Burnley Grammar School

to quote Ian
"but we went out on a showery, gusty, freezing cold day in the mid 60s in Scotland. Shorts, plimsolls and jockstraps for us, but our PE master in tracksuit, gloves and scarf with the hood up. On the final mile (of five) it turned to sleet" ... it's what made you and my hubby real men!!

Hi Sterling, you're spot on the cost of boys PE kit is mad. I have 2 boys at school which makes things challenging. Things like a Football/rugby top is £45, a hoodie another £40, don't mention trainers.. At least this year they're both at the same school but even so. I raised the kit with the school but was told "it's to give a sense of identity with everyone wearing the same thing"

I have questioned the school's approach and do not think they do enough for boys. It bothers me things are too weighted in favour of girls, for example my eldest has never sweated in a PE class. The boys need their identity too and this is not happening. There's loads of comments about doing PE in just shorts or with a vest and shorts. Either way is fine with me. It would give them both a different experience and take them out of a comfort zone for a couple of lessons while they got used to it,and that's no bad thing. I know my 2 wouldn't object especially in gym. Who knows they may be made to work a lot harder than they currently do. While safeguarding is an issue, just going in shorts and a bare chest or a vest and shorts would be more practical for them and also save me unnecessary expense which just goes into school coffers. I'd be really interested to see what others think.

Ian, in our school hail wasn’t the real problem. As I said, losers went out shirtless despite bad weather. One time I was one of the winners so I had to run with a shirt and I also had my friend’s shirt. I like running shirtless so I made the terrible mistake of giving back my friend his shirt. As the rules said, I was obliged to take off my shirt and that I did, I toke it off and run shirtless. However, my friends organised a terrible joke. They hide both shirt which I used to run and the other one I had in class. When it started raining I was happy, because I like going shirtless. The problem was that it started snowing and teacher said that we could take on shirt; but I haven’t any one. I was the only one who was shirtless in a snowstorm. School gym was far so I could only run. That was a strange feeling but also an exciting one, so that after lesson, I had to go back home by bus, but I haven’t any shirt. I said to my self: “ no problem, you run shirtless, you could go back home shirtless” and that’s what I did

Ian, thanks for posting that excellent clip from Leyton. Gym at my boarding school (all boys) in the 1960s was very like that and it brought back many happy memories.

One of the things most notable in the clip was that no lad was fat unlike the lardy lads you see today. The school regime I was part of certainly didn't allow a lad a chance to put on weight.

Six mornings a week (except Sunday) we were out for a run at 06.30, the course was either two miles or four miles dressed in shorts and plimsolls whatever the weather. On finishing the run it was straight into the outdoor pool, in winter the first lads there sometimes had to break the ice. We always swam naked although we had trunks for sports day but that was the only time we wore them.

Every lunch time there was 90 minutes of games or PE or cross country before afternoon school started. We only had shirts for rugby and everything else was white shorts, plimsolls and a coloured armband.

I loved it and wouldn't have changed anything about it, they were great days.

Simon D,
Great to hear that you also enjoyed PE. I completely agree that it was much better not having to wear a top. I’m thankful for the toughening up regime, on reflection it was a good thing and a positive experience.

Given the huge change in PE, compared to what Baby Boomers experienced, is it any wonder the NHS is at breaking point. The large amount of obese and/or unfit teenagers we have today spells big trouble ahead.

I have read that cash strapped parents now have to pay £150 for a High School PE kit. A kit they may never break sweat in and outgrow quickly.

Simon D
I never experienced hailstones on a run, but we went out on a showery, gusty, freezing cold day in the mid 60s in Scotland. Shorts, plimsolls and jockstraps for us, but our PE master in tracksuit, gloves and scarf with the hood up. On the final mile (of five) it turned to sleet. The cars on the road had lights on and some of them tooted on seeing us. Bizarrely I realised at that point I was actually enjoying the experience and liked shirtless running ever since.
In the gym, the "strip" command was issued at the end of the period. We were expected to obey instantly (as with all this orders) or face the consequences. Even if there were visitors. We then had to file into the showers in an orderly manner.
PE was hard - circuit training, vaulting, ropes, wallbars, medicine balls, indian clubs etc. - so we really needed the shower.
As you say, it taught discipline and fitness and always respected my teacher who was also a very strict disciplinarion.
Also, I found this clip on the web:

https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-secondary-school-gymnastics-leyton-county-high-school-for-boys-1936-online

Our gym period was harder, although I was impressed by the vaulting. The PE teachers do appear but fully clad with boys in shorts and plimsolls. I have always felt that wearing PE kit demonstrated the authority of the master over the boys.

