The Importance of Fitness to Support Life Skills
Eric Chessen, founder of Autism Fitness, shares his journey to create effective fitness programs for neurodivergent individuals. He emphasizes the importance of understanding their unique needs and challenges as well as the role of fitness as a life skill. He states, “It’s not just for sports or body composition. A lot of our focus is to support activities in daily living.” Eric also discusses the need to raise the standard of practice in the fitness industry to better serve the autism community.
The Importance of Fitness to Support Life Skills
All Autism Talk
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Richie Ploesch
Eric, thanks so much for being here. It's great to have you on.
Eric Chessen
Thanks, Richie, appreciate it.
Richie
So before we dive in, I would love it if you could give us a little bit of your background and a little bit of how autism fitness came to be.
Eric
Yeah, absolutely. So I grew up on Long Island, New York, which will be evident as soon as this conversation really kicks into gear or as soon as I get excited, get to hear the accent start to rear its ugly tangent. And so I started out like many kids playing different sports, particularly baseball, and then like many kids when my skills and aspirations with a particular sport weren't high enough, I stopped doing that and then became pretty sedentary. And it wasn't until later in high school that I felt I really needed to make some type of change because I just wasn't happy with my body. I wasn't happy with the way that I felt.
So I started working out on my own, having no idea whatsoever what to do or how to do it, just following what I thought I should be doing or various magazine articles. know, the internet was still in its very, very early zygotic stages, so I couldn't even rely on that. And then getting into martial arts later on, but it piqued my personal interest and then eventually my professional interest. And I...
eventually became a personal trainer and I was in graduate school for behavior psychology. And in one of those graduate level behavior psych classes, I had a classmate who said, hey, you know, I work for this program with a residential school for teenagers on the autism spectrum. And I know that you're a personal trainer. You're obviously interested in behavioral science. You're in this course.
We've never had a dedicated fitness program and so maybe we could recruit you and you can bring some of these programs in or start developing something with us. And this was in, to give you an idea of the history and how far back this was, this is around 2002. And so I started working with them.
Richie
Okay.
Eric
- developing and implementing programs based on my background in exercise science and in strength and conditioning. And what I soon recognized was that there was no blueprint whatsoever for integrating meaningful and effective fitness programming. And when we talk about fitness programming, predominantly talking about resistance-based training, which we can definitely get into the technical aspects of and why it's so important to focus on that as the majority of training.
I recognized that there was really no set strategy or really predecessor to that. Everything that I could find up to that point were articles that would say, hey, fitness is important for all populations, including, you know, the term neurodivergent wasn't in existence yet then, but including the autism and special needs populations. You know, great, what do you do with that?
Richie
Yeah.
Eric
How do you make that actionable? So as I continued working with more and more individuals, particularly teens and adults, and a wide range of capabilities, I recognized that there were three different areas of concentration whenever you're integrating a fitness program. You have the physical, which are the exercises themselves. You have the adaptive, which is motivation and reinforcement. Certainly a big deal when we talk about the neurodivergent population. And then we have cognitive capabilities with reference to communication, processing, and also motor control and body awareness. So I developed what would eventually become the PAC profile, which is our autism fitness operating system for assessing skills and then programming.
So it was really out of...I'll use the term organically stumbling upon working with this population in a fitness capacity and then recognizing that there was really nothing out there. When I say nothing, there might have been something out there, but it was never cataloged or recorded, nothing that I saw. And I think because I had the interdisciplinary background, I was able to connect those worlds. So then in 2017 I launched the Autism Fitness Certification and now we have over 500 certified pros in I think over 10 countries.
Richie
That's great. I'm thinking, I'm hearing your story and I'm thinking about how it relates to my education and my background. And around that same time I was teaching and we had, you know, adaptive physical education and we would take a lot of games.
You know, we take basketball, for example, and adapt it to mirror what our students could do. but, but it was not necessarily an hour a day or three times a week was maybe once a week, or it was a little bit inconsistent and we would start every day with some movement, you know, get out of the classroom. Some of my students would sit on a bus for an hour, come to my classroom and then we get right into class and it's like, no, we can't do that. We got to get up. We got to move. We got to stretch.
