Adaptive Exercise offers convenient in-home personal training to autism families in the Worcester County area of Massachusetts. We are focused solely on working with people on the autism spectrum and people with other developmental disabilities. While there are many gyms and personal trainers available in the Worcester County area of Massachusetts many of these options are not appropriate or suitable for people with autism. Traditional personal trainers are not trained bunch strategies that have been proven to be most effective for people with these disabilities. Our approach to exercise is autism therapy through improving fitness and improving health. Our training utilizes ABA teaching strategies, adapted language, visual supports and careful equipment selection with the focus of safety in mind. If you’re looking to improve your child with autism’s level of fitness, physical health and mental health, our personal training service is here to help.
In-home training is a convenient option for families. No need to travel to a gym, all the equipment is provided by Adaptive Exercise. We use equipment such as medicine balls, sand bells, collapsible hurdles, resistance bands and many exercises require no equipment at all. Our personal training can be conducted in a relatively small space, so there’s no need to have a home gym. Because we’re operating in homes your child can to exercise and improve their fitness in a comfortable, safe environment. Traditional gyms maybe overwhelming to the sensory needs of your child. These gyms can be crowded and loud. They also are filled with equipment that if not used properly can cause serious injury. Not exactly the best environment for child on the spectrum put does not have a lengthy history of exercising. Exercise can be autism therapy that helps your child improve their physical and mental health. But it is difficult offer a high level of autism therapy when the child is distracted or uncomfortable in the environment. Not only is the environment suitable and comfortable for beginner exerciser, but the rate of progression is designed cannot overwhelm or make exercise aversive to your child. By overwhelming a child with too many exercises early on in the training process, a trainer maybe causing them stress. Exercising should be a positive experience for any athlete, this is why it is so important to focus on building rapport and creating a positive, motivating experience early in the training process. We do use various assessments to determine your child’s current level of fitness and how they move, but these assessments are interspersed throughout the first several sessions. Once a strong level of rapport has been established and the trainer understands the child’s current level of fitness, they can implement the most appropriate and beneficial programming for your child.
The ABA teaching strategies used in our training allow our personal trainers to provide the most effective exercise autism therapy. Simples teaching strategies such as using positive reinforcement throughout each personal training session help build self-confidence and reinforce participation. Our trainers use behavior specific praise to let the athlete know exactly what they’re doing correctly. A great example of this would be a trainer saying ‘Nice job pushing all the way up’ when a child performs overhead press with proper form. This lets the child know that they are doing the movement correctly. Positive reinforcement can also be used to motivate child when they’re not doing something correctly. A child who is getting frustrated because they cannot accurately performing exercise could be praised for doing great try or for having a great attitude. This helps keep the child in a positive mindset and not make exercise aversive to them.
Another ABA teaching strategy used in our adaptive personal training is shaping. A child may not be able to perform and exercise accurately early, but the trainer can shape the exercise to the point where is being performed accurately. This is a widely used strategy I in our training, many times beginner athletes can roughly follow the exercise instruction, but display poor form. Our job as personal trainers using autism therapy, is to recognize when used in proper movement patterns our deemed unsafe to perform at that current time. If the moving pattern is poor, but does not seem to present any immediate risk injury the trainer can you shaping to correct the movement pattern. A common seen example of this is beginner athletes learning to squat. Often times children can perform a rough version of this movement pattern. Rather than teaching this movement completely, the trainer can use physical prompting, kinesthetic cueing, and other supports to shape this movement to proper form. The child may not be able to controlled her movement they’re the concentric and eccentric portions of the movement. This is often the case with the beginner athletes.
Adapting the language used within each personal training session can make a big difference for athletes with autism spectrum disorder. When people think of the role of the speech language pathologist they often think of articulation or expressive language autism therapy. However receptive language abilities can be just as important as expressive. Receptive language abilities refers to what a child can understand in regards to language. A child may be able to speak fairly fluently and clear, but may struggle understanding others language. Our personal trainers take this into account, using only essential language to teach each exercise. This means breaking exercise mands into 3 to 4 word utterances. A good example of this is a trainer saying “bend knees, touch floor” to get a child to complete the squat pattern. The utterance still conveys the exercise expectation to the athlete, but does not use any additional nonessential words in the message.
Together these strategies along with other added sports, increase the likelihood of your child succeeding and progressing through their exercise program. Coming from the background’s of working with children with autism, I have learned many of these skills in schools and through in-home therapy. Many of the strategies have been proven to be effective in other areas of education, and have just been applied to our personal training. Since beginning to offer personal training to this population, I have seen the strategies work firsthand. If you’re interested in getting your child more active, and bettering their physical plus mental health, Adaptive Exercise is here to help.