@OmSigDAVID,
Absolutely. As an adult I learned about exercise physiology and the various pleasures and occasional pains of running, hiking, dance (I'm a fool), rock climbing (fool again, but I get it), and best of all for me, swimming, which I learned at 39; I loved gliding in the Y pool as I got better at it, sort of a dream sequence.
I learned about sports, as opposed to exercise for itself, from three places. Sister Mel at St. Nick's, who pulled the whole class outside in spring and taught us to bat and pitch, both as if we'd not held a bat before, which we hadn't, at least a good bunch of us; my father, helping sans pressure; and newspapers and books.
My dad taught me how to ride a bicycle, how to fish, how to hold a bat (probably after Sr. Mel), and how to hit a golf ball at the local pitch and putt (Rancho Park, which may mean something to old golf fans), took me to horse races since I had gotten fixated on an early kentucky derby.
My high school taught me nothing at all on how-to, a four year waste. I spent my after school time reading compilations of short stories, with a subsection of those books being about sports. So maybe I learned sports from the oldie great writers, who, generally speaking, wrote 'over the top', but kept my interest.
At university I took tennis and swimming, and oh, gads, ballroom dance, had good days and bad at all of them, including a romance out of the dance class. My best tennis day was when I borrowed a class friend's racket (this was in the days of wooden ones) and every ball I hit went right where I wanted it, I was wonderful. Slazenger was the name of the racket. Next time with my own racket, I was goofy again.
Repeating, I don't know how classes are taught now, but primary instruction and some basics about aerobics and strength conditioning could matter, even to the, er, natural athletes.
I've later loved exercise, swimming more than running, when I do it and keep it up for years at a time. I also slough it off easily, have an inveterate laziness that takes hold. Lifetime quandary, depends on which year.
My wife says I already look like one.) Occasionally my trainer would vary the workout routine by introducing me to a sport. One day he showed me how to shoot a basketball. I had assumed that shooting a basketball was just a matter of thrusting the ball towards the hoop. I was amazed to learn that I had been wrong. It’s a skill involving particular wrist and finger movements that has to be learned by repetition over time, like learning how to type. I easily could have learned how to shoot a basketball if I had been taught how. But like I said, there was no instruction in any of the P.E. classes that I was forced to take. The fact of the matter is that the traditional P.E. classes have never actually been taught like academic classes have always been taught, but don’t tell that to all the people who are opposed to P.E. reform and demand that ALL students be required to take P.E. classes that are essentially USELESS to nonathletic kids.