But it was, there was no thought behind it. was just what I want to, I want to start the day outside for 10 minutes. So that's what we did.
Eric
Right. Yeah. Which is not necessarily bad also, but there's a difference between moving around, and you can move around a little, you can move around a lot, and then a structured exercise program. And there's a big difference there because moving around a lot is fine, but it's the same thing as let's write a lot of words on a page. Okay, well, do those lots of words wind up-
Richie
Correct.
Eric
-forming a paragraph or a cohesive sentence. So we want to start with the goal or formalize the goal of what do we actually want out of this? Do we want a lot of random movement and playing around? Which is fine. Kids on a jungle gym where you go into a sensory facility and it's free for all and people are going to discover what they like, what they don't like, gravitate towards one thing or another. But if we're talking about outcomes and-
Richie
Right, or cohesive thought.
Eric
-I'll preface this by saying what we're looking, our strategy in autism fitness programming is to develop strength and motor skills that are then going to generalize to activities of daily living because that is by and large what makes a program meaningful, especially in the lives of most autism and neurodivergent individuals. Can we develop those skills that are going to show up elsewhere so that those individuals are stronger, safer-and more independent in their lives. And if we start with that goal, then we have to work backwards and say, all right, there needs to be a structure around this.
So if we randomize it, then those skills are not going to have the opportunity to develop. So the random movement, random play, let's do one thing this week, one thing next week is okay, but it's not really, to your point, Richie, it's not really gonna yield a result because there's not enough continuity to it.
Richie
Right, it was fun and we got to get up and move around and that's important but certainly didn't have an outcome in mind. is that where you start with each of your new athletes? You start kind of with a needs assessment and determine what some of the goals and outcomes should be?
Eric
Yeah, absolutely. And that's why I developed the PAC assessment because I knew that just saying, you know, okay, we're going to get all of these exercises done was not always at least initially a possibility with each one of my athletes. Sometimes you have a very focused, very motivated or even just motivated enough athlete where I can assess all.
Richie
Right.
Eric
you know, eight or 10 of these exercises that I want to assess. And sometimes we need to start at a much more modified level. So when I assess, like to approach things as simple and effectively as possible. So if I'm assessing a squat, I'll demonstrate it for the athletes so that they have a visual cue on how to do it.
enable them to do it and then figure out, okay, do we need to modify it? Are they able to do this at what we call standards? So they can do it independently with motor control, full range of motion, all of these things that really matter with respect to the exercise having benefit. So I'm looking at the athlete's level of motivation and engagement. So that's the adaptive functioning. And then the cognitive functioning.
Richie
Mm-hmm.
Eric
I like to start off very, I like to start off and early on set the reality that one more, that, and I'm glad these are becoming outdated terms anyhow, but there's no such thing as high functioning and low functioning. These terms, in addition to being rather disrespectful to the individual, they don't give us a lot of information. So when I'm talking about cognitive functioning,
I want to know what that athletes communication is like. do they have robust verbal communication? If they do, are they able to articulate what they, what their needs are? Are they able to communicate effectively? If not, do they have some type of augmented or secondary communication system that that's functioning, in, order to, to get those, needs and ideas across and then how are they processing information?
Also, I was just on a on a call the other day with a gentleman and I was discussing how oftentimes the idea of using analogous language or analogies is going to fall flat because if I say run as fast as a or do this as slow as it's not necessarily going to communicate effectively. So we have to be very strategic and considerate of the language that we're using. the number one rule with respect to the coaching process is avoid over-coaching, using way too much language to convey things. So the reality is you cannot coach and program effectively without accounting for each one of those skill sets, the physical, the adaptive, and the cognitive. So that's kind of how the methodology came about, is recognizing these are the essentials.
