Adaptive Exercise is a personal training company offering in-home exercise autism therapy to the Worcester County area of Massachusetts. Children, adolescents and adults with autism present with a wide range of the abilities, like any other population. Our programming at adaptive exercise is individualized to fit your child’s needs. We use a Personalized Exercise Plan or PEP structure a fitness program that is both appropriate and beneficial. If you’re looking to improve the physical or mental health of your child with autism through exercise autism therapy, Adaptive Exercise is for you. Our personal trainers our experience working with people with autism and follow a systematic approach to exercise autism therapy.
Children and adolescents with autism who do not have a history of exercising or playing sports struggle to find an avenue to engage in physical activity. Our programming can be adapted to the most novice athlete to teach them how to exercise safely and properly. Many parents wonder if their child is ready to engage an exercise program. We recommend contacting your family physician to see if your child is ready to begin an exercise program. If provided clearance our trainers can teach basic exercise behavior all the way up to more advanced strength building or cardiovascular training. We understand that it can be difficult for families to find sports teams, gyms or clubs to get their child moving. Adaptive Exercise is a solution to teach better movement and fitness. A child who improves their movement in level of fitness will have more options available to further their progression.
Children who have a prior history of playing sports, or being active can also benefit from the exercise autism therapy of Adaptive Exercise. Our trainers can observe assess their current level of fitness and develop programming that is appropriate. This could mean correcting form of known movements, teaching new movements or progressing their level of fitness. All of this must be done with an emphasis placed on safety. Engaging in exercise increases the chance of muscle or skeletal injury. Taking these risk into account our trainers implement strategies that focus on safely progressing each athletes performance in their personal exercise plans.
Is Adaptive Exercise autism therapy appropriate for adults? Our trainers are focused on serving the highest level of specialize personal training people with autism. Well we main focus on providing exercise training to children with autism, our programming is individualized so what is appropriate for people of any age. Exercise is both physically and mentally beneficial and we believe that people of all ages should be able to reap these benefits.
Because autism is a spectrum disorder, our training can be adapted to fit the who needs of people across the spectrum. Coming from a background of working with individuals with significant support needs, I focused on creating programming that can benefit children with the most significant support needs. The programming was created to account for children who struggled with receptive language, had maladaptive behaviors, and struggled with motor planning. This programming was then adapted to be more appropriate for people with less significant supportive needs.
Adaptive exercises focused on providing exercise autism therapy to the Worcester County area of Massachusetts. Because they’re so few exercise services available to people with autism and other developmental disabilities, we aim to work solely within this population. There’re many personal trainers available for typical children, adolescents and adults. This is why we believe we need to focus our efforts on providing services for this underserved population. People with other disabilities may need services from more qualified or specialized personal trainers. All of our programming and Adaptive Exercise has been specifically designed for people with autism spectrum disorder in developmental disabilities.
The teaching strategies we use in our adaptive personal training has been tested and refined over the past two years, by our founder David Crowley. Many of the strategies are borrowed from other therapies such as speech language pathology, Applied Behavior Analysis, social skills groups and special education. These strategies are used to support our athletes in learning and mastering exercise movements. Other visual and kinesthetic supports haven’t developed by Adaptive Exercise to provide the most support possible. This multilevel system of supporting athletes in learning and adhering to exercise programs increases your child’s chances of progressing in their program.
When David decided to form a company to serve people on the autism spectrum in learning how to exercise, he found little information on the subject. Searches resulted in learning more about the many benefits of exercise for people with autism, but very little actionable information or strategies. Coming from a speech language pathology background he found ways to apply the strategies used to elicit language and speech, and was able to apply these strategies to personal training. Applied behavioral analysis is one of the most popular therapies for people with autism spectrum disorder. David had a lengthy background working in ABA programs in using ABA strategies to teach life skills and academics. Many of these strategies were used in developing our personal training programming. Exercise in essence is just a collection of learned behaviors. These behaviors may be more complex, but many of the same ABA strategies are effective in teaching the skills. Once strategies to teach the skills were organized, finding equipment that was appropriate as well as safe was the next step.
At Adaptive Exercise we ese a variety of sand based weights in our resistance training. Sand based equipment it’s functional, much safer then metal weights antennas to be more affordable for families. Equipment like sand bells, medicine balls, sandbags, and weighted vest can be used to teach the wide range of functional movements. For families who are looking to expand their child’s amount of exercise outside of our personal training sessions, this equipment is affordable purchase. Other pieces of adaptive equipment such as hand markers, foot markers, spot markers and arrows are also affordable. This type of equipment can be extremely helpful in teaching exercises in developing exercise plans they’re easy to follow.