Beginning an exercise program can be difficult for anyone. People need time to learn the exercises, they need motivation and they need support. This can be an even greater challenge for people with special needs. People with special needs have all of the same challenges as anyone else to begin an exercise program, but they have unique hurdles to overcome. These challenges are unique for each individual, but regardless of what challenges exists it is the role of the personal trainer to support their client through this time. Adaptive Exercise is Worcester’s first exercise autism service provider. We work with individual’s with autism spectrum disorder, as well as other special needs. Our autism exercise services are provided by certified personal trainers, skilled and specialized in working with people with special needs.
Learning how to perform complex exercises takes time, and in autism exercise services it may require additional supports. The most important skills for trainers to have throughout this process are patience and empathy. The personal trainer must exhibit patience because this can take much longer depending on the individual. In some situations it may take a client months or even years to learn how to perform an exercise accurately. For other clients they may learn how to perform an exercise in one session or even on the first attempt. The goal is that we teach each client how to accurately perform each exercise before we can even begin to think about progression. Safety should always be a priority and in order to keep our clients safe they must be performing exercises accurately. Deviations in exercise form can lead to injury. The personal trainer must also show empathy, because clients can become discouraged or frustrated throughout this process.
Patience and empathy are skills that all personal trainers should have, but for our autism exercise services in Worcester we require a number of other skills. Our trainers must be able to adapt the instruction and use added supports to aid our clients in their exercise journey. Traditional personal trainers use language as their primary mode of instruction. This is not ideal for some people with special needs. Our trainers use modified language to deliver verbal instruction. Modified language is shorter phrases, using only the most essential language to deliver instruction. These phrases are 5 words or less and are paired with the trainer physically modeling an exercise. In application this would sound like “hands in front, push overhead, back down” when instructing a client to perform an overhead press. The trainer would use this modified language instruction paired with them performing the exercise. This sets a clear expectation of what the client will be doing.
Adaptive instruction can help the client understand what they should be doing, but added supports may be required to ensure they can perform an exercise accurately. And remember in autism exercise services we must first target accuracy before performance. There are three different types of supports we can provide our clients with, visual, kinesthetic and physical. It is important to use these supports in a hierarchical manner so that these supports can be faded or more intrusive as the client progresses or regresses. This is often not a linear process in autism exercise services. A client may reach exercise mastery and regress to the point where they require supports again. That is ok, we must remember that accuracy always comes before performance. Visual supports are very versatile, there are mirrors, videos, photos, schedules, spot markers and even the trainer physically modeling movements. So our adapted instruction already utilizes one form of visual supports. Mirrors are the most popular visual support that can be found in any gym. They provide exercisers with real time feedback of their movements. Video can be used in a very similar way to point out form inaccuracies. Schedules and exercise pictures are great for sequencing exercises or teaching individual steps of an exercise. Spot markers are another great visual support, they come in a variety of shapes (hands, feet, circles, arrows) that help clients understand how to position or move throughout an exercise. Kinesthetic cues are another type of support trainers can use in exercise autism services. Kinesthetic cues indicate where to move to. These cues can be objects in the environment, the client or trainers body. An example would be instructing a client to bring their chest to the wall during a wall push. The client is provided with concrete instructions that provide them with tactile feedback. In the example of the wall push, the client would know they reached the target of the movement once their chest touches the wall. This type of cueing requires a little bit of creativity on the part of the trainer, but can be applied to many different exercises. Physical supports are the third way we can support individuals in learning exercises. This is done through physical prompting. Physical prompting is when the trainer goes hands on with the client to aid them in performing a movement accurately. It is important for the personal trainer to aid in the movement and not fully manipulate the clients body. If physical prompting is required and a client does not comply with the movement the trainer is prompting the exercise should immediately be discontinued. Physical prompting can be provided at different predetermined levels of intrusiveness so that the prompts can be more or less intrusive over time.
Remember that beginning an exercise program can be challenging for anyone. A prior history of engaging in an exercise program is the number one predictor of client adherence to a program. In the case of autism exercise services, a vast majority of our clients will not have a history or maybe a brief history of exercising. This means that trainers must do everything possible to make their client feel comfortable, supported and safe. Through the use of our adaptive instructions and added supports, Adaptive Exercise is proud to offer an appropriate exercise service for an underserved population.