Exercising with Dyspraxia and Dyslexia can be a challenge, but first it is important to understand what they both are exactly.
Dyspraxia, also known as developmental co-ordination disorder (DCD), is a common disorder that affects movement and co-ordination. Dyspraxia does not affect your intelligence. It can affect your co-ordination skills – such as tasks requiring balance, playing sports or learning to drive a car.
Dyslexia is a set of processing difficulties that affect the acquisition of reading and spelling. In dyslexia, some or all aspects of literacy attainment are weak in relation to age, standard teaching and instruction, and level of other attainments.
Below is a client journey of mine.
Meet Simone
Simone contacted me over 2 years ago to help with her fitness journey. In her consultation she stated that she suffers from Dyspraxia and Dyslexia so has always struggled with movement and coordination dating back to childhood. She wanted to get fit and strong but in a safe and enjoyable way that would work for her mental struggles.
I introduced Simone to the TRX and explained to her that I will be testing her body mentally and physically, that there would be tough days and easy ones but know shes in safe hands. I didn’t want to make her fitness journey easy and handed to her on a plate, I wanted her brain to be tested and to feel confident when it comes to movement on the days I wasn’t around.
We started with a basic conditioning program just to get her body ready for the journey ahead and some of this included gym machines with fixed movement and others creating more stability and mobility. Once this phase had ended TRX Training became the main staple of training.
Every exercise caused confusion and panic but the execution of the exercises were perfect, so it was up to me to find the right way to get this plan to work and eventually it all just clicked. Rather than make life easy and just give her the movements on a plate, I ran through the right coaching cues for her, allow mistakes to happen (in a safe way) and give her the time and patience to correct what was wrong. Suddenly out of nowhere the movements came without any panic or over thinking and now we knew we were on the right track.
Simone then purchased her own TRX to use from home & when she traveled & I provided the plans, videos & full explanations to help her on the way.
After 1 year her strength & fitness really flowed, so I decided to introduce Simone to the RIP trainer. It was like love at first sight but this REALLY tested the brain & movement patterns. Even with the instant panic there was no wiping a smile off her face and very quickly also purchased her own RIP trainer. What was fascinating was seeing how Simone differentiated the coaching cues. Even though they are the same across TRX, they are different due to explaining what the anchor point is and body/hand positions with the different equipment.
2 years later we are still training strong and turns up hugging her rip trainer ready to be tested further & further, which as a coach is a dream come true.
Anthony Mayatt – Owner/Personal Trainer
thanks for info.