Why are we bad at sports?

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I am very bad at sport but I tend to be highly obsessive about the scoring aspect of it. I often like to keep figures in my mind of what team scored the highest and what player scored the highest number of goals in a single game. Like as a kid I felt I would make the very worst umpire (especially with Australian Rules Football) but an excellent goal umpire. Does anyone feel the same way about sport?

When I was a kid I used to really suck because I never really played sports but since the end high school I have been doing a lot more and got pretty good at most sports. I also tend to be very good at any new water sport I try. The thing that has improved my performance the most tho was learning to juggle. It improved my balance , coordination and reflexes more than anything ever has. I got better at every sport since then.

This is my first post, I am 65 years.

Sports just aren't appealing to me unless I can bet on them, like football.

Without bets no interest.

But if I know a bookie, don't right now, I watch college all day Saturday (betting) and NFL on Sunday.

I have played sports in high school, but like other things I have tried it just becomes boring or something like that.

Thanks

I am clumsy as hell and I'm not very coordinated. I have always loathed team sports because 1, the clue is in the title "TEAM sports" and 2, letting the rest of my team down when I display my amazing coordination skills and having everyone shout at me. In PE I was always picked last, and even not at all so the teacher would have to pick a team for me. Often I'd sort of stand back and try to be invisible so no one would notice I wasn't joining in, or if I had a choice I would get a basketball and bounce it up and down for an hour and half.
I do however like doing solitary sports like aerobics even if I'm not too good at it, and I love swimming.

Monkey,

Maybe it is the team concept. Never tried out for team sports, never invited by the ones that did, and in my senior year never attended a game.

But I did try out for and made the wrestling team. I really enjoyed at first, we had a first year coach and I showed him a move I learned in JV the year before at another school, and since he didn't have wrestling experience and I don't know why, he appointed me the Team Captain.

I have to say I failed at that task, leading the team just didn't fit me and it became very obvious immediately, but the coach must have noticed and soon he announced that we would rotate TCs on a weekly basis. Such excellent news.

I wrestled the whole year, won a few lost a few, but my younger brother at the CIF finals in Beverly Hills that year wrestled and beat Gregory Peck's son, and Gregory sat not too far from us, he had dark glasses.

That was the end of sports at least organized team type sports.

I can't begin to say how much I didn't desire to be TC.

I must be bashful or something like that.

Thanks

I'm in the minority of aspies, but I'm actually really good at sports. I'm only 15 though, and I've played sports since I was really young.

I play soccer, basketball, tennis, baseball and I run track. I also did competitive swimming for a few years.

Soccer is my best sport, and I made the varsity team as a freshman. Soccer is one of my main interests. I watch every professional soccer game I can, and I think I have the rosters and stats of every team memorized.

Basketball, I find more difficult, because being in the gymnasium is really loud and I get distracted. Tennis and track are easy because they're individual sports and there's way less thinking involved.

I think there are two reasons that I'm good at sports. 1, my parents are both really athletic. 2, I started sports when I was really young. I started playing organized soccer and baseball when I was 4, but even before that I played with my dad and brothers. I started basketball and tennis when I was 6 and swimming when I was 7.

I find that when I try a new sport, I'm not very good at it. I tried football when I was 11 and rugby when I was 13 and I was terrible. I also tried water polo when I was 13 and I didn't understand the rules, so I gave up.

I'm kind of a mixed bag. I'm generally on the clumsy side. Stairs and me don't mix. I've tripped while walking on flat, uniform surfaces, as well as my own feet. I sucked at team sports. I was the one who was always chosen last. The team leader (captain?) who got stuck with me often gave an exasperated sigh. And my performance would justify that sigh.

However, I have done some individual sports, some very well. I used to do BMX/freestyle trick bicycle riding, though I never got very good because I was always afraid of falling. Despite my clumsiness I usually did pretty good at martial arts. I've studied about half-a-dozen of them, but never for very long (usually a time or money issue). In some cases the instructor would say I did very well and tried different things to encourage me to continue. I've done distance running, but was never competitive. I've run a half-marathon before, and loved it. I ran it with a 12-minute mile pace, though I have run as fast as 8:30/mile for shorter distances, up to 2 miles.