Hi John, if I gave the impression I didn't enjoy my PE/Games lessons it wasn't the case.There was a real emphasis placed on PE and toughening up with a double lesson timetabled for each day. Each session was hard and unrelenting both inside and out. In the gym it didn't take too long before each boy showed sweat, despite my skinny physique I started to sweat up (my teachers phrase!) quite early on in a lesson so I was very pleased my vest was off! My teachers also made sure my vest was off outside too when doing anything other than cross country for which each boy ran bare chested. I did have to wear a vest for the inter class basketball matches. As each team played one half in a vest before going to skins for the other half, it wasn't too bad. I'm grateful for what it did for me and it instilled discipline into us all too.

Chris G,
I supposed it’s just what you’re used to and your experience was simply different from my experience. A shirtless PE rule was introduced for boys at Primary School when I was 9. Lads got undressed and stripped to the waist in front of girls, we then walked down corridors barechested on our way to the school hall where we did PE. We were seen by other classes, teachers and sometimes parents as we walked to the hall.

At Senior School lads got changed into shorts and pumps in the changing room and entered directly into the gym already stripped to the waist. We also did cross country in shorts and trainers and barechested. If you were selected to be on the skins team to play football, the PE teacher would say ‘shirts off lads’, if it was warm enough we’d play skins vs skins and were given different coloured bibs to wear to distinguish teams.

Like you I enjoyed the freedom of being allowed to exercise stripped to the waist.

John - not a strange practice at all. My school was about 50/50 boarding and day boys and we all used the boarders dormitory cubicles for changing. This meant two sets of stairs and a long corridor to the gym, and we were expected to wear our tops for this. This we did for the first couple of weeks, stripping off once we reached the gym. However once the no-vest-on-PE-days fashion caught on, virtually nobody bothered to take a vest to wear for just the few minutes that it took us to get toand from the gym.

Hi John, Honestly I don't think it bothered anyone, especially in the gym where we were all expected to show sweat during each lesson. I w tended to sweat up a little earlier than some of my friends so not wearing a vest was a good thing. It was the same outside we'd line up and be picked into teams of vests and skins until the beginning of December we'd regularly play football in shirts vs vests. Cross country was performed everyone with everyone bare chested with no exception. I don't think it was harsh telling us to "strip to the waist" or "strip" We knew what they expected but knew they'd look after us at the same time. No one wants teachers who were to "friendly" that would be creepy.

Simon D,
Your school seemed to operate a strange practice, if your PE teacher always made lads strip to the waist in the gym there was no point in putting a top on the the changing room. It would have made more sense to come out the changing room shirtless. Did you never think that this was a bit of a waste of time?.

Hi David, we did go out to run in heavy rain. I don't recall thunderstorms but definitely remembered hail stones. Now they did hurt!

Our teachers used the phrase "strip to the waist" or simply "strip off" at the start of the lesson. At that point we removed our vests and dropped them in a line at the front of the gym where the girls could easily see them.

Rachael - Rachael - you said that a lot of boys wore vests under their school shirts and simply put a PE top over. My experience was similar, in that virtually all of my PE group wore vests under our school shirts every day, but also different since most of us didn't bother with dedicated PE tops, and just took our shirts off, put our PE shorts on and there we were, all kitted out.

All this changed when topless PE was introduced. Dad's initial reaction that we wouldn't have to buy me any more PE vests, was soon put down by Mum pointing out that I had been wearing my ordinary underwear vests for PE for a number of years. Her greatest concern came a couple of weeks later, when she realised that an unintended consequence of taking my vest off for PE was that, after the class, I generally "forgot" to put it back on again. In fact, unbeknown to her, within a couple of weeks I had stopped wearing a vest to school on PE days, and by half-term, I had given up wearing them altogether. Mum protested for a while, prophesying that I would be dead from pneumonia by Christmas, but the worst never happened, and I lived to turn my old vests into cleaning cloths.

Roy F,
I didn’t mean to be pedantic I was explaining from a personal perspective that I was entirely happy that I was not allowed to wear a top for PE. Unlike some guys who’ve posted on here we went into the changing room stripped off completely and put on a pair of white gym shorts and pumps, no underwear was allowed to be worn under the shorts. We all entered the gym wearing just shorts and pumps, we weren’t made to ‘strip to the waist’ in the gym.

Some lads have posted that they were made to strip to the waist as soon as they entered the gym and there was a line of vests or shirts left at the side of the gym. I still think that when guys post ‘we were made to strip to the waist’ it sounds as though they disliked the rule or regarded it as some form of abuse. People could have posted that their PE teacher said ‘shirts off lads’, I personally don’t find the word ‘made’ appropriate because I was perfectly happy with the stripped to the waist/no shirts allowed rule.

