Fitness and Health Essay Spring 2013

Author's Note:  This is a piece that we had to write for fitness class.  We had a prompt that we had to write about the question:  What does physical activity provide for you?  We had to give specific values that class provides us with and we had to explain why we thought what we thought.  I am working on sentence beginnings in this piece.

Huffing and puffing coming around the final turn in the mile; trying to get that last pull-up; sliding that metal piece across the box and carrying wooden blocks across a line.  What we do in physical education class has helped me prepare for the most important test in gym: fitness testing.  I work hard in gym class so I can improve when we do test our sprinting ability, our upper body strength, our flexibility and our endurance. I see value in physical education class because it helps me keep in shape, plus I learn about ways to keep my body healthy so I can be the person that I want to be in the future.

Physical education provides me with many values.  It not only provides me with a challenge, but it also provides me with self-motivation to do better. I always want to improve, so I take all the games and activities that we do seriously because I know that we are doing it for some purpose. Some activities are challenging for me, so I need to focus to perform then at an advanced level. Another value that physical education provides me with is enjoyment and self-expression. I get to show who I am by playing the sports that I enjoy with pride during class. I value all of these qualities because they make me who I am in gym class.

While physical education class provides me with many values and ways to express myself, it also provides me with health and social interaction.  We learn how to take care of our bodies by eating right, exercising and knowing that if we make the wrong choices, such as using alcohol or tobacco at a young age, it could possibly affect us later in life. Physical education class also provides me with social interaction with classmates. I don’t have many 8^th grade friends in class with me, so I have to gotten to know some of the 7^th graders like Will, Matt and Seth. I need to be able to communicate with them just like I would with any other 8^th grader. It is good that I am getting to know other people because in real life I won’t always get to work with or communicate with people I already know.

All in all, I value physical education class. I want to be healthy in the future, so by working hard, knowing the information that I need to know and taking the steps that I need to take, I can be successful and healthy in the future. These values are very important because they show who I am as a person. If you work hard now, the results will show in the future and that is what I have learned the most throughout my life.