Adaptive Exercise’s group exercise service it’s a truly unique approach to autism therapy. The class is structured to accommodate both children and adults on the spectrum that present a wide range of physical and cognitive abilities. The class covers a number of different functional movement exercises, as well as a warm-up and cooldown at the beginning and end of each class. Each class runs 45 minutes and can accommodate up to 15 athletes. Our classes have been offered at a number of reputable ABA agencies and gyms. If you’re looking for a fun group based activity that is also beneficial for people with autism spectrum disorder, contact Adaptive Exercise about bringing a group exercise program to your school, gym or program.
Our classes are capped at a number of 15 participants, because this allows the trainer to not only provide additional support when necessary, but it also allows for each athlete the opportunity to participate. Some athletes may need little to no additional support to be successful in the group exercise class, but the other athletes may need additional attention, and adaptation to the programming to participate. All of our exercise services are intended to serve as autism therapy, in order to do this our personal trainers need to be able to support each athlete appropriately. For some clients this may mean receiving physical prompting from the personal trainer. In other cases the trainer may need to give a client a smaller weight to use for specific exercises, or remove the weight altogether. If this were a larger exercise group class the personal trainer may not be able to provide this extra level of support. We also understand that in some cases maladaptive behaviors, or tantrum behavior can arise when presented an novel task such as exercise. In these cases our trainers need to be able to not only keep everyone in the group safe, but intervene when necessary. This can be difficult with a group and size, but especially in a larger group based activity.
Adapting the language we use in each group exercise session, is one of the most effective approaches to our group autism therapy. Traditional group exercise classes use language as the primary tool to instruct clients on how to move. A trainer might tell clients “we’re going to be performing squats” and then from clients on proper form by queuing them on what to modify through language. For children and adults who struggle with receptive language, or focusing find a group based tasks, this can be very difficult. We used modified language to introduce and instruct clients on each and every exercise. All our exercise mands within the group sessions are broken down into 3 to 4 word utterances. This eliminates all unnecessary words and still conveys the message to the group. For example, when teaching an overhead press in the group class setting the trainer would say “push overhead, back down” paired with the physical model of the exercise. This is much easier to follow and the language using a typical personal training group exercise class, where the trainer may communicate this through much more complex language based instruction. This language strategy can also be used to cue or prompt an athlete displaying poor form in exercise movement. An example of this would be a child not fully extending their arms in an overhead press, the trainer can cue the athlete by saying “arms straight”. This direction when paired with physical modeling, physical prompting, kinesthetic cueing can correct form in a more clear manner.
The equipment used in our group exercise classes is portable (due to the fact that we offer a traveling group exercise class), safe, and effective. We use primarily sand based weights, hurdles, balance beams, exercise steps and resistance bands for the bulk of our programming. This equipment is very versatile it can be used to teach a number of different functional movement exercises. Because it is mostly sand based, it is safe to use for both beginners and more danced athletes with autism. Autism therapy is meant to be beneficial and safe, if clients are getting hurt using traditional fitness equipment like metal dumbbells and barbells we cannot offer the highest level of autism therapy. Sand bells are similar to dumbbells, Sand bags are similar to barbells and plyometric medicine balls have become more main stream in the fitness world over the last few years. You can perform many of the same exercises with this equipment as well as a number of exercises unique to this type of equipment, and it is also much safer.
Our adaptive group exercise classes do not only benefit your child’s level of fitness, and physical health, but may also benefit social skills as well. One of the most popular new forms of autism therapy in recent years has been the development of social skills groups. These groups are typically focused around games and activities that illicit individuals to interact with one another. Our group exercise classes provide children and adults with the natural opportunity to work on many of the same skills. The class is broken into three phases, a group exercise phase, a pull-out phase and a turn taking phase. During the group exercise phase, the personal trainer provides instruction to the entire group. Each athlete follows the trainer’s instructions to perform a number of different exercises. During the pullout phase, the trainer will call upon individuals in the group to take a turn performing more complex exercise movements. In the turn taking phase, the trainer will perform exercises that require each athlete to take turns, such as medicine ball throws. Each of these spaces offers not only a unique exercise component, but offers a unique social component as well. Turn taking is commonly worked on in social skills groups, when children are playing games. Group instruction, is an area of focus in other autism therapy settings, such as the special education classroom. The pullout phase of our group exercise class, allows each athlete an opportunity to watch others work on complex task. Everyone is not immediately working on this task, can comment, applaud or interact with one another, while they wait. All of these skills go beyond the world of fitness, and address social skills that are worked on in other settings.