Welcome to the AdaptX Podcast, where we have discussions with individuals who are building
accessible businesses or products advocating for inclusion or excelling in adaptive sports.
Our intention is never to speak on behalf of those with disabilities, but rather our
goal is to amplify your ideas, voice, and learn strategies to scale our impact and help
other businesses become more inclusive.
On today's episode, we are joined by Austin Roth.
Austin, thank you for joining us.
Austin is a CrossFit athlete that competes in national competitions and the CrossFit
Games as a whole.
We'll let him give you some insight into how he trains for the games and what his background
is as a competitive athlete.
Yeah, so my background is actually in class at Country Running.
I did that in high school.
After college, I wanted to explore fitness a little bit more.
I joined a bootcamp site, so I worked out and eventually found CrossFit.
So I've been doing CrossFit for about seven years now.
I really enjoyed it, really just learning a lot about myself through CrossFit methodologies.
And then for the last three years, I've been competing.
So I've done competitions like the Real World Games and Wadahalooza for the last three years.
And I just really enjoyed it.
Did you have any hesitancies first, walking into a CrossFit gym or what kind of gave you
the confidence to enter an environment like that that you would have the ability to keep
up with your peers and other athletes?
Yeah, there was a little bit of hope with some of the bootcamp style classes.
One of the coaches really had a background in CrossFit and did kind of both.
So just through talking with him and him, kind of like looking at how I move and what
I can do and what I can't do.
And kind of he suggested that it would be possible for me to do CrossFit stuff or just
to go in and just see what happens.
So I really felt like it was the hardest part was just starting for me because it just
seemed so intimidating.
I didn't know if I could really touch a ball well or if I would get injured.
Like I didn't know how to move.
So at first CrossFit was just very scary and very full in.
I think just being able to talk with him and knowing that I joined his CrossFit classes
and knowing that he knew how he moved a little bit beforehand really was helpful for me.
Do you know what classification of cerebral palsy you have or kind of how does it present?
Does it affect, is it hemiplegic?
Is it diplegic?
It's quadriplegic.
So it's also limbs.
It's spastic mostly in nature.
So I get hypotonia.
So I have kind of more stiff muscles kind of everywhere.
But my legs are a little bit more imposed than my upper body.
So that's kind of how it takes me.
Did it present any grip challenges or are you able to comfortably hold barbells or dumbbells
or do you have to make any modifications with the equipment?
Yeah, I don't make modifications in the equipment, but I do have kind of lower grip strength
than an average person.
So I do tend to modify workouts to think about that and to incorporate that into workouts.
So I can finish a workout and grip strength wouldn't be the limiting factor.
Do they allow you to use any gripping aids or things like that within the CrossFit competitions?
Yeah, I think if you really need it, like if it's really like a safety concern, they'll
let you have it.
I feel, but for me, I guess I mostly work out without it.
So I just haven't really used it or looked into it too much.
So it doesn't really hinder you with like pull ups or deadlifts or anything like that?
Not too much.
I mean, it was super high reps and it would really be taxing, but I think it hasn't been
too bad.
What was it like growing up with cerebral palsy?
How did it affect your educational experience through elementary school, middle school, high
school?
I think for me, looking back on it, the hard thing was especially like having more of
a mild form of cerebral palsy, I was definitely like, I wasn't like totally like unable to
play with kids like I was, but I was always kind of like the last few picks for sports.
So like the one that was kind of known to be like not so good at certain things.
And I think that for a long time just made any kind of sports or activities kind of scary
and kind of like something I didn't want to do.
So definitely growing up, I kind of had an aversion to fitness as sports in general.
So I remember like seventh grade in E class having to like learn a mile and 12 minutes
and being like worried about that.
I mean, of course the coach would have been like lenient for me, but you know, I just
had no desire to actually like do anything physical because I felt like there was a lot
of like emotional kind of difficulties with kind of talking about stuff and not feeling
included or not feeling like wanted in sports settings or just feeling like I was kind of
like not the best player kind of thing.
What led you to gravitate towards cross country then?
I was actually a friend.
He was doing it.
He was like waking up at like 6am to cross country before school.
And I was like just talking with him and I was like maybe I'll give out a try and it
was just something that I wanted to do that like to hang out with him and eventually like
I ended up really liking it.
Finding out that I could actually like run for long distances and I just seeing myself
like my emotions and like my mental health improved and like physical health improved
and there's so many benefits for it and it's like it just kind of got me hooked on it.
