Hesketh Fletcher Gym Team

at the small exclusive boarding school i went to all PE was done naked as was swimming.
because the grounds were well enclosed cross country was also
done naked.

It was normal when I was at school to do all PE stripped to the waist whatever the weather.
I well remember being stripped to the waist with snow on the ground.

I was at an all boys boarding school and punishment runs were very frequently given and you'd see small groups or individuals doing laps of the field on a very regular basis. These were given with some relish by our rather brutal PE teacher and it was often given for slightest things like if a perceived lack of effort, a vest wasn't sticking to you or if your bare chest/back wasn't showing at least a thin sheen of sweat at the end of a lesson.
Our kit was simple, a vest, shorts, indoor trainers and another for outdoors. Teams were always picked by the teacher half would strip off, half would keep a vest on. I can vouch through experience that some of us were definitely stripped off more
than others for some reason!
Nobody seemed really bothered by the mimimal kit but there always dark mutterings about the temperature in winter - being stripped down for a fitness sessions outdoors in the snow was brutal by anyone's standards.
The punishment you always wanted to avoid was 2hrs in the gym. You
were required to wear your vest when you entered the gym. Due to the nature of the exercise the school nurse gave you a quick checkover before you stripped down to the waist to begin the punishment. Needless to say it wasn't long before you began to drip with sweat. A lot of lads endured this and being given attention by the nurse afterwards was not seen as unusual.

In reply to Stuart, at my all boys school in the 80s we were given extra punishments for forgetting our kit, usually a PE detention. These usually took place in the gym and lasted the same time as an ordinary PE lesson but sometimes there would be a punishment run outdoors instead. I had to do one of these as a penalty for not having my PE vest; what I didn't realise until we got outside was that I would be doing the actual run bare chested as well! We were told to take our vests off, leave them on the ground at the starting point and then set off on the run. All part of the punishment. It certainly wasn't a warm day but the worst aspect of it was having to run past a group of girls from a nearby school - that prompted a fair bit of giggling and whistles etc! It was a real relief to get back to base and I was always careful to bring my kit in future.

Like a lot of secondary schools in the early 70's if we forgeot PE kit we had to strip to just our underpants and do PE as normal.

Did anyone else get additional punishments for forgetting kit, like detention, punishment runs or even caning ?

I if you forgot your kit for pe you had to borrow shorts and do it in barefeet in sports hall and gym didnt do us any harm your feet was black with dust that's all

At my school, if rugby was cancelled that usually meant the weather was too bad for any other outdoor activity. So we had to join in with other classes going on at the same time - half of us in the gym and the other half in the swimming pool. Sometimes boys brought swimming trunks but if not you had to swim in your black rugby shorts. If you were joining the gym class it was the same - black shorts instead of the white ones we usually wore indoors, shirts off and bare feet. It was often a bit of a squeeze but we had to make the best of it.

If it was frosty and we were unable to play rugby, we had to do a cross country run instead. In theory we could have used the gym, but in practice another lesson was already in progress.

Our cross country kit was navy shorts and plimsolls, always stripped to the waist. If you just had rugby kit with you, you had to strip to just the shorts and run in bare feet. Some boys brought plimsolls with them just in case rugby was cancelled, but most ran in shorts only.

What happened with other boys if it was unsafe to play rugby.

We were the same indoor shorts only and bare feet.

Like Steve we were stripped to the waist and barefoot at all times for PE.
Again white shorts in the gym and black shorts for cross-country(again stripped to the waist and barefoot.)

We had to strip to just shorts in the gym, so bare feet and stripped down to the waist. Same kit throughout the school, no one was ever allowed to wear a vest or t-shirt or anything on our feet.

For pe we wore white shorts, with navy rugby shorts for cross country (still shirtless). Anyone wearing the wrong colour shorts would have been in deep trouble !

To tell the difference between teams we wore plastic sashes/bands which came in various strong colours.

As far as I recall there were never any problems telling teams apart.

We would wear different coloured shorts-white or black.
Being stripped to the waist there was sometimes confusion about tackling but not as frequent as you would think.

John,

I remember at the start of the first lesson and after changing into our new kit, we were told to stand in a line out on the yard and our PE teacher picked a lad to stand facing the class and told him to take his vest off and drop it on the yard. About a minute (if that)later we were all stood stripped down. Vests were only used to make up a second team only for inter class competitions like basketball/cross country/fitness.

This lasted from the age of 9 to 18, after A levels and had the same teacher throughout this time.

