It is a normal Monday night around 6 PM at your local gym. Many people just got there from work or are leaving the gym and headed home for dinner. A wheelchair rolled in the gym for his or her Monday night \u00a0bike ride to cool off from the busy day at work. Some people do not think about this situation often. What is going on in the head of the wheelchair user? I am a wheelchair user, but I am not limited by my physical challenges.<\/p>\n
During grade school, I was in fantastic shape, because I was going to my mom\u2019s gym and working out. I had a personal trainer, John J\u00a0Masacci. I asked him how it felt training people with physical challenges.\u00a0\u00a0He answered\u00a0saying, \u00a0\u201cWhen I first met you\u00a0in\u00a01999, \u00a0you had an in-the-box mentality at your\u00a0workout sessions. What I sought to do was innovate and stimulate your\u00a0interest by designing a\u00a0training program around your favorite sport, and found as many baseball-related mechanical activities as I could. \u00a0Since you were\u00a0a huge Ken Griffin JR. fan,\u00a0we started by squatting for catching and fielding, running within your walker as best you\u00a0could while concurrently attempting to quiet your\u00a0spasticity. We were also able to mainstream some activities like stair climbing and very slow but steady treadmill work, so you\u00a0could feel like the other members of the club. All in all, I believed it was important to pair you\u00a0with a trainer who shared your\u00a0love of movement and willingness to challenge traditional rehabilitative repetitive therapy with something that was joyful and sparked your athletic psyche. Ultimately,\u00a0you\u00a0was the architect of your\u00a0own success and I facilitated that with adaptive activity based on\u00a0sports.”<\/p>\n
For me, I feel I am like any other person who wants to stay in shape. People with physical challenges have life goals and dreams, just like everyone\u00a0else. I learned that if I want to live the life that I want, \u00a0the key is to stay as fit as possible. Do not be scared if you see someone at your local gym doing things differently. You just have to have faith that one day you will be able achieve great things too, even if you have physical disabilities.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is a normal Monday night around 6 PM at your local gym. Many people just got there from work or are leaving the gym and headed home for dinner….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":56330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[8878,8877,8876,939,2911,2916],"class_list":{"0":"post-56307","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-ada","9":"tag-chase-hastings","10":"tag-disabilities","11":"tag-exercise","12":"tag-working-out","13":"tag-workout"},"yoast_head":"\n