Yeah, we talk about how accessibility is more than just like the physical environment.
It's also that social emotional component.
I think that's what CrossFit does a great job of when they build the community and in
kind of each location and they tend to be very supportive in terms of supporting all
the athletes whether they finish first or last in the workout.
So that's something where like all fitness centers and all businesses can kind of learn
from is how to build that community that really supports one another and people tend to be
pretty unwavering in their love of CrossFit or their obsession with CrossFit seems to
be something where they kind of been able to foster that like cult mentality where people
really are passionate about the organization.
So that's definitely something whether whether you follow CrossFit methodology or not it's
definitely something you can learn from as a business as a whole.
But do you have any aspirations to continue with distance running or endurance sports
sir?
I'm kind of I've looked into like triathlons and thought that would be fun to kind of get
my feet into a little bit but I haven't done anything officially yet but I mean I do do
some like longer distance runs on my own so.
What was your educational background?
So I know you went to Arizona State which is a school that we've worked with through
our AdaptX curriculum.
They have a program called Devils Adapt where you were you a part of that or were you familiar
with that during your time on campus?
I was not no I didn't know you even doing that.
Yeah so it's I think it's relatively new where they have students that become kind of student
trainers and they support individuals in the community and students on campus that have
disabilities and kind of work in a one-to-one setting and it's part of their recreation
health and wellness department and it's one of the groups that we're lucky to work with.
We've had some of their trainers go through our course to give them some more strategies
to work with different disabilities but what did you go to Arizona State to study?
Biomedical Engineering.
And what kind of drew you to that or what was your goal with that degree?
Yeah at first it was kind of a competition of like me just really accelerating math in
high school and really enjoying that and I wanted to focus on that more and also thinking
I wanted to go to medical school so it just kind of felt like a good fit for like people
in this major kind of do and go both ways so just thought it would be a good fit for
me in deciding what I wanted to do in the future kind of a path to both ways to research
and do digital engineering, mathematical type of world or medical school whatever I decided.
I saw a couple, were they capstone projects or thesis projects, that seemed to be pretty
interesting.
Were they senior year?
Do I maybe talk a little bit about your thesis?
Was it related to autism screening?
Yeah so I did a capstone project on autism screening using like an iPad or an iPad and
it was kind of a proof of concept.
We just kind of followed eye gaze and kind of tracked that in kind of a clinical setting
so we actually we never got to clinical settings we just kind of said like hey this act could
be running in the background and kind of tracing the eye gaze of children and hopefully eventually
lead to early diagnosis by seeing how they track this and be doing a tentative with kind
of the doctor or not so it was kind of a verbal concept it really wasn't finalized or finished
but it was kind of a senior thesis that we did.
Yeah that tends to be the case with some capstone projects they're more like proof of concept
or feasibility types of studies but they don't always make it to a clinical setting unless
they're picked up by subsequent capstone students because there's only so much you can get done
within one semester.
Was there I thought I recalled one other project you were working on or that you had listed
there?
Yeah in my past it was all through four years I was involved in epilepsy research so I did
some kind of EEG analysis of seizure activity and seizure prediction was kind of the main
theme of it also diagnosing between epileptic and non-epiphylipic CEDAW as you think some
of these methodologies so kind of just advanced like signal processing of EEG to kind of further
diagnose the epilepsy.
Is that something that you're still interested in or are those kind of topics that you still
pursue today or have you gone in a little bit of a different direction?
Yeah we don't really do I don't do that research anymore I find it interesting I do find I
don't know it's kind of like we won't making as much progress as I don't know it was hard
to see as making doing something more significant to improve that from where you were so it
kind of felt like it wasn't making a huge leap to kind of clinical trials but it was
interesting and it was kind of a fun to work with for the time.
What do you do for work now or what does your career look like now?
Yeah right now I work at UCSD University of California San Diego we study silent language
research and and functional MOIs so we do brain imaging studies and in particular we're
looking for deaf and duet individuals who are language deprived so they kind of grow
up in either other countries or places where they don't really have access to sign language
or kind of any language for like a set period of time and then later on maybe ages like
five to thirteen they finally get the first exposure to a real language and kind of how
that affects brain development and affects kind of different things in the brain and
how well they can master sign language so it's kind of correlating them too.
Are you more on the like statistician side of that or are you implementing like surveys
and I'm definitely more on the like engineering statistician side of the functional MOI data
analysis.
