Making Fitness Accessible For All: Empowering People With Disabilities Through Physical Activity | The Spirit Club Foundation Ep 83

Fitness is a crucial element to the health of every human being, but many of us need a push to get active, relying on a gym, fitness class or online videos to guide us in our fitness journey. However, these kinds of exercise programs aren’t designed for those with disabilities, and they’re often left feeling out of place and discouraged. People with disabilities also have higher rates of conditions like diabetes and obesity, so it’s especially important for them to have access to physical activity.

 Aiming to close the gaps people with disabilities experience and provide greater access to fitness is The Spirit Club Foundation. Its founder, Jared Ciner, and Executive Director, Kim Schofield, are joining host Jamie Truman in this episode to share what they’re doing to fulfill the organization’s mission. This includes offering funds for individuals to attend exercise programs, providing fitness classes and group exercise programs, and more.

 Jared and Kim’s personal experiences with the program highlights the amazing impact the organization has on the lives of people with disabilities and their families. Not only does physical activity reduce the risk of disease, improves immunity, mental health and LOTS MORE, but they’ve seen firsthand the positive effects of team-based training and socialization.

 To learn more about the benefits of the organization, be sure to register for their upcoming Fitness Festival on October 1st at the Ivy Mount School in Potomac, MD. The festival runs from 1 PM to 4 PM and will feature fun demo classes, a silent auction, award ceremony and more.

 The Spirit Club Foundation is on a mission to help every person who reaches out for a scholarship, so tune in to find out how you can help them!

 You can also subscribe to their monthly newsletter to stay updated on their events and programs in the community. https://www.spiritclubfoundation.org/

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Email: info@trumancharities.com

This episode was post produced by Podcast Boutique https://podcastboutique.com/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Thanks, Jared, Thanks Kim, for coming on today to talk with us.

Speaker 2: 0:06

Thank you so much for having us. Yeah, very exciting.

Speaker 1: 0:09

Good. So you know. I want to talk, jared, a little bit about your background and why you decided to co-found the Spirit Club Foundation. However, first we want to know what exactly is the Spirit Club Foundation? I know you started it back in 2015.

Speaker 2: 0:27

Yeah, so the Foundation is created to help make sure that people with disabilities have access to participate in fitness programs, and the Foundation essentially functions as a trying to bridge the gap and fill the needs where there may be lacking opportunities or reasons why people with disabilities may have more difficulty participating in exercise programs.

Speaker 2: 0:57

So the main functions of the Foundation are to help people really at the moment, pay for their services, so really through scholarships to individuals who want to participate in a fitness program but don't have the financial means to do so. But we're also working really hard to come up with other solutions to help people with disabilities have greater access to fitness. For example, funding organizations who serve people with disabilities to be able to offer their own exercise programs. Funding people through transportation, if that's one of the reasons or limitations why they can't participate in a fitness program. Making sure they could get to and from a program. And helping to incentivize organizations to engage in fitness activities, organizations that provide services to people with disabilities. So we're pretty broad and really just trying to fill any gaps that might cause a person with a disability to be less able to join in on exercise activities.

Speaker 1: 2:03

Right Whatever may hinder them in being able to participate in any type of fitness activities. Now, Jared, why are you so passionate about this?

Speaker 2: 2:14

That's a good question. I don't have any personal family members or any personal connection. I think it's just something that I've found to be meaningful to me in my life. I did have really great role models through my family who helped me have opportunities to volunteer in different programs and organizations. I worked as a one-on-one camp counselor, working with a really awesome child with autism growing up as a teenager and I just became really honestly, it's just very natural and easy for me. I think I really enjoy interacting with people who are just maybe not exactly the same as I am and have different means of communication or ways of thinking, and that's always just been very interesting and engaging to me and in some ways, easier for me from a communication standpoint to connect with people who are different from myself in various ways. So it's just been a little kind of natural for me to be interested in working with people with different backgrounds and abilities.

Speaker 1: 3:35

So tell me about how the fitness component came to be. So are you passionate about your fitness yourself? And tell me what ways do you think it benefits individuals with disabilities being able to have access to either you have either group training or one-on-one training.

