The high school football team spends up to 21 hours a week practicing in the summer and 15 hours a week during the school year, yet they still have to take gym classes.
Although student-athletes spend every day training or practicing for their sport,  they are still required to take an hour and 45 minutes gym class, but for what? They get plenty of exercise and activity from practice and games; they don’t need to waste a whole class period playing Frisbee golf or doing yoga. Most activities in gym are huge wastes of time anyway. Units in gym tend to be abstract and unknown sports or mundane activities like power walking or jump roping. Student athletes could spend their hour and 45 minutes anywhere other than gym, and it would be a better use of their time. Instead they could go to a study hall or free period to make up for the time they put into their sport after school.
Considering the sacrifice students make to play their respective sports, they should be rewarded in some way by the school. The least they could do is help committed student athletes who take personal fitness. If you didn’t know, personal fitness is considered an elective, not a replacement for gym, so students who take personal fitness have to give up an elective to take it. If a student athlete is committed enough to sacrifice an elective to train and lift more for their sport, they should be able to skip out on some tchoukball or powerwalking.
Though, gym can be good for people who do not regularly exercise or play sports because at time you do actually exercise. If you run the mile or play basketball all gym class it can really benefit some people
In-season student-athletes don’t even try in gym. I know whenever it was game day I would give minimum effort and think “I’m saving myself for the game”, though that might have just been an excuse to be lazy. Regardless, anyone with a game or practice after school isn’t going to give 100% effort. If the students aren’t even trying, why bother having them go to classes?
Even health class is a joke. I understand that we should be taught not to do drugs and drink alcohol, but do we need to learn the same curriculum every year? I can’t tell you how many times I have how to stay healthy and what an STD is. Truthfully, we should stop having health after freshman year.
According to familyhealth.org a says that one shouldn’t “over exercise”, and teens only needs 1 hour of exercise, and student-athletes definitely get that hour and some.
The solution is simple: in-season athletes should not have to take gym, they should have a choice between personal fitness or other electives and a free study hall because gym is a waste of their time.