It's awesome do you guys have a time frame for that project I would imagine it's longitudinal
in nature? Yeah it's definitely longitudinal we don't have like a definite end date we
have a lot we could do we could do you know kind of go on forever you know there's a
lot to do with it so.
Is there a specific technology within like the sign language and the communication space
that you guys are aware of or that you're kind of focusing on I've seen some apps that
like turn ASL into speech or vice versa turn speech into ASL same thing and like the visual
impairment space I've met with a few different companies that have various technologies that
are supposed to improve the accessibility for people who have visual impairments but
there's also some mobile applications that are coming out that might do stuff similarly
so are you guys using any like app or AI types of tools or is that something that's on your
radar.
Not really no we're more kind of in the like education and kind of brain development so
we do kind of push for early access to language whether that be sign or spoken because that
seems to have a real impact.
There seems to be like a critical career after a certain age of like we're guessing on like
age eight or something you can't really master your first language if you start learning
about age so kind of just push for educational reforms and kind of dialogue between clinicians
so.
Absolutely is that a grant funded project.
Yes.
We can transition back to the sport space and the fitness competition space what's kind
of next on the horizon for you or what's next for competitions.
Yes so I have the real world game in December so I'm kind of getting ready for that.
Are you friendly with Stouty the guy that runs it all.
I am yeah.
Yeah he's been a wonderful resource and has done a lot of good for the industry.
Are you looking to be in the CrossFit adaptive space as well for their competitions or.
Yeah yeah I've tried for it.
I haven't yet to make the games but they have like kind of a different classification system
than we'll watch and that kind of makes it a little bit more challenging.
Except also they only take five people in the normal school division so it's a little
bit more challenging but I've been close to getting in a couple times though.
Yeah I was going to ask if the new I don't follow it too closely but I know there was
a new classification system this year and I was going to ask if it affected your eligibility
in any way or whether have you looked closely into it.
Do you think it's kind of a net positive or are there negative aspects to it.
Yeah I think it's definitely been difficult to kind of go from like a lenient kind of
classification system which is like the first two years to kind of a small intense thing
because you know people who were eligible are no longer eligible and that's been really
hard.
Also those seem to be a little bit of confusion of you know what the terms mean like what
it means to have a significant impairment and you know some people didn't like that
they were ineligible and kind of just the way that they did it it caused a lot of confusion
for a lot of people so in some ways I think it's a net positive but I think it's I say
that because it's an ongoing thing you know it's not like they did it perfectly the first
time and made it great it was a step in the right direction but they also have like I
definitely do have issues with it so.
Yeah it's been I haven't followed it close enough to know all the nuances I think it
is supposed to mirror maybe the Paralympic classification systems to a degree I think
they based some of the decisions off of that but it's tough to find that balance between
like creating equal competition but also not being exclusionary in terms of who can participate
and who can't I wonder if more categories or kind of more tiers to the competition would
allow more people to participate without having to like qualify through their classification
system it's but I know we'll want some people have gravitated towards we'll want from the
CrossFit space because they have more options and a slightly different system so.
Yeah yeah that's one thing that I think I mean real logits has a ton of different divisions
and is more open to having more people and I think CrossFit is really trying to make it
like official like CrossFit games like put a lot of effort and resources and to this
so they just don't have the resources to make it as big as it should be and I'm also on
the divisional athlete committee for CrossFit so I do have like meetings with CrossFit at
CoDs and a few other people involved so we do talk to some of this stuff so I do know
that you know in one sense they are definitely committed but they're also in order to like
make everyone happy they would have to have a lot more divisions and they just don't have
the resources or the not putting the effort to you know do all that which I mean granted
it is a lot and the CrossFit games is not like a cheap thing so you know I do think
that ties with them.
What does your role on that committee look like are you just advising them based on your
personal experience or?
Yeah they're basically just asking for feedback so what the community is kind of filling in
kind of just expect that to them so.
What do you think the fitness industry not specific to CrossFit as a whole but what do
you think the industry has to do to be more inclusive and more accessible?
I think it's a good question.
I don't know it's weird for me I've been kind of thinking about how to put this in words
but a long time it took me a while to actually own up to the fact that I had a disability
or like needed adaptive resources and I think I was more hesitant to some of the adaptive
spaces because of this so I think you know just knowing that they're out there is kind
of like a little thing it kind of hard for me but I think just getting the information
out that the law says is available and the law people who want to help out.
