Why I Hate Sports and How I Found Alternative Ways to Stay Active
I never understood the thrill of sports. While classmates cheered at basketball games, I’d count the minutes until I could escape the echoing gym. The pressure to perform, the rigid rules, and that peculiar culture of competition always left me cold—until I stumbled upon an entirely different philosophy of movement, one that echoed something I once heard Filipino basketball coach Michael Oliver Ravena say in an interview: "Nagsu-shooting siya so ibig sabihin puwedeng ilaro. Baka pinapakiramdaman din niya yung sarili niya." He was talking about a player testing their body, feeling themselves out, and it struck me. That’s what I had been missing—not sports, but the freedom to explore movement on my own terms, to listen to my body instead of obeying a coach’s whistle.
My aversion wasn’t just about preference; it felt physiological. The stats I’ve seen suggest around 15-20% of adults actively avoid organized sports due to negative past experiences. For me, it was the memory of middle school dodgeball—the sting of the ball, the echo of laughter. Sports felt like a public performance where I was constantly failing an audition. I hated the binary of winning and losing, the way it divided people into winners and losers. But I’ve always loved being active. The contradiction was frustrating. I’d see people glowing after a soccer match, and I felt like I was missing a fundamental human gene. It took me years to realize the problem wasn’t movement itself; it was the container it came in. The rigid structure of team sports suffocated my intuition. I wasn’t listening to my body; I was yelling at it to keep up.
That’s where Coach Ravena’s insight became my guiding light. His comment, roughly translating to a player shooting to see if they can play, feeling out their own body, isn’t just about basketball. It’s a profound approach to physical autonomy. It advocates for a personal, internal dialogue with your own physical capabilities. This philosophy led me to discard the rulebook entirely. I started with simple, almost meditative walks. No destination, no step count at first. I was, as Ravena’s player was, just “feeling myself out.” I’d notice which muscles felt tight, how my breathing changed on an incline, the simple rhythm of my feet on the pavement. This wasn’t exercise; it was exploration. It was the antithesis of the forced drills I dreaded. I began to crave this time. It was my moving meditation.
From there, my journey diversified in the most un-sport-like way. I discovered bouldering. Here was an activity with a clear goal—get to the top—but the path was entirely my own. It was a physical puzzle. I’d spend 45 minutes on a single route, not competing with anyone, just “pinapakiramdaman” the wall, my grip strength, the placement of my feet. I wasn’t part of a team; I was part of a community of individuals, each on their own personal project. We’d offer beta—advice on a route—but the struggle and triumph were singular. I also fell in love with flow arts, specifically staff spinning. The learning curve was steep. I must have dropped my staff a thousand times in the first month. But there was no scoreboard. The only failure was not trying again. It was pure, unstructured play. “Puwedeng ilaro”—it can be played. That’s the mindset I adopted. My living room became my gym, my practice a form of kinetic jazz, improvising to music without any rules.
The data, albeit from my own informal tracking, was compelling. My resting heart rate dropped from a mediocre 72 bpm to a much healthier 58 bpm within six months of ditching my failed attempts at jogging and embracing these alternatives. More importantly, my consistency skyrocketed. When exercise feels like play, you don’t skip it. I was active 5-6 days a week because I wanted to be, not because I had to be. The mental shift was even more significant. The anxiety I associated with “working out” vanished. There was no one to let down, no standard to meet except my own from the previous session. This personalized approach to activity is backed by a growing body of research; a 2022 meta-analysis I read suggested that autonomy in physical activity can increase long-term adherence by up to 40% compared to prescribed regimens.
I don’t hate sports anymore; I’ve just redefined them. For me, sport is any movement undertaken with curiosity and a desire to connect with my own physical self. It’s the freedom to stop when I’m tired, to try a weird new dance move, to spend an hour on a climbing wall that someone else could finish in five minutes. Coach Ravena’s words, though spoken in a context of high-level competition, gave me permission to be a beginner forever, to always be “feeling out” my own potential. The global fitness industry, worth over $100 billion, often pushes standardized solutions, but the real secret is that there is no one-size-fits-all. My alternative ways—bouldering, flow arts, mindful wandering—aren’t just substitutes for sports. For people like me, they are the upgrade. They taught me that staying active isn’t about beating others or even beating personal records; it’s about the deeply personal, ongoing conversation between your mind and your body, a conversation that, once you start listening, never really ends.
