June 2, 2025, 2:24 pm | Read time: 4 minutes
School sports were a nightmare for me, with my teacher acting more like a drill sergeant than a motivator. As a result, my memories of those classes are quite negative. For a long time, I believed I was not athletic. What a mistake! Today, I love exercise and training. How I got to this point…
“Nina, what have we been doing here for the last six months?” My gym teacher, Mr. Rose, was once again suspiciously close to a fit of rage. The reason I still remember my gym teacher’s name today—about 20 years after graduating high school—is quite simple: I was a real failure in school sports and thought for many years afterward that I was naturally not athletic. This was proven wrong by the fact that I now love running, am a yoga instructor, and regularly test new exercises and sports for FITBOOK. I’m a good example of how you can overcome bad school sports experiences. Sports scientist Andreas Heumann also confirmed to me that it’s possible to become athletic even at an older age.
Overview
Actually Athletic, but School Sports Brought Frustration and Fear
I couldn’t catch balls; I hated volleyball. I had little coordination, hardly any strength, and was afraid of gymnastics during the school sports competitions. In elementary school, it was still okay. My parents always made sure my sister and I did sports, so I was in children’s gymnastics, track and field, and I could swim solidly with a Seahorse badge on my swimsuit by the age of five. Everything was actually within the norm, even if I didn’t particularly stand out in school sports. I think I still had a reliable “Good” in elementary school. That turned into a C when I went to high school. Suddenly, ball games were at the top of the list, and my best friend and I were the last to be chosen for teams.
Then there was my gym teacher! In his youth, he was in the military, and he was a fan of the whistle ever since. He managed—to put it mildly—not to motivate most of the girls in our class during school sports. Jogging through the woods at two degrees in the morning or learning a handstand when you’d never done gymnastics wasn’t our thing. The fun was gone. And the gym teachers at high school, with their faded tracksuits, whistles in hand, and little patience, didn’t exactly help me feel more comfortable. So the image solidified: I’m just not athletic. Once a failure, always a failure. Or?
“Experiences from School Shape Our Self-Image”
“Experiences from school shape our self-image,” explains personal trainer and sports scientist Andreas Heumann from Berlin when I asked. “If you ask me, physical education in school should primarily help children develop their greatest potential.”
This function of school sports—at least in my subjective opinion—was not fulfilled for me. And that, even though I actually started with a solid level of athleticism. At least school didn’t take away my enjoyment of all sports. I always liked running, I enjoyed jogging in the woods with my mother as a teenager, I had swim training where I was quite good, and I tried many things. However, my school sports experiences led me to never really feel athletic.
How I Later Discovered Joy in Sports
It wasn’t until later that something changed. When I was in my early 20s, a foster dog came into my life—and with him, increasingly longer runs. At first, I thought I could combine it with some exercise, knowing that without any physical activity, you can’t stay healthy. So, I figured I should at least do a little, even if it wasn’t fun.
But then something happened. I noticed that I was more awake during the day, I could sleep better, and I was fitter. Pretty soon, I was running every day and was delighted to find that I could run longer and longer distances—first 20 minutes, then 40 minutes, later 10, 12, and 15 kilometers. “Through sports, you become an athlete because doing sports defines your self-image,” says Andreas Heumann.
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It’s Never Too Late to Become Athletic
I don’t want to complain. I probably wouldn’t have given myself a C. Not because it was so bad but because I was hardly aware of my athletic abilities at the time. I don’t want to blame the school: I can certainly understand that ball sports might not be for everyone. I don’t think the grading in school is necessarily the problem, either. Rather, the problem is the image we unfortunately have of ourselves. “The most important insight from my work is that you can always improve,” says Andreas Heumann. “I’ve had 40-year-olds come to me who thought they couldn’t get fit anymore.”
When I go running today, I sometimes wish my old gym teachers could see me. That hasn’t happened yet—but I still hope it will.