Focusing on your fitness doesn't mean you have to do something you don't like. Learn how having choices can increase your desire to get moving. Join Peggy Mills, owner of Valemee Fitness, Amy Finkle, behavior analyst at Boundless, and Ryan Burnett, assistive technology manager, to hear how individuals with disabilities are working out all around town and at Boundless. They join our host, Scott Light, to discuss why it's important to give yourself grace in your exercise journey. We also share how BoundaryCare has partnered with Boundless to use technology to monitor health and enhance quality of life.
Focusing on your fitness doesn't mean you have to do something you don't like. Learn how having choices can increase your desire to get moving. Join Peggy Mills, owner of Valemee Fitness, Amy Finkle, behavior analyst at Boundless, and Ryan Burnett, assistive technology manager, to hear how individuals with disabilities are working out all around town and at Boundless. They join our host, Scott Light, to discuss why it's important to give yourself grace in your exercise journey. We also share how BoundaryCare has partnered with Boundless to use technology to monitor health and enhance quality of life.
Fitness especially for the intellectual and developmentally disabled community is blank. Amy start us off
Amy Finkle:regulating.
Scott Light:Ryan?
Ryan Burnett:adaptable
Scott Light:Peggy?
Peggy Mills:Team effort.
Scott Light:You guys are right, I'm coming out of the gate strong here. And with that we're jumping right into our March episode of Well-Being. A podcast brought to you by Boundless. Boundless is a nonprofit that provides residential support, autism services, primary health care, day programs, counseling, and much, much more to children and adults. Our mission is to build a world that realizes the boundless potential of all people. And hey, if you like what you're hearing, please give us a great review wherever you listen to our episodes. I'm your host, Scott Light, the voices that you just heard belong to our three great guests today. Peggy Mills owns Valemee fitness. Amy Finkel, is here, so is Ryan Burnett. They both work here on the boundless campus. Amy is a behavior analyst, and Ryan is assistive technology manager. Welcome to all of you.
Amy Finkle:Excited to be here.
Ryan Burnett:Thank you for having us.
Scott Light:So I'd like to get you to expound on your fill in the blank there at the very beginning. So Amy, let's talk about that one word you use for the IDD community? How so?
Amy Finkle:Yeah. So I said regulating and as a behavior analyst, a big part of my job is figuring out what issues our students are facing that is helping causing them to be dysregulated. And my job is to help analyze what might be causing that and figure out a way to make our environment as accommodating to them as possible. So a large majority of the students we work with are autistic individuals. So with that comes different sensory sensitivities, maybe the lights are too bright, maybe they're not getting enough input in their day. So we really try to get them to what I consider an optimal optimal learning zone. And so some of our kids come in, they're really tired, really lacking energy, and they need something to jazz them up, get that energy up, some of our kids come in already way too overstimulated and need something to help bring them down. So by having fitness as a part of our daily routine, it's just a regular part of their schedule, that every day we have this time that we're going to check in with our body and see where we're at in terms of that optimal learning zone. Do we need an activity to help bring us down? Do we need something to help bring us up and fitness is a great way to do that, especially with the system Peggy has trained us on.
Scott Light:Okay, love that. Ryan, your word was adaptable. Expound on that a little bit.
Ryan Burnett:Yes, I'm a physical therapist by background. So I've worked with individuals that have a variety of abilities. And I think what's hard is that when we think about the word fitness, we immediately get an impression of a gym, or something that's really intimidating, a treadmill, something that we don't want to do, or heavy weights. But fitness can mean different things to different people. And just because you're focusing on fitness doesn't mean that you have to be doing something that you don't like, you can have an activity that could be you know, a hobby, it can be taking a hike, or playing kickball or playing any other kind of sport. As long as you're, you know, being active moving your body getting your heart rate up, it can be incorporated in a fitness regimen.
Scott Light:Peggy your you threw two words at us it was a team effort. Talk about that a little bit more?
