Burnley Grammar School

Nick - nice to hear from someone else who did PE in the 90s and played vests/shirts and skins. Your description of how it felt to be a skin at first is spot on, that's exactly how I remember feeling when I suddenly found myself standing in the gym in my shorts and 'pasty bare chest', as your teacher would have put it!
Sounds like his approach helped to make the whole thing fun, which is good and clearly worked if lads were keen to play football in skins.
Did you ever play shirts and skins outdoors? We did on one occasion at my school, it was a really warm, humid day and we wore these heavy football jerseys which were reversible and in different colours to tell the teams apart. Given the conditions a couple of boys on my team asked if they could play barechested, thankfully the teacher agreed and told the rest of us to do the same. Definitely a relief to be skins that day!

Hi Bernard, what do you mean with “no matter how cold it was”? Did you play bare chested in winter with rain/snow and freezing temperatures?

Sam. I didn't have a jock strap at that point. However, I changed schools for my 6th form years. There, jockstraps were very much in fashion - mine was a Litesome, too - but unfortunately we had to wear PE vests all the time. No topless Ness, even in summer,

Hi John,
Yes - looking back I think we were very lucky with our p.e. teachers. The football team played with full kit - they had to wear shirts, boots and socks in addition to the black shorts. According to my friend who was in the team, the shirts were very uncomfortable even after quite a few washes. They played shirts and skins when they practised so every-one wanted to be on the skins side no matter how cold it was.

Gavin A, I think the jockstrap I had at school was Lithesome. You don't seem to see the brand anymore. What about you?

Chris G, thanks for your post.My wife and I have been away with the family for the past week making the most of the late summer sunshine. As you will have read in my earlier post you and I were at secondary schools in the late 1950s so I was pleased to read that when you had to be topless for PE you soon got to enjoy the comfort and practicality this brought, which a lot of you extended to the point of also going commando.

I was also at school in the 90's, and did shirts & skins for indoor PE. The thing I remember most is our teacher who had all these catchphrases he;d use every lesson. Each time he divided us into two teams, he'd pick one team and yell at them: 'Off with your tops, boys, show the opponents your pasty bare chests'. Every single time. We'd chant along.

A lot of us played 5aside at lunch for fun in the gym (some of the prefects organised it), and whenever the skins started to pull off their shirts, someone would usually shout 'off with your tops lads, show us your pasty bare chests'.

I don't think anyone minded being barechested, in fact I remember arguments at 5aside about whose turn it was because we wanted to be skins, eg you got to be skins last time so now its our turn etc.

I suppose I was self conscious the very first few times about being topless, feeling naked just in shorts and a bare chest but you soon forget that.

Hi Bernard,
What a good PE teacher you had, you were lucky to be able to play football shirtless as well. Yours really was a great school for lads who preferred to exercise shirtless. Did your school football team wear shirts when they played against other schools?

John - inside we wore different coloured bands over one shoulder. These didn't work all that well as they would slip off too easily.

Outside was much easier - one team would wear the black shorts that were supposed to be the football kit while the other team wore their white shorts which were officially gym and cross country shorts. This worked much better than the coloured bands.

Hi Jeremy, I used to play airsoft shirtless when I was young. I remember it started one day which was very hot so we decided to take off our shirt and to continue without it. We played near an abandoned house so it was full of bushes and dirty places where to hide in, even shirtless. The advantage was that we didn’t feel hot and the disadvantage was that we got very dirty (especially our bare chest). Even though the place was far from town, so we didn’t care of being dirty, one day three/four girls were walking there and they saw us in that conditions. It was funny because nobody of us had a shirt so we decided to continue playing as we were, with sweat and mud on our chest and a group of girls watching us. I want to ask you if you have ever played paintball/airsoft shirtless and why did you choose to do it ?

Bernard,
I agree with you that vests or shirts are not necessary for PE but how did your PE teachers manage to identify teams when lads were divided into teams and were all stripped to the waist?.

Matt - I don't know when you were at school but in my day - in the 60s - we were worked hard in p.e. and most of us would have been uncomfortable wearing a shirt. If boys are exercising vigorously then there should be no need or desire to wear shirts inside or outside. I can imagine if a class of boys were out on a football pitch shirtless in winter and there was a lot of time spent standing around listening to instructions etc they would get pretty cold but that was not the case at my school. All instructions were given before we went outside and we were pretty happy running around in our minimal kit.

Harry, I’m happy I’m not the only one who played paintball shirtless. Yes I think it is a perfect idea to play shirtless even these painful games to divide two teams. Even in winter, the fame is more funny if a team is shirtless. I remember another time we decided to create two teams and to make everything more funny, the team which lost had to take off their shirt and to do a punishment like being shot shirtless, passing through rose bushes full of thorns shirtless, and even running in snow and doing press-ups in it shirtless... it was very funny seeing the other team losing but when my team lost it was terrible ahah... it was part of the game, have you ever had experiences like this?

Paul, it’s not a perfect solution for lads that prefer to be stripped to the waist for indoor PE. Our gym was always heated in the winter and it was way too hot for wearing vests or t shirts. Schools that got lads to bring a black and a white pair of shorts to each PE lesson had no problem in distinguishing teams at all. A friend of mine went to a school that had that PE kit rule and he never had any issues with it at all.

