PE teachers get on my nerves

For lack of anything better to say, I will regale you with more tales from my physiotherapy - a strange and unusual occurrence in my life at present, since it involves physical activity!

Anyway, at yesterday's session I learnt something very interesting. As some may know, I spent most of high school with PE teachers making life miserable through their perhaps unwitting lack of understanding and compassion for people of lesser ability (some even mocking me, believe it or not). My poor flexibility performance was countered with the inevitably useless advice of performing various hamstring stretches in order to improve. Even though I put in my most diligent effort in this regard, as I did with all areas of my education, there was never any noticeable improvement. Even continuing such stretches during osteotherapy years later proved unsuccessful.

Yesterday I was asked to try a move which required minimal flexibility - and dismally failed, upon which I explained my poor hamstring condition. The answer? Hamstring stretches, of course! But upon performing the 'real' hamstring stretches (not the ones that only stretch your back, as prescribed by my dear old PE teachers), we discovered the limiting factor was not in my hamstrings at all (well, not yet anyway). The stretch-pain was in the wrong part of my leg, for a start. My real problem? My nerves.

So in the end, I could maybe have salvaged my sporting self-esteem a little bit more if my PE teachers could have told me the difference between a muscle and a nerve (surely that isn't medical specialist knowledge?). Then I could have pursued a more appropriate action, improved and achieved. So, the moral of the story, for both PE teachers and the little people alike: Don't assume; seek to understand the real issue.