Peggy Mills:Yeah, well, 82% of people with disabilities don't engage in physical activity. So in a nutshell, I think a lot of it has to do with number one, they don't know what to do. If you walk into a gym, that doesn't mean something vigorous or beneficial is going to happen. Providers are very much involved. A lot of times parents, and they have to be involved in the process. In order to make something truly happen. It's beneficial to the body, the mind, the emotions of spirit, which happens in a gym, or this can be at home as well, you don't have to go to a gym to work out, like Ryan mentioned, you know, if you get out and you're walking on a path, and you put in, you know, two miles, that's a good cardio activity. But there's a lot of things that are really important to make the fitness process continue. And it's got to be the whole village involved in making this importantly, making it important to the individual. So the person might see the benefit for themselves when they're doing one activity. But then if they're doing something else, they don't enjoy it. So or the provider doesn't take them to a gym and when they get there, they don't know what to do. There's just a lot of variables that mean that we all have to work together the fitness professional, it's working at the center has to know what they're doing. The provider has to be bought in to what is happening when they go to a fitness center or even when they're doing the exercises at home on a regular basis to parents. And then of course most importantly, the individual themselves has to enjoy what they're doing.
Scott Light:Peggy I saw you and your team in action not that long ago at the Dublin recreation Community Center, tell our listeners more about your program. And I know you've you're training different trainers at different gyms, right? And that's making your program a whole lot more accessible.
Peggy Mills:Yeah. And that's our goal is to be in as many gyms in the city as we'll have us so that people can go right down the street and go to the gym on their street corner and do their exercises. Our particular system has been developed through a lot of years of basis on evidence based practices and my own experiences in working in the education system to make the system duplicatable, simple, and sustainable. And so right now, the Dublin Rec Center is one of our partners, there's about 10 other gyms in the city that have partnered with us. And we basically just need a fitness professional in that in that environment, who is willing to learn from us. And then we will teach them how to put a training program together for anyone to regardless of their ability level.
Scott Light:And now we can bring it full circle, hopefully here for our listeners, because that program Amy is is here, right and to layer on top of that you have been trained by Peggy.
Amy Finkle:Yes. So before we brought it to boundless, I had the honor of going to see Peggy in action in her natural enviroment at Valemee over at the gym. And we did a two day training. So I was able to start from the bottom and work my way up to learn the whole program it started out with she had some of her employees and volunteers train us so we could get an idea of the process and then passed off the baton and we started practicing and training them and then eventually got to train individuals from the community and run them through their actual workouts. So Peggy took us in and showed us how the whole process works. And then was able to give us a little bit more of the fitness, her a PE adaptive PE background and help us understand a little bit more, not just how the program works, but understanding the way fitness works in the body. So we could make sure that we're not just going back and expecting our kids to do all these exercises without a real understanding of how it's going to affect the joints and things like that. So she trained me and a few other of our behavior analysts at the center, so that we have that fitness eye to help critique form and make, she calls them progressions and regressions, make exercises a little bit more difficult or a little bit easier, depending on our students skill level. So she gave us all that information. And then has put together a whole package of materials that I'm sure Peggy can describe in much more detail than me but that are accessible to our students. So we could buy those materials. So we could just essentially replicate her gym in our space that we had at Boundless. So thanks to her, we now have all the materials and we've been able to implement the fitness program into a majority of our students daily routines, which is something that has been really cool to see. Because one thing that we always all of our kids fitness is a part of typical school curriculum. So all of our kids have fitness, they should be participating in physical education. But how that looks in our adapted setting where we don't have as many resources has varied. And now that we've taken on Peggy's Peggy's program, I've really seen, first of all, a lot more staff buy in because a big piece of Peggy's program is empowering the individuals to make the choices themselves. So it's not, I'm coming in, the kids are walking up. I'm a drill sergeant saying, drop and give me 10 Push Ups. I don't care if you like push ups, I don't care if you're good at them. Go ahead. We're doing push ups today and no one's happy because I'm making a kid do something they don't want to do the kids doing something they don't want to do. That's not fun for anybody. So with Peggy's program, it's all about building up to the kids making their own choices. So we have a board with all sorts of different exercises with visual so our kids who aren't good readers are able to see the different exercise potential and pick out what they want to do. So it's not me saying you're doing this. They go up they look at all the choices and go that looks fun today. Maybe they pick something that's way too hard for them. That's another part of Peggy's program is never telling kids no empowering them to make their own choices. So a kid pick something and I look and it's hanging from a bar and doing crunches and I go you can't even do a crunch on the ground. I know you can't do that.