Richie
Yeah, and I think that makes sense. mean, what you're talking about, what I'm hearing is knowing your athletes, knowing the people that you're working with, knowing them, you know, regardless of age, knowing preferences, knowing how they communicate, knowing their strengths and weaknesses. I think that that's what I'm hearing from you, which I think is part of any relationship when you're supporting anybody, right? Any coaching relationship. Yeah.
Eric
totally. Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're universal human qualities and universal human constructs. I think that they just need to be a lot more dialed in and a lot more specified when we're working with the neurodivergent population, because we can't take many of the same assumptions and liberties with language or even with the exercises themselves can't assume that the athlete is going to be able to perform the exercise, when I say perfectly, you within that realm of it being effective and good technique the first time.
So I have to take the appropriate measures and set up the environment so that the athlete is successful with that exercise. And I don't mean just successful from the standpoint of they feel confident and capable with it which that is definitely part of it. And that's big component of adaptive functioning. But when I look at it, does this movement pattern actually look good? Because if it doesn't look good, it's not the fault of the athlete, but the onus is on me as a coach to do something about that. That's what I get paid for.
Richie
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what are some of the challenges that your athletes face? I mean, you've mentioned that you've mentioned a couple of things already, right? A sedentary lifestyle sort of individuals up for some challenges, just just physically being able to do it. But what are some others or maybe even just expanding on that one?
Eric
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. The physical component is big because you have two competing challenges here. And these are the two big ones. Number one is that the typically sedentary lifestyle that you mentioned, and this is especially true for teens and adults on the autism spectrum who do not have a lot of these general fitness opportunities. And the second one is that many times, we see a deficit in motor planning and motor functioning and then strength for the autism population. And again, this transcends age range. So these are things that we may see in younger individuals with autism, but it's not as though they necessarily correct themselves as the individuals age.
Richie
Right.
Eric
So if I have a 12 year old athlete, odds are they probably move a little bit better than a 24 year old athlete because that 24 year old has just had 12 more years of either being sedentary or not having a program in place. And the other part that contributes to that is their kinesthetic awareness. And this one that I think gets, you can go a lot of places as far as the definition and get and get really technical with it. But really what kinesthetic awareness means to me is do they have the motor control and the body awareness to complete that particular movement, a squat, a press, a cable or a band row with sufficient range of motion and control of their movement for enough sets and repetitions such that it creates our...
our platinum level goal and that's a training effect. Is the exercise doing its part to, or is it serving as a tool to make that athlete stronger, more stable, move better in that particular pattern? So those are the two big physical challenges are the motor planning and then the strength deficits and certainly the sedentary lifestyles that many neurodivergent individuals have.
Richie
Yeah.
Eric
So from the physical side, those are the big ones.
Richie
Yeah, I feel like I'm hearing you and thinking about how students move around in space and how my clients just sort of move and operate and bump into things or trip over things or crash off their brother or sister or whatever it may be. Right. And it's just some of that is just awareness of how their body is interacting in the space. Right.
Eric
Yeah, absolutely. And then there's the difference coming back to something that we were talking about earlier, Richie, was the moving around versus having a structured program. And the difference sometimes is to say, you know, they're really active. They move all over the place. Well, yeah, they're moving around a lot, but is it actually skill development? And that's where it separates you of moving around a lot, which again, not necessarily bad.
And certainly, I would never say someone doesn't need that input for self-regulation and for calming. And even throughout the day, if I'm on the phone, I drive my wife nuts with this too. I'm a pacer when I'm on the phone. So if I'm on a call, I'm all over the house too, or all of the backyard. And so that's not bad. It's just to say that moving around a lot is not structured enough.
Richie
So am I.
Eric
-to satisfy getting the athlete stronger in those particular ways too. So they become separate things.
Richie
Is that how you came up with the phrase movement of the moment? I mean, that's really what you're talking about, right? Is like making sure your movement is intentional for the moment or the task that you're doing.
Eric
Yeah, well, are you talking about the movement for movement or movement of the moment? Because movement of the moment was those used to be that was my video series way, way, way, way back.
Richie
Okay, yeah, do you want to tell us about it?
