And if you did what class grade/year would it had happened? What decade (if your comfortable sharing)?
I am wondering how many people actually did this and from what locations/ages/years it would have happened. For my education (American elementary-college years 2000’s-2010’s) I never had to do that. I feel like I had to be common enough that it is referenced in movies and tv shows.
Yep. USian public school, middle school in the early 90’s. I think I was… 12 or 13. Never managed it because I had zero upper arm strength so I couldn’t even get my feet onto the knot on the bottom.
Sure did, I think it was part of a bunch of tests we had to do for the… Presidential Fitness Award or something?
It was done in Elementary school, so Fall 87->Spring 93? I have no idea if they’re still doing any of that crap now though.
I do remember it being the neatest dang thing because our school had like this entire wall of collapsible gym equipment that folded out like a playground with like 2 or 3 story monkeybars and gigantic poofy mats at the bottom, and you better believe some kids fell off.
The more I think about it, the more I suspect they don’t let them do that anymore
ELEMENTARY! I feel like that is wild.
Haha yeah it sounds like a crazy fun playground filled with danger.
honestly I think the last time I could have pulled it off was elementary. I went from a skinny stick to mr. chubs in a flash in 6th grade. though maybe it was because I didn’t have any ropes to climb anymore?
Climbing is way, way easier for younger children.
I’m probably five years younger than you. We had rope climbing but it wasn’t part of the Presidential Physical Fitness Award (which I am seemingly deeply proud of actually having managed in the third grade, despite being crap at pull ups, and I was even worse at rope climbing).
No, I always thought it seemed stupidly dangerous. What happens if a kid falls and cracks their noggin. seems like an unnecessary liability
This was my thought when I first heard of it. My school wouldn’t let us on the playground when it was wet because we might slip on the monkey bars haha
Yup. Canada, early 90s. Up to the gymnasium ceiling and big jump to the crash mats. Only once it twice though. I found it extremely difficult and struggled all the way. Some of my classmates were able to do it no sweat.
As for age. Under 11. So, maybe 9 o 10?
That’s wild to imagine! Any recollection of how high up those ceilings might have been? The gyms I remember in the US had ceilings that were something like 2 or 3 stories high, if I had to guess. That strikes me as quite the height to jump for a fitness test. Just for the height factor alone I can’t picture myself having the guts back then to do it. Dunno if I’d even have 'em now 😨.
Probably around 2 stories. Mrs. Klinghammer, the gym teacher, was a little intense at times.
Western US here. We had a rope climb twice a year from 4th to 9th grade. I tried the first time and then refused every time after that.
Never did get any flak for it. Can only assume they knew it was dangerous and were happy to have kids skip it.
I did in US middle school (8th grade, 2008 or 2009) but it was a knotted rope, so the knots acted as footholds, making it much easier. Also there was a marker 10’ or so up and we weren’t supposed to pass it to avoid fall injuries. Very nerfed from the archetypical gym class rope climb. As a severely out of shape nerd I still struggled with it :']
Yes. US elementary school in the 1970s. Can’t remember how high they wanted us to climb, but it was a 2 story gym.
Nope, never.
We climbed rope in elementary school in the early 90s.
I definitely remember climbing a rope in PE in like 3rd or 4th grade which would be around '99. Washington State btw.
rope climbing was a one day thing that i did every year of Physical education for as long as i can remember. i’d say it started in 3rd grade?
Yes, for U.S. elementary schools in the late 80’s it seemed common I thought (?)
Also I sucked at that, I only ever made it a few feet up before giving up LOL. In my school it was always more of a race to test who can do it the quickest, not actually spend an entire week learning how to do it properly.
Ours was pass/fail.
I find it so interesting how PE is a class one can fail in some parts of the world. We have PE as a compulsory thing but would never get graded on it (just as well, refused to do a lot of it) unless we chose to do it for our GCSEs.
Yep, I remember doing it at least a couple years in a row in elementary school (I might have been 9 or 10?) - this was in France, in the early 00s.
No, and I couldn’t have if I tried. I’ve always been bottom heavy: I was a runner and long-distance cyclist with some soccer in there, too. Wide birthing hips but not much in the way of arm and shoulder muscles. That began to change when I started lifting weights in college, but in high school? No way.
Yes, we did this in late elementary school (I want to say 5th grade, or 10-11ish years old?), but did not do it beyond that. There were two ropes–one standard rope and one with evenly spaced knots that you could use to climb with hand and footholds. This was in the '90s.
