AdaptX - Inclusive and Adaptive Fitness

04/22/2025

The 2025 Unified 5k is an inclusive road race and adaptive sports expo where participants can run, walk, or roll their way through the 5k or 1 mile distance in an inclusive community to raise awareness toward making fitness and physical activity accessible. The event will also host an Expo with interactive experiences and vendors that will demonstrate innovations in assistive technology, adaptive sports, and more. Top finishers in six adaptive categories will be recognized at each race.

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Last year’s event in Massachusetts featured a variety of like-minded organizations including the Bionic Project, Inc. – An Amputee Soccer clinic with U.S. Captain, Nico Calabria. The Boston Renegades – A Beep Baseball clinic, a form of baseball which can be played by people who are visually impaired, Waypoint Adventures - an adaptive recreation organization, and Open Source Wheelchair Design – where attendees learned the science and engineering of wheelchair design with Erik Kondo. The Unified 5k connects participants to the AdaptX mission through the four pillars of the organization: education, research, advocacy, and opportunity.

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This year, the AdaptX team and their national and regional charity partners are bringing this impactful event to communities around the country. The first six events kick off on May 10th in Cumberland, RI and make stops throughout the Spring and Summer in Salt Lake City, UT, Mechanicsburg, PA, Lancaster, MA, Saint Paul, MN, and Dexter, MI.

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All funds raised will go toward furthering the AdaptX mission of creating more fitness and physical activity opportunities for individuals with intellectual and physical disabilities.

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Visit www.unified5k.org/formotion to join the ForMotion team at the Unified 5k in Cumberland, RI or Lancaster, MA!

Unified 5k and AdaptX creates access to better health and fitness for individuals with disabilities through education, advocacy, and opportunity.

10/06/2022

𝐀𝐃𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐗 𝐖𝐄𝐁𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐑 📚
𝘊𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘐𝘯𝘤𝘭𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘍𝘪𝘵𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘍𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴

If you're passionate about inclusion and adaptive fitness, recreation, and sport, join us for a webinar on October 17th at 10AM EST.

We’ll be joined by staff from The Turnstone Center, a Paralympic training center in Indiana, to discuss how to create inclusive fitness facilities.

We'll cover:
- Systems and strategies to make your programs inclusive
- Considerations for an accessible training environment
- Why inclusion is beneficial for businesses
- What careers in adaptive fitness, sport, and recreation are available

You can register for the webinar at the link in our bio

09/23/2022

Excited to have 30+ staff and coaches from the Granite YMCA branches (as well as some YMCA staff from Wisconsin and New York) joining us for our next AdaptX cohort starting on Monday.

AdaptX and the YMCA have synergistic missions of making fitness accessible for all. Building off of the success that we had with The Old Colony YMCA branches, we can't wait to have more locations on board.

09/13/2022

Our next public AdaptX cohort starts on Monday. Visit the link in our bio to learn more/sign-up or send us a message if you have any questions!

09/11/2022

It was a pleasure to have .haley complete her capstone project for her Doctorate of Occupational Therapy with us this Summer. She has created a module for our AdaptX course on training strategies for clients post-stroke.

Our next cohort for the AdaptX course starts September 19th and sign-ups will be live tomorrow morning!

.haley with .repost
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proud to have collaborated with .coach .hp on the creation of AdaptX’s new module: training strategies for individuals post stroke.

08/16/2022

07/23/2022

𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐭𝐡 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐀𝐭𝐡𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐂𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐲

Here is a sample workout from one of our clients at .hp

07/17/2022

𝐎𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐇𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬: 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐂𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐒𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬

This Tuesday, Dr. Beth Terranova will be sharing a presentation with our AdaptX coaches on training strategies for clients with spinal conditions.

Beth is a physical therapist and strength and conditioning coach with a passion for working with clients with scoliosis and after spine surgeries. Diagnosed with scoliosis as a teenager, she defied the odds to become a National Level Olympic Weightlifter. She completed her DPT from CUNY Hunter College in 2015 and became an Orthopedic Clinical Specialist in 2018. She pursued training in the Barcelona-Schroth Method for treatment of scoliosis and kyphosis and became Advanced Certified in 2019. Beth works with clients with scoliosis and other spinal conditions to improve their curves, reduce their pain, and progress their fitness for life. She works with clients after spine surgery to help them recover quickly and get back to doing what they love.

We’re looking forward to learning from to better serve clients of all abilities

06/24/2022

In an editorial¹ released earlier this year, Dr. Alan Jette, editor in chief of PTJ, identifies a discrepancy in the Physical Therapy profession between a desire to improve function towards a preconceived universal norm while at the same time valuing diversity.

In The Politics of Disablement³, Michael Oliver’s social model of disability claims that individuals are not disabled by physical or intellectual impairments, but by a society that does not account for their differences.

On the contrary, the physical therapy profession is guided by a medical model that “defines disability as a deficit²; as an anatomical or physiological departure from the norm that requires correction.” The paradox is where the balance lies between improving functional capacities while appreciating individual differences.

While the medical model was necessary to provide a framework for intervention, it may have inadvertently pathologized specific diagnoses and created gross generalizations across entire populations. Understanding specific anatomical, behavioral, and cognitive characteristics of a disability is crucial to guiding treatment, influencing program design and communication strategies; but improving health outcomes needs to equally emphasize social-emotional characteristics.

The International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health⁴ presents a more holistic model that also prioritizes environmental factors. Influenced by Oliver’s aforementioned work, in her article “Disabled by Society,” Dr. Erin O’Brien states that “embracing a social theory of disability requires a large-scale rethinking of not just physically disabling structures, but also of social spaces…in order to challenge the assumption that “normal” even exists.”

Focus less on changing the individual and more on changing quality of life by creating environments where they can grow physically, socially, and emotionally.

1 Jette 2022 [35358304]
2 Roush and Sharby 2011 [22003161]
3 Politics of Disablement by Michael Oliver (1990)
4 Disabled by Society by Erin O’Brien (2012)

06/20/2022

𝐀𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐒𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐞 𝐋𝐞𝐠 𝐑𝐃𝐋

Single leg stability is often used interchangeably with balance. But if balance is the quality that we’re after, then characteristics like single leg strength and proprioception are most important.

The single leg RDL can be a difficult movement for clients initially. However, there are a couple variations we can use to address some of the common mistakes.

We know a unilateral stance will be inherently less stable than bilateral; and when stability is reduced, so is our capacity to load. Using a slider to maintain contact with the ground can improve balance, prevent the hips from rotating, increases hamstring length, and may allow us to load the movement.

The second slide demonstrates a hand-supported variation which allows us to use enough load through a full range of motion. Both of these variations allow us to more effectively target mechanical tension and muscular damage; mechanisms of muscle growth.

06/09/2022

Looking forward to having 25 staff and students from the fitness and wellness department at the University of Colorado join us on Monday for five weeks of education on adaptive and inclusive fitness.

The June 13th cohort is open to college students outside of Colorado if you or someone you know has a passion for creating a more accessible fitness industry