There’s more autism awareness today then their ever has been, and more families are looking for the best ways to support their children. There are specialized services as well as therapist, trained in working with individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Some of the most popular and effective forms of therapy are ABA or Applied Behavioral Analysis, Speech Language Pathology, Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy and social skills groups. Many of these forms of therapy have years of research backing them and have been proven to be successful. Exercise therapy is one of the newest forms of autism therapy. While exercise therapy is not as widely accessible to autism families as these other services, there is plenty a scientific evidence backing it.
When David Crowley first set out to researching exercise options available to people with autism he found very few companies that offered such services. What he did find was countless research articles and testimonials stating the benefits of exercise for people with autism. As a licensed personal trainer he already knew of many of the benefits that are associated with engaging in regular physical activity and exercise. Benefits like improved coordination, strength, stability, weight loss, improve cardiovascular health and improved mental health. But, what he was not aware of was the unique benefits correlated with people with autism engaging in regular exercise. Research suggest that engaging in regular exercise can improve social skills, lower rates of maladaptive behaviors, reduction in stereotypic behaviors and improved attention. Many of these benefits have been target of achievement of more traditional autism therapeutic interventions. Therapies such as ABA, Speech Language Pathology, as well as PT, and OT. Collectively this wide range of beneficial results from exercise inspired David to found Adaptive Exercise.
The current fitness options available for people with Autism Spectrum Disorder do not appear to be sufficient. There are sensory gyms, inclusion sports programs, and adaptive physical education programs. Sensory gyms are great leisure opportunity for people with autism, but the work gym can be misleading. These types of environments do not necessarily promote physical activity. Inclusion sports programs are great opportunity for many people with autism, but for children with more significant physical education needs, they may not be actively participating. Children or adults who are falling behind their peers terms of gross motor skills may not be able to participate in the sports. Another problem with the inclusion sports programs is that some children with autism do not have the physical or cognitive abilities understand or play sports. Adaptive physical education should be an avenue for children and adults on the spectrum to learn new gross motor skills so that they can progress towards they’re neuro-typical peers. Unfortunately many so-called adaptive physical education programs only adapt the standards for their participants. Rather than finding new strategies to support people with autism who struggle with gross motor skills, the expectations of their performance is simply lower.
At Adaptive Exercise we create truly individualized programming for each of our clients. Our personal trainers specialize in working with people with autism and how to best support them. We use ABA teaching strategies and added supports to provide the most appropriate physical education programming for our clients.
People with autism may require additional support to learn and master new skills. Well not all people with autism need this level of support, for those who do traditional fitness options may not be appropriate. ABA has been proven to be an effective mode of intervention, so when developing our programming for Adaptive Exercise we adopted many ABA teaching strategies. In the field of ABA there are many strategies used by therapist to teach and decrease specific behaviors. A behavior is defined as anything a living organism can do. So an exercise in essence is just a behavior. This means that these same strategies can be used to teach different exercises. A personal trainer who understands how an exercise should be performed, can use these ABA strategies to teach exercises effectively.
The need for fitness professionals who understand and are skilled in working with people with autism is clearly prevalent. Approximately 30% of children with autism struggle with low muscle tone. Low muscle tone can impact a child’s gross and fine motor skills. Skills that not only affect their level of fitness, but can affect their performance academically, vocationally and socially. The rates of obesity and overweightness for children and adolescents with autism are higher than their neurotypical peers. Children and teens with autism are more than twice as likely to be overweight in nearly five times as likely to be obese. Another study suggest that more than 80% of children with autism struggle with coordination. All of the struggles can be reduced or negated through engaging in regular exercise, but for some reason adaptive personal training is not as mainstream as more traditional autism therapies.
Not only can exercise benefit gross/fine motor skills, attribute to weight loss and improve coordination, for people with autism there are additional benefits. Engaging and regular exercise has been shown to benefit children’s social skills. It is also been shown to reduce the prevalence of maladaptive behaviors, stereotypic behaviors an increase time on task. These same skills and behaviors are the target of many other autism therapies. So engaging an adaptive personal training program can help build upon the skills your child is learning in other therapies.
Exercise is widely misunderstood, people often associate exercise as an option to lose weight. What is not as understood is that as human beings we have not evolve to be sedentary creatures. Our lifestyles have adapted so that we do not need to engaging in as much physical activity as our ancestors once did. To counteract this we need to engage in regular exercise. Exercise not only helps us physically, but can benefit our cognitive and emotional health as well. If you’re looking for new ways help your child, exercise goes beyond just fitness. Engaging in regular exercise can help your child in there to be some daily living, in their education and in their development.