Speaker 2: 3:53

Yes, well, I'm definitely passionate about fitness. I'm sorry I'm sweating, I was literally just running before this but yeah, exercise has always been a really important outlet for me personally, even as a kid. It was hard for me to make friends and socialize, but using sports as a way to do that was really effective for me. You know, I couldn't necessarily go introduce myself to a peer, but I could bounce them a basketball and shoot hoops and by the end, you know, we were friends. And so I think for me, using athletics and sports and movement as a way to build relationships was very natural to me. And so, you know, I had a lot of opportunities growing up to help facilitate that.

Speaker 2: 4:43

One of the big things for me was in college. I spent a summer in Ethiopia volunteering at a school and I didn't really have a specific role there, so I pretty much facilitated like soccer games with the kids because that's what was fun for me and it was really nice for me to see how a structured activity like soccer could really change the vibe and the interaction among the students there. And I went from, you know, a tough environment where only the big kids were playing and the little kids were left out to, you know, celebration and being much more inclusive just by giving that structure and those instructions that everyone's gonna play and we're gonna make fair teams and the whole environment changed through having a positive exercise activity. And so that was kind of like a light bulb moment for me where, like you know, this really helps people. You know, facilitating physical activity could really help people feel better and that was really helpful for me.

Speaker 1: 5:45

So let's talk a little bit about some of the individuals that you personally worked with.

Speaker 2: 5:52

Yeah. So once we got started like teaching actual exercise programs, a lot of people stood out of just like you know, really impactful, you know, positive people who really motivated me to continue this work. One was a really really awesome guy named Michael. He was a couple years younger than me. He has autism. He came to a group class once and he walked in and he walked right out. It was not for him. He did not like the social aspect of it. It was, you know, overwhelming.

Speaker 2: 6:30

And afterwards his parents asked if I could work with him one-on-one and that was the first time that I did, you know, like personal training for Spirit Club, and it was just really interesting to see. Like at first he actually didn't wanna come back to the gym, so I would meet him in his house and after like 10 or 15 minutes he was exhausted, he didn't wanna do it anymore and like there are times where I literally was like chased out, like goodbye, I like am not welcome here anymore and that's okay. And over time it was just really great to see how he grew over time. You know, the next week maybe it was 20 minutes, the next week maybe 30 minutes, by the end it was a full. You know, a couple of months later, full hour, multiple times a week, he was really working hard, much more comfortable, to the point where I said, how about we come, we go do this in the gym?

Speaker 2: 7:22

And he said, okay, we tried it again in the gym, you know, to the point where he said, okay, how about you try working out with a different trainer? And he said, okay, how about we try a group class again? And that was a big moment where he went and did a group class. He still didn't love the group class, but we had him work as a volunteer assisting people, you know, exercising as a, you know as a leader, and that, I think, was much more important for him and made him feel much more comfortable. And then he started an internship, you know, working at the front desk, and just seeing like the transformation that happens among you know, for people, not just his fit I mean he lost like a hundred pounds but also just really more so, even like the social and the confidence you know, changes that took place for him, using fitness as that tool for him to really feel good about himself and connect with other people. So there's a lot of stories like that.

Speaker 1: 8:19

Yeah, how did that feel, seeing him progress from coming in and being completely scared of going into a group class, to then you start working with him. He works all the way up until finally getting the, I guess feeling good enough or, I'm sorry, feeling like he would like to join the group class. So what was that like?

Speaker 2: 8:44

I just felt really proud of him. I felt really happy for him that he had made that progress and had overcome some of those you know challenges from before. And it was, I think, on a bigger scale, just really important to see how exercise could be used as such an effective tool to help people achieve their potential and do things that they didn't realize that they could do or that they couldn't have done if they didn't engage in an activity like that.

Speaker 1: 9:17

Yeah, let's talk a little bit about some of the benefits of the actual training.

Speaker 2: 9:22

Yeah well, the nice thing about exercise from a program standpoint is they're totally countless. We're not in any way recreating or trying to convince people of something that's useful. Every doctor in the world will tell every person that they should be exercising on a daily basis. The nice thing about our work of bringing this service to people with disabilities is that the benefits are the same, in some ways even more important, because, statistically, people who have a disability are going to be more likely to have health disparities. Obviously, not everyone.

Speaker 2: 10:13

Other people with disabilities who are in amazing shape, much better shape than I am. Statistically, if you have a disability, for example, you're going to be 58% more likely to be obese than a person without a disability, taking all of the benefits that come from exercise improved physical health, mental health, emotional well-being, physical and functional capabilities, all these things that trickle into other goals in life, like employment, relationships. Those all exist for people with disabilities, just like they do for people without. In many cases, it's more important because the baseline is generally lower due to a number of reasons why a person with a disability might start at a lower baseline. In some of these areas, the benefits are really in your face. When it comes to things being physically active, and even more so for a person who might have a harder time, more limited resources or opportunities to engage in physical activity or lots of other reasons that might make living a healthy lifestyle more difficult.