I've also been good at marksmanship-related sports. The first was archery. I was regularly having my arrows repaired because I'd either shoot holes in the fletching or break the nock with subsequent shots. My favorite thing to do was to take a plain index card and stick it to the target with a pencil in the center and see if I could hit the end of the pencil. I could usually do it about 3 out of 5 times. When I didn't the arrow was usually right next to the pencil. I used to play with throwing stars when I was an adolescent, and I eventually got to the point I could consistently hit a half-dollar-sized target out to about 30 feet or so. I also tried knife-throwing. Once I got the range and spin right, I could usually perform similarly well. I've been very good with handguns. I can remember being at a training course and firing 4 rounds, rapid-fire, into the same hole. On more than one occassion I've come back to shooting after a long hiatus (2-3 years), picked up a gun at the range, and shot well enough to qualify on a police/security qualification course of fire.

Marksmanship is definitely a hand/eye coordination task, but I wonder why I could do what I described above, yet could never hit a ball with a bat or throw a ball to the intended recipient. To this day it baffles me. Can marksmanship be a savant skill? Maybe my obsessive interest in those skills helped drill them into my muscle memory? Or maybe what I could do is not unusual at all?

FYI, I've been told numerous times that I have pretty handwriting, though it does tend to suffer when I'm stressed or in pain.

I'm not that good in most team sports that are played in PE, and that includes running the mile as well. Once when running on the track in PE, I got hit on the head from a football when another class was playing that sport during the same period. I found I'm better in individual sports such as archery and martial arts, so those are the sports I participate in now.

I get that too. I seem to deal with it differently though, I go into an attentional "vortex". As in block out all sensory information that isn't vital.

I was once sparring at kickboxing, and really going for it, and I vaguely noticed someone yelling, it sounded distant, maybe it was coming from across the room...'Jess! Calm the f**k down! No need to hit so hard...'

The other girl had asked me about four times to ease up, but I'd gone into one of those narrow focused states, and literally didn't hear.

Ok, just to clarify, when I said 'we', I meant most, not all aspies I was wondering more about innate athletic ability, rather than coordination or team stuff. What I wanted to know was, is weakness in the muscles- being naturally a slower runner and weaker at things like lifting and throwing, an aspie trait or something that depends on the individual. Could something like the fact that I suck at lifting heavy things and running (and I mean REALLY suck) have to do with the way my neurology is as an aspie or is it just random genetics. I do have normal pain tolerance and I'm fine in team sports so the stuff that most ppl in this thread were talking about doesn't really apply to me:S

I have always liked sports I'm a digonesd NLD but if I have an Aspergers obssion it is sports. I'm not very good at playing them but that has not stoped me from enjoying them both playing and watching.
Being good at sports requiers two basic things. One must be in top physical and mental form.
Most of us hear at Wrong Plaent probbly do not have the best eye-hand cordnation. I think that people who don't like sports don't or refuse to understand that there is a mental side to sports often requiring split second decisions to be made. I can only speak to my own experance but I tend to have a lot of self dobut, which means that I may delay my decision making under stress. I think there is another factor involved as well and that is our parents. They mean well and want the best for us but they can be over protective. mine were. Secuess in sports takes years of training. Talent or natural abillity is important not everyone no matter how much they train is going to be a top leval athlete but you can become pretty good at anything through experance. We tend to lack that experance.

Ive honestly been bad at sports since most of them involve throwing something around and i cannot stand the sight of something coming directly at me (particularly the face) and my judgement of distance is pathetic. That, and I really never got a mental "buzz" from them (never found them intellectually stimulating.). I will go out and walk for a while, but thats about it. I can ride a bike, but cannot skate (ice, board, inline, etc.).

I profoundly hate sports and I am awfully bad at it.

I don't really know why. It seems like I don't understand anything of it. I'm physically weak, maybe I have bad reflexes and/or coordination, I don't know... Obviously, school made me hate sports even more. Of course, when you're not good at it, the other kids start picking on you and it only adds to all the other problems an Aspie often meets at school (being bullied, all that stuff...). I've hated gym classes during all my childhood and I'm glad I'm finally done with it.

I assume it's because my sensory motor skills are crap

I was mocked by a teacher thirty years ago for being "afraid of the ball" (in rugby). It only now occurs to me, after all this time, that he was fat and I could have outwalked him running (and still could, now that I'm the age he was then). What an enviably sporty fellow.

i'm pretty athletic actually and while not graceful in the least, i can have really great balance. and i can be tireless.
the thing is i suck at the whole "team mentality" thing. the sunlight makes me blind, and i just get confused so easy. i can only focus on one thing at a time...i cant predict the other team very well, or know who to pass to, or ever remember the rules. i'm ok at defense in soccer, though. i just make sure no matter what, i keep the ball away . so i can focus on one thing. .