PE lessons put women off sport

Pressure in school sports leads to less interest in exercise in later life

Your lack of motivation towards exercise might be due to your experience of sport at school according to new research. Findings from a study of girls attitudes to PE show that women become less interested in physical exercise as they get older as a result of the pressure they felt during sports lessons at school.

‘It's simply unacceptable that the overwhelming majority of our young women are leaving school with dangerously low levels of physical activity,’ says Sue Tibballs of the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation, who conducted the study.

The study suggests that doing PE makes many girls feel like their body is on show and feel under pressure because some sporting activities are too competitive for them.

Recipients also say that it is humiliating getting sweaty in front of boys in their class, as well as having to endure the dirty changing rooms.

Only 12 per cent of girls aged 14 are doing the amount of exercise that they should be, which led to The Youth Sport Trust saying that schools need to work on increasing girl’s confidence levels.

Women say they would have liked the option of choosing activities such as dance as opposed to highly competitive team sports such as hockey or netball at school.

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