Scott Light:Right. Right.
Amy Finkle:But that come that's where those regressions and progressions come in. She taught us how to make it easier for them make it something that is manageable for them so we get to see a lot more choice which makes staff feel better about what they're doing, because you're empowering the kids in the whole, one of Peggy's main concepts is that she wants to work herself out of a job. So the ideal is that we will get to the point that our students can come in, we say, All right, it's your workout time they get their boards, they choose what they want to do, they go to work out, they gather the materials, they clean it up, they let us know when they're all done. So it gives them that power to exercise in the way they want. And so it's been really cool, because first of all, it makes it a little bit easier for staff giving the students more independence, making it a more enjoyable collaborative experience overall. But then there are also students that I think staff would have never thought would have achieved any sort of independence and fitness that we're seeing make strides toward their fitness goals. That even I who like to think that I presume competence and all my students and see the potential, these students are making more progress than even I would have thought before I was trained in Peggy's program, we have a student who, among many diagnoses, has spastic cerebral palsy, and is in a wheelchair primarily as his main mode of transitioning around the building. So again, he's one that in our old Fitness System, fitness was always on his goals. But if you were looking at the goals that were hit daily fitness was usually the last one, no one really wanted to try it with him. They were thinking, Okay, how much buy in are we really going to get from him. But now we've been able to adapt these exercises, have a wider bank of exercises to draw from. And now on those days that one of his big goals is to increase those leg muscles. So we can see him walking around the building more so on those days that he doesn't want to walk, we're able to present other options. So it's not well walk or no exercise its walk or do one of these many other exercises.
Scott Light:That's awesome.
Amy Finkle:Yeah. And I can I can think of so many stories, there's another, another student who has a really hard time with transitioning, and especially with things that are unknown, and he really wants to know exactly what's going to be happening. And if he doesn't know, he's just not going to start the transition. So he was another one that just even getting him to our fitness area was such a struggle at first. But now we've been able to bring the board to his room and show him look, you get to pick out the exercises, you know exactly what to expect. And now we've come from us, basically having to model every step of the process to once he hears its fitness, he gets up, he knows exactly where to go, he stands in front of the board starts modeling the exercises he wants to do, and with just a little bit of prompting is doing more than the required reps that we expected out of him and just vastly exceeding our expectations. And like I said, I could spend the entire podcast talking about stories like that, and students like that.
Scott Light:That's great. Ryan, let's bring you into this because your expertise, your your experience, you're you're the technology guru here. So tell us about the program called BoundaryCare.
Unknown:Boundless has partnered with a company called BoundaryCare. And what BoundaryCare does is use the features of an Apple Watch to connect an individual and their care provider to health data and location. So how it works is an individual would wear an Apple Watch in the BoundaryCare app will silently collect that data. So it could be number of steps per day, heart rate, oxygen saturation, if they've had a fall, and even what their location is, it'll send that information to an app essentially, that can come to care provider or a parents' phone. With that data, they can choose what's meaningful to them. So the parents say they don't need to focus on location, they're just wanting to know what is going on with heart rate when someone is doing a particular activity. That's how they can use that to their advantage and to keep someone safe. When we bring this back to the fitness, the fitness industry or incorporating more fitness into someone's daily life. Let's say fitness is a new goal for them. If they have this watch, or they have a fitness tracker or BoundaryCare specifically, what they can do is start incorporating those activities in their day. With that safety net of having someone being able to monitor if their heart rate is going outside of pre established parameter.
Scott Light:I would think that that gives security as well to that person's caregiver, their family and friends as well.