Reading John's questions to Mark made me think back to a brief experiment at my school when different coloured shorts were used to denote teams in the gym. At first one team had a coloured sash worn over the shoulder but, as John pointed out, these tended to slip down too easily! So the PE department came up with a new system. Each boy owned a pair of white shorts for lessons in the gym and black shorts for outdoor games. So boys whose surnames were in the second half of the alphabet were instructed to bring their black shorts to gym lessons instead of white and both teams were stripped to the waist.
The system just didn't work because you kept having to stop and think about what colour shorts someone was wearing, there were a lot of misplaced passes and the games were chaotic. So the school scrapped the idea after a few weeks and instead brought in a set of bibs that fitted over both shoulders and were secured at your sides by elastic. One team wore the bibs while the other team reverted to the usual kit of white shorts and bare top. That worked much better because it was easy to spot straight away who was on your team and we kept that system throughout the rest of my time at school

Mark.
What happened when it came to playing Team Games in the Gym , like Killerball (A Sort of Gym Rugby) or Basketball, or Football?
Did the different teams wear different Colour Shorts?
Some Schools used coloured Bands that you wore over the Shoulder but these could slip off quite easily!
Did you find that having all Boys stripped to the Waist
made identifying an Opponent or "Enemy" difficult in a quick-reaction situation like a Scrum or a Tackle?

Nick, This was in around 1963 at a Grammar School and the PE teacher encouraged us to go stripped to the waist.

Mark. With regard to your post: Roughly what year was this? And what sort of school? And did the PE teacher make any comment or encourage this? Thanks.

Like Sam there was a lad who started to do PE shirtless and again more and more boys joined him so that eventually we were all stripped to the waist.

When I was at school we had a lad in our class whose father was into "healthy living."
He told me that as soon as he got home he had to remove his top and go stripped to the waist for the rest of the day. He had four brothers and they had to do the same.
He was the first in our class to do PE etc stripped to the waist and after that more and more of us stripped to the waist both in the gym and outside.

At my mixed secondary school the boys' indoor PE uniform was white shorts only.
For outdoors and cross-country we wore black or navy blue shorts and were again bare-chested. Some lads also went barefoot as well.

At my school in the 1960s it was the invariable practice to do PE stripped to the waist.
We would also be bare-chested for cross-country runs whatever the weather.

Andrea,

Yes, the topless PE and naked swimming continued to the end of primary school. I know some girls had become to develop by the age of 11, but there was no difference in what was worn. I know it was really uncommon, particulary our swimming lessons, but I'm not sure if other schools did the same.

Laura

Laura,

Did the topless pe and nude swimming lessons happen all the way to the end of your time at primary school?

When I at primary in the late 1960's boys and girls all had to change for pe in the same classroom, but that was only to vest and knickers as we put on our pe kit. When a few of the girls started to wear bras rather than vests (I never got to that stage at primary school!), they were allowed to change in the toilets.

Andrea

I went to Shears Green that Martin mentioned back in March. It was such a shock when my first PE lesson came round. I'd had a PE kit at my previous school and was worried that I didn't have it with me. I went up to my teacher and told her, only to be told in return to take my clothes off, including my vest! That was a serious shock, but was nothing compared to my first swimming lesson in our school pool. As Martin said, these were done nude!

The only time we did shirts v skins was if we had football practice. In the gym our uniform included just shorts and no top, everyone went bare-chested without exception. For teams we had coloured bands that you had to wear on both arms, but they weren't all that clearly visible during a game. Shirts v skins was much more effective as it was easier to spot which boys were on your team.

My ex told me that at his all boys secondary school their indoor pe kit was just a pair of white shorts. They wore rugby shirts for outdoor pe though.

At my all girls school we wore T shirts and gym knickers indoors (and outdoors in summer) but a gym skirt and long sleeved shirt outdoors in winter.

The worst thing was if you forgot your kit, the pe teacher made you wear a shirt from the pe store cupboard that probably hadn't been washed for months!

"Shirts-v-skins" didn't arise at my school as we were stripped to the waist for PE at all times.

Mike, were you the only one who was always a skin or was it the same for other boys too? At my school the teams were meant to be picked at random each time but quite often the teacher would announce 'same teams next time' at the end of the lesson. So if you were a skin you'd often stay bare-chested for the next lesson or more and you could easily go for a few weeks of PE without wearing a top at all.
Sometimes there was no team sport in the lesson but half the boys still had to do it as skins. I never understood why that was but obviously I didn't question it at the time!

We too used to play "vests-v-skins".
As I never even possessed a vest I was always a "skin".
Therefore I had no problems about being stripped to the waist.

Adam, it was the same for me, though it was usually skins vs vests. One thing I always found strange was that the teacher always picked me to remove my vest be it indoors or out. I didn't mind and was always glad to be a skin especially playing basketball when you could see vests sticking to your opponents top.