Speaker 1: 11:28

Yeah, when you're talking, and especially when you're talking about Michael, the benefits of just a social aspect which will help him in all aspects and areas of his life. Just being able to walk into that group class is the same as if he's with his parents or with another family member, and having to walk into a big group of people and to feel less anxiety about that. I feel like the social aspect with this is very impressive which you guys have been able to do for these people, these individuals I want to know a little bit about. What are your exact classes in training? What are some of your favorite classes that you have that people really tend to gravitate towards?

Speaker 2: 12:09

Yeah, so we started off and, just to clarify, spirit Club started a couple years before Spirit Club Foundation, so there are two separate entities. While Spirit Club offers direct classes and training programs, the foundation is a very important one and it is super valuable to come in and help make sure people can have access to those programs. Spirit Club's actual fitness services and activities are pretty wide ranging. We offer things like group exercise through fitness, yoga, zumba, boxing, meditation. Our newest class, which is really popular, is a drumming fitness class where everybody has a stability ball in front of them and drumsticks and they're basically playing to the beat of everyone's favorite songs. And that's a great class because you're working out really without feeling like you are or realizing. You're just jamming out to your favorite music and sweating by the end of it, and so those classes are really fun.

Speaker 2: 13:20

They're designed to really help facilitate that socialization. Those are always set up in a circle so people are looking at each other and interacting with each other, rather than a typical gym group class where everyone's just facing the front, kind of isolated. We generally break into partners at some point in the class and do your exercises one-on-one with a peer. We'll do team activities and relay races to help just again increase people's confidence and excitement. So everything is team-based rather than no competition among members in the classes. And then there's a lot of personal training and partner training for people who, like Michael, aren't ready to do a group class Well, not like Michael anymore, but when he first started. So giving people that personalization as well and that more one-on-one support is really important to provide that option as well.

Speaker 1: 14:18

Well, you know, Kim, I want to talk to you for a little bit as well. So you just joined the Spirit Club Foundation as the executive director in 2022. So you're kind of new to the organization. I want to know what was it about this particular organization that you made you gravitate towards it and want to become part of it and such a large part of the organization?

Speaker 3: 14:43

It's a great question and thank you, jamie. But you know I wanted to become the executive director of the Foundation because of its mission, because of how it wants to support people with disabilities to have access to fitness. Years prior, you know, I saw firsthand how it was difficult to find a Jim that was, you know, correctly fit for my daughter. It might have been a good you know location for myself, but it was hard for her to fit in.

Speaker 3: 15:19

And with my years of advocating for people with special needs, I literally kind of probably, came in direct connection with Spear Club at probably one of these you know expo events and got talking to you know Jared and his trainers and ultimately put my daughter into that class to see what it would be like.

Speaker 3: 15:37

And what I saw was that it changed her. It made her stronger, a more engaged person. They connected with her and wanted to, you know, get her to meet her goals. And because of that and because of my ability and need to want to share all the great things that happened to me and my family and advocating for others, there was an opportunity that came that presented itself to become the executive director of this foundation and help support its mission, and I naturally just gravitated towards you know what their goals were and how they wanted to make it more affordable for those with disabilities to participate in these fitness opportunities, and it was just a great way for me to bridge the people, the families and the organizations together with the goal of having you know fitness as an option and an opportunity for those with disabilities.

Speaker 1: 16:38

So your daughter started participating in the spirit club. What was her first class and how does she? Is she really involved in fitness now? Because of it.

Speaker 3: 16:50

Oh yeah, it's amazing. It's been going on about three years now. Like Michael, my daughter has lost over 40 pounds. Wow, yeah, it's huge.

Speaker 3: 17:03

I just wanted to do stuff but always complained that everything always hurt. So, taking her to a regular gym, trainers might not have understood some of the things that she was complaining about and not understood how to, like, support her in those endeavors, but the facility in the class that she took actually kind of brought her out of her shell and I saw firsthand by just standing in the background. I didn't know my daughter could bend in certain ways because she never demonstrated it before for me, but was happy to do it for a trainer, and I saw them work with her strengths. They were, you know, connecting with her. She was becoming more confident in her abilities and from that we gravitated towards, you know, adding on a one to one fitness trainer that comes into our home and works with her individually on some of her flexibility needs and because of that she's now training me on how to be more flexible. I love it. Yeah, she's teaching me how to play.