Ryan Burnett:Yes, I've talked to several parents about emerging independence. And so someone might be using this for emerging independence with someone going to a friend's house or going to a job. But it can also be emerging independence with incorporating new activities into their life. What's nice too is that this device allows a connection via a phone call. So the parent could even call the watch. The individual wouldn't have to have any type of interaction with the watch. It would just automatically answer after two seconds, so let's say heart rate goes up, parent is concerned parent can call the watch and say, Hey, I know you're doing something you really like to do. But it looks like your heart rate is getting a little too elevated. And let's take a little break and see if we can get that to come back down.
Scott Light:Peggy, you're joining us via zoom, and I can see your smile here. This has to make you feel just great. Knowing that you've got this program, not only is it expanding, but you're seeing real results here.
Peggy Mills:we are, we are we just completed a study with the Ohio State University as well which the results will be coming out this spring, to determine whether or not the system promotes independence and builds fitness in adults with disabilities so that it has led to things like that, and the fact that there's so many gyms in the area that are using our system. I know inclusion is huge. For so many of the families. Ideally, you know, we'd like to see the gym, a gym that specific and basically not inclusive, and also be able to go to inclusive centers, I think we need both in our community. But as Amy was talking about, and even Ryan, the whole, this is a low tech, you know, it's a visual system. So our system is low tech, he is using obviously, much higher tech experiences in order to build good fitness and independence with people. So you need both. And I think that's the thing that after so many years of teaching is like I have students that are so young, three year old starting out, teaching and working with them and Adapted PE and they're now 42 years old. And I'm seeing them out in their community and working out in their gyms, that's that's what drives that's what makes my boat float, you know, is these guys have to have something that's sustainable for long term. And you have to have a program that is sustainable, you can do classes here and there. But if you don't have something simple, able and cost effective, it's just not going to work. So to be able to take something like what Ryan's doing and included in what we're what our system does is amazing. It's it's a wonderful combination.
Scott Light:It really is. And it's, you know, like you said, we need low tech, we need high tech, we need everything in between, because what all three of you are talking about is super customizable. I mean, that's really what you're doing. And you're making it super customized to what that individual wants to do whether they want to hang from a bar and try a pull up, or they want to do mountain climbers, or they just want to walk on an indoor track, do whatever they want to do that particular day. Let's do pivot, though, and talk about just exercise in general, because I'd love to get your all three of your thoughts on this. And this is this applies to, to really anybody and everybody out there, whether you're 8, 18 or 88. And we know the documented benefits from fitness and just staying active people who are active, they live longer. And they also have fewer illnesses. While they're on this earth. We know that exercise has profound positive impacts on things like depression, anxiety, ADHD, exercise, relieves stress, improves memory helps you sleep better, and just improves our overall mood. Ryan start us off here about just those those overall, those overarching benefits of exercise fitness activity.
Ryan Burnett:When I think about activity, what's most meaningful to me is to find something that works for me. And when I speak with other people, I say, find what works for you or find what works for the individual you serve. Because I'm someone who's studied exercise and physical therapy for years, and even I, you know, fall off the wagon sometimes.
Scott Light:Sure, sure.
Ryan Burnett:to work unless I've gone to the gym first. Because I find that I'm more resilient, I can kind of take on the day, I can handle my challenging emails better, or anything else that the that the day is going to bring to me in you know, After my work shift, if I try to exercise then I always find an excuse not to. So thinking about what works for you how you can incorporate some of your favorite activities, or how you can maybe even pull on another person to be your like accountability buddy. Is is really important when I speak with people.