Eric
man, that's, I forgot about that. I, yeah.
Richie
Or you said you had your new one, right? You have a new video series. I spent some time on your website, right?
Eric
yeah, you can still find my movement of the moment stuff on YouTube. Yeah, I do Tuesday training where I do a long form video on the channel every week to break down some type of either the exercise or the concept or a strategy or usually going from the strategy to how we utilize it to have a working knowledge of what exactly we're doing and how to do it successfully.
Richie
Yeah. You mentioned a term and I want to go back to it and you said you said fitness as a life skill. Can you expand on that more your thought behind that?
Eric
totally, yeah, this comes back to the whole generalization process of taking exercise and using it strategically to enhance functioning across the board, but particularly with respect to activities of daily living for our population. So there are three main reasons why anybody exercises, whether they're neurotypical or neurodivergent.
One is performance-based. So it could be performance out of another sport. It could be a performance out of particular activity. know, people strength train for baseball or volleyball or golf, or, you in my case for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, you know, we strength train for a particular sport or pursuit. It could be canoeing, it could be cycling, it could be whatever, but being stronger is going to enhance a lot of the general qualities for that particular sport. So that's one.
Second one is body composition. know, gain muscle, lose fat, that kind of thing. I'm not assigning any type of order of importance to any of these either. It's just these are the reasons. And the third is for safety, and independence in the real world. And I think this is the biggest one for the neurodivergent population. And it's the one that needs to be, I don't know if demystified is the right term, but oftentimes when people hear fitness, they think body composition or for sports.
And then the question is, well, why is it important for the autism population? Which I'm so thankful that I hear less and less and less than I did in the onset of my career, because I think people have a much better understanding now of the important role that fitness plays in quality of life. So if we're looking at it from the perspective of ADLs, we can match up a lot of these movement patterns and a lot of the strengths of things that we need to do on a daily basis.
So squatting, for example, we squat when we sit down, we squat when we're to a degree when we have hip flexion going up and down stairs. We squat when we're sitting, know, trying to get into a car. We squat down when we're looking for something under a shelf or under a couch, as I have to do oftentimes with my dogs because they like shoving their marrow bones underneath my, in my office and then they can't figure out what happened.
And then carrying things. So we use an exercise called the farmer's walk or heavy carries all the time with sandbags or heavy medicine balls. Picking up something heavy and being able to carry it from one spot to another is one of the most essential human skills of the modern age that we have. So if we're training these things and training them correctly in a gym setting or in a clinical or in a school setting, odds are if we're doing it with enough volume sets and repetitions and consistency, they are going to enhance these activities of daily living on a day that our, if we want the highest quality of life and the most potential to be independent for the neurodivergent population to me, and of course I'm biased in this situation, you cannot have this conversation without bringing in, you know, strength and resistance training.
So it's not just about body composition. It's not necessarily about training for a sport or for a particular activity. It's about training for life because these especially as our population ages are not only going to be optimization protocols, they're going to be safety protocols. If you think of an aging neurodivergent population, they are at risk.
Richie
Yeah.
Eric
-for a lot of the same things that we in the neurotypical world are at risk for. I'm sure you have relatives, I have relatives who have gotten up into their 70s, 80s, 90s and have had falls. You have one fall and everybody raises an eyebrow, two falls and now we're concerned, three falls and now you're in a home, right? And now you're much less equipped and able to be independent. So there is much...
Richie
Now you need a different level of care. Yeah, yeah.
Eric
-there is as much as an impetus for the optimization aspect of fitness as there is for the prevention aspect of fitness.
Richie
As you were describing, carrying the heavy carries, right? I'm thinking about bringing groceries in from the car, moving, doing laundry up and down the stairs, right? Putting food on the table, like any, I'm just thinking of all the ways that that plays out. And you're right, it is an essential daily living skill. It's part of what we do all the time. And we, I think one of the things that we tend to do is we tend to take things for granted, right? And, and,
Eric
Yeah! absolutely.
