCK DOWN. The only time I ever enjoyed gym (which is pretty much when I did anything resembling sports for most of my life) was floor hockey or anything-involving-a-racket season because (Focus I am shockingly good at those. The hockey part is much more surprising, I think. I was actually willingly picked for hockey teams, not just because I was one of the last five people and someone had to pick me. These days, my favorite sport is going out and dancing so hard that you can't fathom the idea of moving all the next day. (I've had to pee for two hours and just can't seem to motive to get out of my bed because everything hurts.)
Yup, it's golf. I don't care if it's good for forging business relationships and male bonding into my 40s and 50s, I will never golf in my life. My dad is the one who pressured me into trying it, along with my brother. All of his sisters golf, as does his mother, my 75 year old grandmother. He would have loved nothing more than to have one of his sons be a golfer, too. So much so that after he gave up on me, he bought golf lessons for my brother as a Christmas gift - my brother's reaction was caught on camera. Classic, as if to say "You really expect me to use these?" Way too frustrating for me. I feel like a complete uncomfortable jackass even at the driving range. Don't get me wrong, I have a ton of respect for professional golfers, as I imagine one would have to practice their ass off more than any other athlete does just to be decent. I was the world's worst baseball player. My parents recognized this and I played only one season. That allowed me to focus on what I was good at: soccer and swimming.
I like golf. I'm somewhere between terrible and mediocre depending on the day - but I actually think an afternoon wandering around clubbing the shit out of things isn't a bad way to spend Sunday. I keep meaning to get more into it. In school - I tried pretty much every sport. I sucked at all of them. The only 'sport' I was ever good at was Chess - and I stopped being competitive when I hit puberty - because I'd always do well until I had to play a girl and then tank every game. In retrospect, that was probably a good time to quit the chess team in general. I was ecstatic when my highschool introduced Snooker as an option for mandatory sports. If they'd had a darts option for off season, it would have been perfect.
My dad's idea of outdoor recreational sport for me growing up consisted of fence construction, cattle drenching and posthole digging. Actually, come to think of it, that was my dad's idea of me growing up full stop. The biggest sport around here growing up, especially at school, was Rugby League (which, unless you're in England or Australia, you'll probably read as "Rugby Union" - which is different). I've never been particularly interested in the game, and it's where the neanderthals tended to congregate. Being a highschool nerd, that would have made playing league the equivalent of feeding myself into a meat grinder. That didn't mean I couldn't play it, of course. Especially by senior year I had the size and strength, even if I wasn't particularly fast any more. In senior year, our English teacher was also the head of physical education. He decided one day that it was too nice to be inside, so we went down the school oval (read: track and field) for a game which was dubbed "kill the man with the ball". This resulted in roving packs of jocks trying to rip each other heads off, the rest of the guys half heartedly taking part and all of the girls standing around trying not to be noticed and not complaining about getting out of another discussion on Hamlet. Some of the jocks thought it would be a good idea to purposely get the ball to the nerds, tackle them into the ground and then pummel them mercilessly... all in the name of playing the game, of course. That didn't work so well when they got to me. It wasn't that I was unused to rough stuff or wasn't physically capable (see above re post hole digging), I was just generally disinterested. The ball was thrown to me and ten to fifteen guys jumped me. Maybe they expected me to throw the ball away and beg for mercy. Being an obstinate bastard even by this stage, I held onto it and waded through them. I got pummelled, but so did they. I then spent the rest of the game getting the ball any opportunity I could and running through the nearest jock. I wish they'd had wrestling when I went to school.