Amy Finkle:Yeah, and I think it comes back to that. That word I said at the beginning regulating and as a behavior analyst that's a big part of my job is helping our students regulate and giving them the tools to do so themselves. But when you think about a lot of the kids that end up are at our center, it's because they weren't successful for whatever reason in the public school setting. And a lot of times, if you look at our kids, those are the kinds of kids that are either hiding under their desks or hiding under a blanket and not wanting to do anything in that very low energy state, or the kids who are bouncing off the walls, and teachers just can't keep them under control. They're here, they're there. They're all over the place. And so, a lot of times in the public school setting, the only available tool to them is to just, Okay, well, do better, I don't have enough resources to really accommodate that. So I'm just going to tell you to sit in your chair again, and I'm going to tell you to do your work again. And as we know, for the kids who end up here, that doesn't work for everybody, not everybody can just be told to be better. They need help, and those accommodations, and that I feel like a big part of exercises, a lot of our kids, a lot of that clutter comes from the brain, there's things that are overstimulating them in their environment there, there's repressed trauma or negative emotions from the environment they're in or maybe not even from the environment they're in. But right now, their brain isn't in their current environment, they're back in this traumatic state. So they've got all these things in their heads that they're working through. And that's just coming out in that physical, that low energy, I'm just laying here, I don't want to do anything, or that I'm bouncing off the walls and can't regulate myself. So fitness gives a way to check in with the body and ground the body in a way that kind of, if you are in the middle of running on a treadmill, or running laps or doing hurdles, it kind of breaks that cycle in your brain and gives your body something else to focus on here in that moment. So we can help our students find maybe I need more energy, I'm gonna go jump on a trampoline and find something to elevate my body and get my body there. So my brain can catch up, or I'm the opposite, I am bouncing off the walls already, I'm going to find something with heavy work or increasing pressure, things like that to again ground my body and help my body reregulate to where it is in the space and get awareness of the way around me. And I think that's one of my favorite things that I've enjoyed about using the fitness with our students is just giving them that power to at first, it's me going, Hey, you look like you're bouncing off the walls. Why don't we try this one. And then our students realize, Oh, I do enjoy that. And then that gives them the ability to pick that the next time. And so again, like I said earlier, and like Peggy told me in her training, working ourselves out of a job, I would love to be able to just give our students a visual coping board train, teach them the skills, and then let them go. Recognizing themselves, Oh, I'm feeling dysregulated Oh, I remember the time that I was with Miss Amy and I did this exercise and it helped me feel better. Let me go ahead and pick it this time. So the whole program is about empowering students to make those choices so that as soon as possible, we can remove ourselves and give them that independence because so many of our students are used to their parents telling them their parents or guardians telling them from the moment they wake up what they're going to eat, what they're going to wear, what they're going to do, where they're going to go. And so this is us going, no check in with your own body, tell me what it is you need. And I'm going to help support you in achieving that.
Peggy Mills:Everybody has to buy into this because fitness, like Brian said, it's not something maybe some people would gravitate toward, they don't understand, cognitively, the benefits that would come out of it. And so just getting started, they're going to have to have people in their corner that will help them undertake this as a way of life. That's the thing is a way of life all those students that Amy is working with, I want to see 10 years from now, being able to go and do something at a gym, or even at home, for the same reasons for mental health, for their sleep for you know all of those benefits that we've talked you talked about and all the benefits that come through all the studies that have shown we don't need to do any more studies to show that fitness is important. But the people with IDD, they deserve to be healthy and fit, they deserve quality of life. They don't know they deserve quality of life maybe, or they don't know that this particular thing is what's going to help them get there. They maybe they just need help because they're putting towels up into an overhead bin at the worksite. They have to be able to lift their arms up. They have to be able to get down and do somewhat like a lunge to be able to put something on the bottom shelf. They need to be bent be able to bend over without hurting their backs. I mean, there are a million functional reasons why people do fitness. And a lot of times there's a lot of us that like it because we like to push ourselves. Then there's others that just do it because they know they should. And then there's this whole class of people that don't know they should do it, but they should do it. And if they have these people who are in their corner you You know, they were willing to say, Hey, this is a part of your schedule, we go and we do this, this is this is so important for individuals with autism. If it's on a schedule, they'll do it because they will go through their schedule. So if you put this program, you put this half hour, in a gym or in their home, we have a program that goes directly into their homes. If they do this on a regular basis, it becomes a part of their life. So that holistic state about sustainability. And, you know, ongoing throughout life is really the key.