Richie
And it's like, well, I can do that. No problem. Well, if we haven't taught it, we shouldn't expect it. And so what you're talking about is teaching and practicing those skills that are going to be important now and throughout life.
Eric
Yeah, exactly. And even getting to the point, you know, we call it the I've got that moment for athletes when they feel confident and capable enough to take the initiative to grab that extra grocery bag or to take the garbage out just because it's not such a challenge for them anymore. And that's a big deal. And you can see that across the board, too. You don't necessarily need a you know, super highly motivated individual who is progressing through all of these exercises at light speed in order for them to start developing these skills that are going to show up in other places. And that's really the goal of programming is to, is to develop and give the athlete the skills to be able to utilize them in a variety of different environments.
Richie
Yeah, yeah. I gotta ask you an opinion question, Eric. I'm curious on your thoughts on this. It seems like there's a shortage of people who are who are training and helping the physical fitness for this population. Two questions. One, why do think that is? And two, how do you think we fix that?
Eric
Yeah, totally. I love attending your questions. great, great questions. So I think number one, someone has to have a, a, a particular and specialized desire to bring fitness to neurodivergent populations. There are some skills, you know, among them, you know, patience and excellent communication skills and really from the exercise science side of things, really understanding your craft as well.
I think someone who is implementing fitness programs for the autism and for the neurodivergent populations very much needs to understand the exercise science side of things understanding exercise, progressions, modifications, the function of the exercise, all these things, because nuance makes a lot of the difference. The other part of it is still, and two decades into this, it's still a relatively new field.
And I go back and forth on, as far as opinion, on whether that is, not a good thing as far as bringing this work to the neurodivergent population. At the same time, one of the reasons that I developed the certification was that I wanted something out there that could be a standard of practice for this population. One of the big issues that I see in mainstream fitness, particularly in the United States, and this may come as a surprise to many, is that there is a very, very low bar to entry. Someone can literally do a weekend certification online, open book, yeah, and become a certified personal trainer, which is very different from someone else who has spent 10 years mentoring, or who not only has a four-year degree, but has spent you know, years mentoring under people who know, who really know what they're doing and understand coaching and all these things.
So the problem is that the practice itself, just in terms of personal training and the fitness profession is so all over the place. And again, I don't know how many people recognize this, that it's not like the medical community where there is a...
Richie
Yeah.
Eric
I'm sure that there is differentiation in practice, but the standard of entry is very high. That is definitely not the case in the fitness world. So in a way, it's almost a relief that not everybody in the fitness world has said, and you can look at other things that have really taken off. Like now so many people are golf trainers or so many people are sports specific trainers or they're mixed martial arts trainers.
Richie
Yeah.
Eric
So I like having the information out there, but I still think that there should be a higher bar to entry for someone who wants to offer this type of service because it is not as simple as understanding the set of different exercises that we want to incorporate. And here go, this is how we modify it, this is how we progress it. At the same time, I think it's also understanding the relevance and the importance of fitness for these populations, which is why so many of the people now who go through the autism fitness certification are from different areas of the therapeutic and educational side of working with the autism population.
So occupational and physical therapy, adaptive PE, behavior therapists, which is cool with me because they're already very familiar with, with these populations as well. And then in terms of the marketability of it also, recognizing that this is a population that very much needs this service, the fitness programming side of that, that's another area. do like the fact that, or I would never say that every fitness trainer out there should also be working with the neurodivergent population.
I think what happens by proxy sometimes, because I've heard these stories from people who've come into my certification, is either they were asked by a parent that they trained or a parent that they knew from the gym, hey, would you work with my son or my daughter? Or I know one of my friends, they would love to have personal training for their teen or adults or whatever. Or they have a kid or a teen show up and they say, okay, well, I recognize that this person is neurodivergent. I want to get the appropriate training so that I can serve them as well. So I think it's a multifactored answer. I think there are a few different reasons.
