The sudden changes that have arisen with the COVID-19 pandemic have affected all of us. Families have been ordered to stay in their homes, schools have closed or shifted to online learning platforms and businesses have shut their doors. We understand that these are unique circumstances and that all these changes can have a profound impact on the lives of autism families across the United States. These changes have impacted us Adaptive Exercise too, but we have worked to ensure that autism families have access to tools and services for their children to be active through these strange times. Due to Massachusetts essential business work order, we are unable to continue holding our group exercise classes, as well as our in-home personal training for the time being. Instead we have turned our focus to creating alternative means for adaptive fitness. The first service we announced was the creation of our Adaptive Exercise videos. These videos use a few of our supportive strategies to provide an appropriate autism exercise video. We used many of these strategies to alter our in-home personal training so we could offer it via video chat platforms.
Exercise videos have been a popular choice for people looking to exercise at home for a number of years. Today there are thousands of free exercise videos available online, which is great for the neurotypical population. But exercise videos are usually fast paced, filled with complex verbal instructions and simply put not the most appropriate tool for individuals with special needs. Proper exercise requires participants to understand how to perform movements accurately, if the exercises are performed with poor form there is a significantly higher risk of injury. Each of our adaptive fitness videos begins with a dynamic warm up phase and ends with a cool down phase, consisting of static stretches. These phases further reduce the risks of injury throughout the video. As adaptive personal trainers specializing in autism exercise instruction we understand that learning proper form is the first focus, before we can even consider improving performance and fitness. What distinguishes our autism exercise videos from other exercise videos? It starts with a slower pace of exercise. This allows more time for our clients to process and follow along with exercises. In addition to this slower pace of exercise, we utilize supportive strategies throughout our videos. The first of these strategies is modified language instruction. Modified language means we use only the most essential words in short utterances of 5 words or less to provide instructions. An example taken from one of our videos, for how we use modified language to introduce an overhead press is “hands in front” “push up” “back down”. Each of these short instructions gives a clear expectation of the movement. This can be particularly helpful for individuals with auditory processing disorders or receptive language impairments. These modified language instructions are paired with the personal trainer modeling the exercise. So, individuals are not only receiving clear, simple instructions, but they are observing the movements too.
Physical modeling exercises is a form of visual support. Our autism exercise videos, use other visual supports to make learning movements even easier for people with special needs. Hand, foot, arrow and other added visuals, highlight the movements involved with each and every exercise we teach. These visuals, combined with personal trainers modeling movements, using modified language and slower pace of exercise allow us to offer the most appropriate exercise videos for people with special needs. But there is another way we can provide additional support in our autism exercise videos, kinesthetic cueing. Kinesthetic cueing, provide clients with real time tactile feedback as to if they are performing movements accurately. These cues can be very simple or more complex. They can indicate how to position the body or how to move. These cues can be made using the client’s body to cue or objects in their immediate environment. One of the exercises we teach “floor touches” has an embedded cue in its name and in the modified language instructions. “Bend knees, touch floor” is how our trainers instruct this movement. The floor is serving as the kinesthetic cue in this example. The client knows to move downward to the point where their hands touch the floor. These types of cues are not possible with every exercise, but are a great form of support when possible.
We use these same supportive strategies to offer a real time mode of adaptive training, with our virtual training. Using popular video chat platforms like Facetime, Skype and Zoom our trainers can work with clients, providing real time feedback and instruction. This is a great option for individuals who may not have a history or experience engaging in exercise. This also allows for our trainers to create a more individualized exercise program. Each virtual personal training session starts with a dynamic warm up to prepare the body for exercise and ends with static stretching in our cool down phase. This helps ensure safe exercise practice. Similarly to our videos we use modified language, a slower pace of exercise, kinesthetic cues and visual supports to provide the most appropriate exercise solution. Now this training can certainly not replace in-home adaptive training, but it is a great alternative. Especially during the current times, as we cannot access in-home trainers or gyms.
Both our exercise videos and virtual trainer offer an appropriate option for autism families looking to get their children exercising. However, these options may not be suitable for all individuals with special needs. Not all individuals have the ability to follow screen-based instruction. We are continuing to work to find solutions for these families. Autism exercise therapy can look very different from one individual to another. This is the case for both our group exercise and one to one exercise options too. So finding a one size fits all fitness solution for autism families is unrealistic. We hope that these new exercise tools we have developed can help more individuals with special needs improve their health and physical fitness.