Marching Band as a Gym Class

              Since I am in band I have a full schedule and am not able to take a gym class.  A common question over marching band and gym is if marching band students can get gym credit during marching season.  My school offers it while many schools don’t.  An article was published a while back and it mentioned marching to the beat is a great form of exercise. 
                Being a band member I know that the band gets a lot of exercise during marching season because of all the competitions and daily practices.  The problem is convincing over people to think that band members get enough exercise and don’t need any more by adding another class to their schedule. 

                There is a lot of physical involvement, especially for the lower brass instruments and drum line.  Carrying those big instruments through a seven minute show is pretty hard and almost everyone is panting and about ready to collapse after a performance.  My band director once said “You don’t get muscles like these playing the flute.”  I loved hearing that because often people complain about how hard it is to hold up an instrument and then all the low brass players (including me) look at each other and smile knowing that they wouldn’t be able to last a minute holding up our instruments.

               Total steps of a marching band member are almost three times higher than the average person because of so many practices and steps during a show.  During a practice there is always warm-up and people don’t just warm-up by playing music.  All the instruments get set down and there are stretches and jumping jacks.  It would be like a normal warm-up if a person was to take a gym class.  Each band practice is long and there is always a lot of marching with repetition.  Since things have to be repeated, a person would have to go to an original spot or a previous set (formation).  Instead of walking to that spot the band members have to run and get there quickly or the set will happen without them and they would get into trouble and probably owe laps.  Did I mention that people do laps?  If a person is late or not paying attention, they will have to do a lap or two around the track and possibly push-ups.  Band members may not do as much physical activity as the football team, but we still do more than the average person would do if they had a gym class every other day.