Richie
Yeah. Yeah, it's a layered question. I recognize that as I was asking it, but I think I think you highlighted some really important things. And one is that obviously we don't want everybody to do this. Like this isn't your not your message is not 100 % of people who are in the physical fitness world should be targeting and supporting these individuals. That's not your message. Yeah, yeah.
Eric
completely. Yeah, yeah. don't, you know, in a room of, you know, 100 fitness professionals, I'm probably looking at two out of them. And those two are going to be the right ones. But yeah, no, I want those two.
Richie
would say it's a couple. Yeah. Right. One of the things that you mentioned in your Ted talk, which I thought was really, was really informative, especially the videos that were embedded in it, was the gamification of some of what you're doing. And I think that goes back to the motivational piece that you were talking about before, right? Can you tell us how you gamify some of the activities, at least to start?
Eric
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And we have to be careful. I'm glad you brought that up too. We have to be careful with gamification because here's, I'm gonna go a little bit askew, but I promise I'll bring it back also. I do a lot of talking and writing about the difference between general fitness, again, talking mainly about resistance and strength training and sports, because they're two different things and sports aren't bad.
Richie
Yeah, do it.
Eric
But again, it's not the same thing. To your earlier point about basketball, are we doing this consistently enough that there's actually skill development? So we have to be really conscientious of how much we're gamifying something. Because if I wake up in the morning and I think, man, I've got this awesome game planned out and this is how we're gonna set it up in the adapted PE session, or this is how I can set it up for somebody and there's gonna be this team and there's gonna be that team.
The challenge there is if I have a group of six or eight neurodivergent kids or teens, there are gonna be two of them who are participating all out. There's gonna be three of them who are just kind of stuck in place and then there are gonna be two wandering around the periphery. So it's gonna break down very quickly because there are too many things going on at once. When we gamify something, it's...
Richie
Yeah.
Eric
-the best way to gamify is to add an incentive or add an objective that coincides with everything that we know to be true and accurate about that particular individual. If they are motivated by turning the exercise program into a Pokemon adventure or into a SpongeBob adventure, go right ahead. But if that's only going to serve to confuse and to get in the way of our objectives, then it makes no sense to do it.
So I'm an advocate of what works and what works is typically building in some aspect of incentivization or reinforcement, but it doesn't mean that we have to go all out with having an offensive and a defensive component, especially with exercise too, because then it's going to get really chaotic and really messy unnecessarily very quickly too. So the gamification could be as simple. I've had, you know, so many BCBAs and, and RBT's who have been successful just adding in a rudimentary token board with, you know, with someone's favorite character or favorite show or favorite whatever on there. And that's as far as you need to go because I also, I also want it to be as naturalistic as possible. And this
Richie
Yeah. Yeah.
Eric
Another really important point, and I think something that happens within the realm of autism in particular, is if I'm working with an 18 year old, I'm treating them like an 18 year old. If I'm working with a 65 year old, I'm treating them like a 65 year old. do not want to, and look, also want, yeah, I don't want, know, I love getting rid of we-
Richie
Thank you for that. Thank you for that.
Eric
-communication, we're going to do squats now. No, you're going to do squats now. I'm going to coach you doing squats. And I think a lot of that comes out of, you know, early childhood education. But I also want to keep things as naturalistic and respectful and age appropriate as possible. So if my 24 year olds absolutely, you know, loves whatever it is, Sonic the Hedgehog, I'll incorporate it, but I'm gonna do it low key. And I wanna be respectful and I wanna make sure their needs are met, but I also want a certain measure of, okay, you're a teen or you're an adult, so let's handle this appropriately.
Richie
Yeah. Eric, where can, before we go, where can people find your website? Where can they find more information about you and your programs?
Eric
Thank you. Yeah, easy enough. Autismfitness.com for the certification, for consulting. If you want to work one-to-one with me, I'm in the Charlotte area. You can find it at Certified Pro. And then The Autism Fitness on YouTube and on Instagram as well.
Richie
Great, thanks so much, Eric. I appreciate you and your insight in the work that you're doing. Thanks for being on this week.
Eric
Thank you.
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