Speaker 1: 18:06

That's fantastic. Oh my gosh, 40 pound weight loss, that's amazing. She's actually feeling a lot better since having that weight off and being able to do more things, obviously. I mean, she's you flexibility, right?

Speaker 3: 18:19

Yes, and it's nice too because, you know, with with a person with a disability, and specifically with my daughter, she always complained about leg pain, lower back pain, you know, always very tight and rigid and sometimes always felt enclosed with herself. So the range of motion was very limited because of her, because of her struggles with herself. You know she created a lot more, I guess, like less flexibility, more tightness within and then being able to have someone work with her and see her capabilities and, you know, help her increase her range of motion. She no longer complains about the leg pain or the lower back pain and you know she's got a wonderful range of motion. That I contribute to the fact that there are organizations that want to make the fitness accessible for everybody, no matter what your ability is, and they have mindset in the patients to work one to one and help them reach those goals.

Speaker 1: 19:22

So let's talk a little bit about how people can get involved within the organization.

Speaker 3: 19:29

So with the spirit club foundation, people can get involved by going to our website. We have a get involved link on our web page and that will help you if you want to volunteer at a future opportunity or an event, or if you want to support us with maybe an in kind donation where we can raffle off at our fitness festival, or you can also get involved by becoming a monthly donor, supporting us by contributing funds to us on a regular basis or even one time per year. That will be supporting our foundation's mission with the scholarships.

Speaker 1: 20:11

And so how are your donations allocated within your organization?

Speaker 3: 20:15

So most of it is based on unrestricted funding. So a person or organization can donate funds to the Spirit Club Foundation and it'll go directly into our scholarship or grant opportunities. We do have organizations that we apply for through grant requests, and some of those grant requests do have restrictions where it might be specifically meant for a certain county or region and then those funds are specifically allocated for that specific area.

Speaker 1: 20:51

So do you have any events that are coming up in the fall that we should be looking forward to around the holidays?

Speaker 3: 20:58

Yes, actually our fitness festivals on October 1st. It is held at the Ivy Mount School in Potomac and it's from 1 to 4 PM. This is the first year that we'll be hosting it indoors, so we don't have to worry about the weather. The nice thing is is that Ivy Mount School also is a recipient from some financial support from the foundation, so they're super excited to partner with us and allow us into their school facility.

Speaker 3: 21:29

And during this fundraising event, our goal is to raise $50,000 that will go into our scholarship programs, and we will be having raffles, silent auction. We'll have other like-minded organizations that support people with disabilities so you and your family can come and meet these other organizations, possibly form new relationships. And we'll have an awards ceremony where we're spotlighting our athlete of the year, our organizational partner of the year and our outstanding leader of the year that are supporting people with disabilities and helping them thrive. We'll have demo classes so anybody can take part of these classes. We'll be at yoga kickboxing. Sam's Spirited Workout Jam is something that everybody each year loves to participate in it. It's contagious and our goal is to walk out with hopefully raising additional funds that keep our scholarship program growing, because each year we're seeing more new individuals apply for the first time and typically someone that gets our scholarships. They'll need our scholarship forever because they need that financial support in order to afford fitness in their life. So we don't see a decrease. We're always seeing an increase.

Speaker 1: 22:52

Yeah, well, that festival sounds amazing, and so people can go just right on your website and they can register there, correct, yes, awesome, all right, so you know. I want to ask you this, and maybe, jared, too, you can jump in as well with your thoughts how do you see the Spirit Club Foundation in the future?

Speaker 2: 23:14

That is a very good question. I think that the nice thing about the foundation is it really follows the community. It's very grassroots in its efforts and its mission. So the foundation it doesn't really try to come up with ways to be helpful and then determine if it's helpful. Everything the foundation does is a direct result of what we hear and learn from the community as a need, and I think that's why, like Kim is such a perfect addition to the team, because you know she's been in this community as a parent with her awesome daughter who's been navigating. You know services in this area. Kim and Rachel know what the needs are and how. You know where the shortcomings are and what should be taking place to meet them and fill them, and so you know.