John, I understand the point you're making - you were just wearing the required PE kit, which didn'f happen to include a top. However, at my school, boys were indeed 'made to strip to the waist' in that you might begin a PE lesson wearing your vest or T-shirt, but be told to take it off during the course of the lesson. Sometimes that came about if we were playing shirts against skins, but teachers might also make a boy take his top off as a form of discipline. It could be surprisingly effective if you were singled out to do extra press ups or laps of the playing field wearing only shorts, with every other lad in the class in full kit.

To John,

I think we know what Simon meant! He had to do PE stripped to the waist whether he liked it or not. It was a practice imposed upon him and, in that sense, he was "made" to do it.

Hi Simon D. I want to ask you if you ever run shirtless in ram thunderstorm. Because you wrote that you were shirtless whatever weather conditions. I’m asking you this because mee to had a similar experience. Our lesson was always the same. We used to play inside the gym a basketball match, then those who lost the match had to take off the shirt and to give them to winners. At that point we started cross country run which was through mud pitches and wood nearby school. The rules were the following ones, guys who won had shirts of guys who lost, and they could decide. If one of the winners wanted to give back shirt to a guy who was shirtless, he could do this but then he had to run barechested, so that always half of the class had to be shirtless. In this way, losers went always shirtless regardless weather or mud which made very dirty chests of guys who run without a shirt

At the risk of sounding pedantic what is the difference between "being made to strip to the waist for PE" and "not being allowed to wear a top"?

Simon D,

We weren’t ‘made to strip to the waist for PE’ the rule was that we were not allowed to wear a top for PE. The rule was shorts and pumps only, we went in the changing room and we weren’t going to do gym in our school shirts and at Senior School all lads I knew had given up wearing vests underneath their school shirts. So in reality all we did was to take off our school shirt and simply not put on a vest or a t shirt in the changing room.

When guys on here comment that ‘we were made to strip to the waist’ it sounds as though it was harsh or in some way a punishment; we were glad that we could enjoy the freedom of exercising shirtless and were not ‘made to wear a top’.

A lot of boys wore vests under their school shirts and simply put a PE top over. You'd see boys strip both t-shirt and vests off in the gym which was good to watch. I didn't object to seeing boys show their upper bodies either indoors or outside. Watching boys strip off on a cold morning was an experience.

Julian, Surely, in the 1960's it would have been normal for boys to be stripped to the waist and in many schools, barefoot, in the gym and for cross country. If the girls reacted in this manner at the sight of a lad in just shorts
at your sports day, what did you all normally wear for PE?

Our school did not hesitate in making boys strip to the waist for everything bar football, which we wore either a pale blue or white vest depending on whether you were in an odd or even numbered class. Cross Country was always done stripped regardless of temperature or condition and we waded through brooks and shallow water. One teacher's favourite thing was to make lie down in the freezing cold water. Reinforced windows ran the whole length of the gym so it was easy for girls to see us. We our school competitions in all sports in addition to sports day. For things like basketball one team would wear a vest for the first half, strip for the second and vice versa so the girls who were allowed to cheer and watch would see both sets of boys stripped to the waist. For cross country and physical fitness competitions coloured ribbons tied round each competitors arms so all boys could be stripped. There's so much lacking for males. It's it's ridiculous making boys exercise in tops and I wonder at the effort going in. For us it really was a case of no sweat, no effort! And I cannot believe girls no longer want to see boys stripped off!!

Hi Matthew I'd volunteer to take messages to other teachers and took a detour to the gym to see boys topless and if I were lucky and see them glisten with sweat. There were always a line of PE vests down by the front of the gym. Were you singled out to go topless by teachers or was the whole class the same.

James - my memories of topless PE was that our shorts were somewhat more extensive, and less anatomically revealing, than our "speedo - style" swimming trunks. We were more likely to have been embarrassed on the beach or at the swimming pool than in the gym.

I remember a School Sports day in the 1960s.
One of the sixthformers-a tall well-built 17 year old youth- was running stripped to the waist and barefoot.
When girls saw that he was bare-chested they flocked over to get a closer look at him.

To Mathew,

We were were often watched by the girls when they were passing through the corridor on the way to their lessons, but there was no segregation from the girls and we often shared the gym when the weather was unsuitable for them to go outside.

John, it was a mixed school but PE lessons weren't so boys outside while the girls were inside and vice versa. There were direct doors from both changing rooms into the gym but another into a public corridor so we wouldnt see each other or at least not in theory.

Claire, you sound like what our girls must have been like! I felt happier about being shirtless as I got used to it so that tallies.

To James
How were the girls able to come and watch you? Should they not have been in lessons themselves?