Frank's posting seems to be the perfect solution to every boy being stripped to the waist and avoiding the problems of identification already discussed for team games

Frank C,
At some senior schools the boys PE kit was black shorts, white shorts and pumps. Lads had to take a pair of white and a pair of black shorts to each gym class, the PE teacher would be at the changing room and divide the lads up so that half would wear black shorts and the others white. Lads were always stripped to the waist for gym class and indoor basketball and other team games. It was far healthier exercising shirtless and shy lads became more confident. There’s no need to wear shirts for indoor PE

Matt and John,quite a while ago this was argued out.The bibs are awkward and slip with movement and can induce extra moisture on the back and chest!Armbands similarly aren't great.Remedy make one team skin and the others vests,it tends to pan out better and all the students know that they will be picked for one or the other

John,
I see your logic about every boy being a skin every time in that nobody could have felt singled out, that's true. If the PE kit was exactly the same for everyone, then I think we'd all have got used to it.
But surely by your argument we could just as easily have kept our vests on and still used bibs or armbands to distinguish teams in the gym? Why did any of us - whether some boys or all - actually need to strip to the waist for PE?

Matt,
Interesting to read about your experience of PE in the 1990s, would you have minded if your school had adopted a stripped to the waist rule for boys indoor PE?. Lads could have worn a bib or a coloured armband to distinguish teams. If all lads had been skins all the time they would not have had the anxiety about being chosen for the skins team and PE teachers wouldn’t have been able to pick on lads that they thought were ‘soft’

Rob. Sorry, missed your post of Aug 27th. Yes, for my first two years in secondary school we wore vests for PE. Some of us had the specified, but never enforced, T-shirt type top, but by and large, those of us who wore underwear vests on a daily basis (and that was most of us back then) didn't bother to change - so, yes, we were a bit sticky and whiffy by the end of the session, but we survived. Things were obviously better once we started going topless,and got more ventilation. Probably not unusually for those days, there were no showers available, but there probably wouldn't have been enough time for us all to get through, even if there had been any. Although there was no official no-pants ruling, a lot of us did remove our underpants, especially when toplessness caame in, but by the the time I left that particular school, there were even a few jock-straps to be seen in the changing room.

Simon - we did vests vs skins in my PE lessons too (also 1990s) and one of my friends got picked to be a skin virtually every time. At first I think he felt a bit embarrassed about taking his top off and maybe that was evident to the teacher, who was a bit of a hard nut and presumably thought my friend was too soft. Whatever the reason, he stayed a skin most of the year and eventually seemed to be fine with it.

Simon E, we were always stripped to the waist for all indoor PE and outdoor cross country running. Your school could have made all lads shirtless for all indoor PE and you could have worn a coloured bib or armbands to distinguish teams. It would have been much fairer and healthier for all lads to be stripped to the waist, who wants to wear a hot sticky vest?

Wow. So many comments about something so commonplace. I left school in the late 90's and our school did vests vs skins for indoors PE and it wasn't unusual to see vests sticking to backs. I know the teams were random but for around 98% of lessons I found myself as a skin. Did anybody think they were singled out too.

Hi Frank and Jeremy an interesting spin on playing games shirtless!Back in the early nineties a group of lads at the engineering works organised a weekend social activity.It was a paintball challenge with two teams battling it out in woods in Derbyshire.Most of us had old coats and well worn jeans it was Spring,April and a bit showery and chilly.We thought it would be a good idea to make the teams more distinguishable as in the woods we mistook who was on which side etc.One of our team took of his coat and t-shirt and indicated that I and the others should do the same this added an extra element of fun,the other team came at us fast and furious we went back home sore and pitted but it was very refreshing and livened things up! We had another round a few weeks later!

Hi frank, yes we used to play air soft shirtless during hot days, when temperatures were to high to wear anything on our chests. Generally we didn’t have strict rules, in fact the winner was the guy who was able to resist more. However, even when we wore protections on our chests, we used to add a punishment for members who didn’t declare they have been hit. They had to take off their protections and shirts so that they had to be bare chested. At that point three of us shoot on his bare chest around 30 shot. After this you had to finish playing as you were, shirtless! Sometimes happens that people didn’t declare and it is a problem because you don’t realise when you win. One time it happened to me and i was very scared not for the 30 shot (which were a bit painful) but for the fact they all had protections a part from me, so they didn’t care to shoot hundreds of shot with automatic arms because of protections... except from me ahahah at the end I was destroyed but the next day I was ready for another battle!

Alfie, I agree that I would have hated having to run barefoot, frankly that wasn’t even safe for those lads to be made to do that. Running shirtless was always great though. After spending hours at a desk in a hot and stuffy classroom in winter, to be able to strip to the waist and put on a pair of shorts and trainers and go running outdoors was a truly liberating experience. It never did me any harm, we quickly got warm and worked up a sweat.

Hi, i was reading Eric’s message regarding air soft..I want to talk about mine of my experiences.. one time I was playing football and my shirt ended up in shreds so I was obliged to play shirtless. The problem was one of my friend who wanted to play paintball, everyone had a shirt a part from me, but I was forced to play. Yes it was very painful but, at least, I didn’t dirty my shirt haha. Have you ever tried airsoft/paintball barechested?

Some fun running bare chested and bare feet in freezing cold, snow and rain while the coaches wore woollen jerseys, woollen socks and shoes.

Give us a break, guys.

I suppose you also look back nostalgically at getting the cane at school.

Bernard, thanks for your comments. At least your PT teacher contemplated no sending you outside in the snow. Ours just carried on with the timetabled activity regardless of weather. Even if that meant our bare feet were ankle deep in snow. Like you say it was often a relief and once you got going was quite enjoyable in a funny sort of way. The biting cold seemed to encourage you to run harder.

Thanks John, you're a man after my own heart. Lads today don't know what they're missing.