Speaker 2: 24:15

One thing we've talked about which I'm personally really excited about is helping not only like from the bottom up in terms of like providing financial assistance to help raise people up to the level they need but also working from the top down on things like policy change, like, for example, in Washington DC, a person with an intellectual disability is able to use their Medicaid money to pay for a personal trainer.

Speaker 2: 24:44

In Maryland it's not as easy. People have to be in a specific self-directed program to be able to allocate any of their Medicaid funding to pay for things like fitness, and if they're not, then there's no opportunity to use their funding towards working out and exercising, and these are things that I think are relatively easy changes or like attainable fixes that would make such a huge difference in so many people's lives. You know, to be able to use the funding that people get due to their disability and use it towards exercise. So I think that a really big opportunity for the foundation moving forward is to help people from the bottom up, but also from the top down, to change some of the policies that create these disparities.

Speaker 1: 25:38

Right, yeah, because fitness it improves the quality of life in so many different aspects, so that is definitely something that needs to be changed to help so many different people. So, kim, you know I love that you've been touched by this organization. Now you're so involved with this organization on so many different levels. How do you see it in the future?

Speaker 3: 26:02

I, you know, I, the mission itself, is solid at what it does and it is so viable to have an organization like ourselves to be able to support that individual and their family with a scholarship to, you know, encourage that fitness opportunity. What I am hoping for in the upcoming years is to be able to offer higher level of funding opportunities instead of partially supporting their fitness goals by able to. You know, my goal is to see can we fully fund something? Could we offer this? As you know, they shouldn't have to pay for fitness. It should be automatically included in their day to day routine so that they can have a healthier, more engaged life. That's my goal and that in order to meet that goal, we need more people to know about our organization and what we do so that they can support us with our scholarship programming, so that we can fund more individuals with disabilities with the scholarship and then also give them a higher scholarship value.

Speaker 1: 27:08

Yeah, the one thing that you had mentioned that really, like struck me was you said okay, well, we, we have a scholarship program and then we help an individual, but it's a continuation and we just continuously have all of these people that are are needing our services and we still need to still be able to provide for the people that we were already helping. So there is quite a large need for funding for the scholarship program that you have. And, before I let you both go, is there anything that we haven't covered that you that you think someone should know?

Speaker 2: 27:50

Nothing comes to mind for me. I think you asked really great questions and I've heard a lot of really good stuff. Yeah, I was just, I'm sorry, one thing that pops up. We are always really trying to stay on top of our program needs in terms of scholarships and grants and, you know, right now, our big effort is making sure we're raising enough money to pay for all the people who are reaching out to us, and we've had a huge increase in people applying for scholarships recently, and so I think you know, if anybody is engaged in this conversation and interested in getting involved, I would say definitely reach out to us. You have any ideas to help with fundraising or, obviously, if you're interested in supporting the foundation, we'd love to connect with people. I think that's our main focus at the moment.

Speaker 3: 28:43

I agree with what Jared just said. I'm nodding my head for those that probably can't visually see what we're doing, but we don't want to say no to anyone. If anyone is applying for a scholarship, they already have the drive within to want to make fit as part of their life and we want to say yes. And in order for us to say yes to every single individual that we could possibly reach out to, we need additional funding to make that happen for everyone. There are so many people with disabilities that have no idea that they can call us and ask for funding. There's organizations that don't think about putting fitness into their day to day programming routine for those that are attending their facilities, and we want to make sure that we're bridging those organizations as well to let them know that we're here to support them. But in order for us to help every single individual organization, we need other people to help us as well, so that we can pay it forward.

Speaker 1: 29:43

Well, I'm very excited about your upcoming event on October 1. That sounds amazing. Can you tell everyone how they can follow you?

Speaker 3: 29:52

So on our website we have links to. You can follow us on Facebook, instagram and Twitter, and you can also engage with us by opting in to receive our newsletters that we email out monthly, where we want to inform people what we're doing, how we're involving in the community, and also what other community members and organizations are doing to to support people with disabilities.

Speaker 1: 30:23

Yes, I am on your newsletter and I love them. It keeps me up to date with exactly what you guys are doing new programs, that you have your festival coming up all of the great stuff. So I would tell everybody to make sure to sign up for that newsletter. It is very informative and you're going to learn a lot about what the spirit club foundation is is doing. So I want to thank you again, jared and Kim, for coming on and talking to us about this wonderful foundation that you have, and I want to thank everyone for tuning in to another episode of the Truman Charities podcast. Until next time.