Scott Light:Well, in talking about ongoing and sustainability, when I've got experts at the table again, like all three of you, I'd like to go around and ask a question like this, what is your best piece of advice to keep people motivated? Or maybe to motivate that that first time exerciser, so to speak? Maybe that person who, who hasn't been or has maybe been intimidated to go to a gym? Not necessarily Ryan, like you were saying at the beginning is not a gym freak, you know, not a gym rat. And it has maybe been a little bit intimidated. What's your best piece of advice to motivate that person? In the in the IDD community to say, You know what, like you said, Peggy, you deserve this.
Amy Finkle:I think for me, a big thing is, don't force it, find what your student is already doing that they enjoy, and getting them active, and then work with that. Do you have a kid who really likes to swing? Do you have a kid who likes to jump on the trampoline? Do you have a kid who's really obsessed with bluey or any of those other hundreds of kid shows that are out there, find what they're interested in and find a way to connect that to fitness, don't, you're not, you're only going to get so far, if you're forcing someone to do something they don't like. So lean into it, find, find that little piece that they enjoy running and playing with bubbles, work that into the fitness. And then once they are able to contact those contingencies, feel what it feels like to get fit, and do that exercise and get active, then you've got a little bit more headway to start trying, okay, yes, you really love running around, what if we tried running up and down some steps and build in a little extra piece, take it a little further. And then always be willing to stop and pause. And you never want to push it too far, you don't want to push it to the point that we don't enjoy it. Because if the first time you had me go work out, you had me running up and down stadium steps or something like that, you can bet I'm not going to want to come work out with you ever again. So start out small, lean into what they like, and make it fun, make it enjoyable, make it a good memorable experience and something they want to do again.
Ryan Burnett:Yeah, and I'll expound upon that a little bit. Like getting someone by and by finding something that they like is crucial. And then recognizing that fitness is a journey. And you know, sometimes motivation levels ebb and flow. And you might have a big law. I know personally, I've had laws that last weeks, maybe months, but then just give yourself some grace when you're getting back into it to say, Okay, I'm here again, I'm gonna start easy. I'm gonna do things that I like to do. And I'm going to recognize that, you know, sometimes my motivation goes up, and sometimes it goes down. But at least I'm still within that whole, the whole mindset that, you know, this is still a beneficial, impactful part of my life.
Scott Light:I recently came back to yoga. And you mentioned the word grace, the main person at the yoga studio said, give yourself some grace coming back. And I should also say I have the flexibility of a two by four. Zero, it is absolutely zero. But when he said that to me, I just I really did just take a breath out. Right, and I just went, That's great advice.
Ryan Burnett:Right. Because you might want to just jump back into what you were doing before, it might physically not be possible.
Scott Light:It was just that word. That's what I needed at the time. I'm so glad you mentioned that word. Peggy best piece of advice?
Peggy Mills:Getting practical, going to a center and asking them if they what they have for people with any kind of disability, or even people that are challenged. Further, whether it be physically or even, you know, mentally doesn't matter what if you have a situation go to your gym ask for programming, they have the fitness industry, this is opening up a whole another can of worms, but they need to get on board. There's to be someone trained at every center that knows how to work with this population and that is a big hurdle. So for motivation, we got to find somebody that wants to work with them and enjoys it and will be there for them. So I would ask for them in individuals anywhere that they're going, whether it's a gym or a yoga studio or I don't care where it is, you know to ask if they have individuals who work with that population. Call us we'll help connect you with great programs around town or even our program and get them motivated by being around people that understand them and care about them and want to be with them.
Scott Light:Well, with this podcast episode, we're gonna get the word out and Peggy, Ryan, Amy, thank you all for being here. Great, great discussion. To our listeners, thank you as well and don't forget you can always be part of episodes to come you can always email your questions or comments to podcast at I am boundless dot ORG. Again, don't forget to give us a great review too. That's yet another way we always want to hear from you. This is the Well-Being podcast brought to you by Boundless.