Adaptive Athlete Training

Our Adaptive Training Objective

There are many fitness professionals who want to train adaptive individuals but don’t know how to get started. And there’s a general lack of confidence in speaking with, programming for and coaching individuals with permanent impairments. As a result, the population that needs the most help gets the least.

To bridge this gap, Dr. Theresa Larson of Movement Rx and Max Conserva of Adaptive Athletic have come together to create an introductory course in training this population – available both online and in person. With thousands of combined hours spent working with adaptive athletes, they offer the essential knowledge needed for any professional to get started.

What’s Covered in the Course

• How do I talk to the disabled population?
• How do I adapt my programing to the impaired population?
• What are the most common types of impairments?
• What are the most common types of medical equipment?
• How do I adapt movement X to an athlete with condition Y?

The course starts with a general introduction to functional movement as a concept. We then explore what differentiates normal vs. abnormal movement. Withs the general foundation of normal movement in hand, we can now focus on the adaptive population in particular. First by understanding how to talk with and coach an impaired athlete, then how to think about programming for that athlete.

Once these general techniques are understood, we can take a deep dive into the four major impairment categories: lower limb, upper limb, wheeled, traumatic brain injury, and other invisible wounds. We spend the remainder of the course detailing how each of the major functional movements interact with each of these impairments.

Who This Course is For

If you want to work with the impaired population, this is the course to get started. It’s designed for athletic and personal trainers who want to open their practice to the impaired population, rehab professionals who want to move from the clinic to the training room, and group fitness coaches who want to incorporate the impaired population into their class programming. This course will help any fitness professional make their offering more inclusive.

Course Details

• Understand basic functional human movement as it applies to major permanent physical impairments
• Gain confidence initiating the conversation and building a relationship with this population
• Learn the fundamental strategies to adapt movements for all major impairments
• Be aware of all the most common impairments and medical devices
• Learn how to safely and effectively adapt common training movements for all of these major impairments
• No prerequisites needed for the course; receive a certificate of completion after the exam
• This course has been approved from NSCA (Provider #L1400-HSFTA) for 0.5 CEUs
• Course contains five modules with a total of 29 videos (4 hours of instruction time)