It does seem like as a whole it's trending in the direction where it's become a lot more
commonplace over the last few years than it was when I first started seven or eight years
ago it seems like there's a lot more resources and a lot more organizations that are coming
up to support people with disabilities.
We would like to see that they don't have to be mutually exclusive like sometimes you'll
see nonprofits that only cater to people with disabilities versus for-profit businesses that
aren't inclusive whereas we'd kind of like to see like the disability and inclusion stuff
not reserved only for the nonprofit space.
It should be kind of a part of a business's typical day-to-day functioning so that's where
we like we try to encourage and teach facilities why inclusion is beneficial not just from
like a goodwill standpoint but also from a business standpoint.
You obviously are able to cater to a much larger market and there's been unintended consequences
we support a lot of athletes with Cerebral Palsy and Autism and Down syndrome but that
in turn has kind of encouraged people with maybe less noticeable disabilities to
also seek out our services because they just assume that our gyms are more welcoming and
supportive environments so it would be good to kind of see fitness trend in that direction
when that is kind of for every person regardless of their ability.
Do you have any specific opinions or feelings strongly about some of the terminology that's
used in the space like do you find the term disability or disabled or neurodivergent like
do you have specific like labels and stuff that you prefer to use or don't prefer to
use I know that's one of the things that sometimes people get caught up on when they're new to
the space or when they're new to working with people with disabilities they're afraid that
they're going to speak incorrectly.
What advice would you give to someone who might be working with an athlete with CP for
the first time and that athletes coming into their gym for an initial session what do you
think would be kind of the best approach for a personal trainer to take?
Um yeah I haven't thought too much about it but I think one of the things is like maybe
for me especially growing up and having a more mild case like maybe case of cerebral
palsy that I have had an issue like calling myself a disabled person but I do consider
myself a person with a disability so kind of the disabled like being disabled um I don't
know I tend to not feel comfortable still with that terminology but I will admit that
I do have a disability so it's just kind of I'm not sure what extent that is the me thing
but I think it's just kind of being mindful that like people are you know coming to terms
with a disability in many different ways and you know it's not just like everyone in terms
of one way it's a kind of emotional thing to kind of think about and process and I know
for me just coming to terms with it it was you know it did take some time so I think
just recognizing that it might be different with different people and people are processing
it differently and growing up with it differently and they might have stuff from the past so
just recognizing though is like a mental health and emotional component to it that makes it
kind of difficult to say just one thing for a lot of time so.
Yeah I mean it's that person first language I guess where we've through special education
stuff we've kind of been taught that um you use the person first language you refer to
someone as an individual with autism as opposed to an autistic individual but then I also
see from like the key stakeholders themselves some people prefer to be referred to as an
autistic individual as opposed to a person with autism and they think it's uh they kind
of identify with their diagnosis so I think beyond understanding someone's diagnosis and
how it might affect their functioning we tend to not refer to it too frequently like if
you were to join my gym I would want to find out that you have CP but then beyond that
the only thing I would care about is how that CP affects your ability to grip things your
ability to navigate the gym safely like once that initial meeting is conducted the fact
that you have cerebral palsy just becomes another characteristic it doesn't really define
you as an athlete how you can perform in the gym is what defines you as an athlete so.
So kind of going back to that question of like if you were coming into if you were going
to someone's gym for the first time what would you what would you want from them or kind
of how would you want that first interaction to look like?
Yeah I think for me I'd really um like I think I would hate it if they like kind of
like I felt like if I brought it up and they felt like scared to talk about it like I would
I would much rather like a cultured person to be like asking questions about how that
affects how my cerebral palsy affects me like what I can and can't do what I need to watch
out for kind of to have more of a like dialogue I think that would really be helpful and make
me more comfortable with them knowing that the you know not not afraid of this stuff
or not like hasn't it decoded me or something because I think I think for me sometimes I
can like say have cerebral palsy and then they they could just try to be two hands on
of like what what I shouldn't shouldn't be doing um but I think it's been interesting
as I like learn more about how my cerebral palsy affects me and what what I can do then
um so just just having more of a like dialogue um with what I want and it would be nice so
symptomatically what are the what are the primary ways that the cp affects your physical
functioning yeah so a little bit of like balance and coordination issues kind of all over um
I do get statisticity but it's mostly when I'm tired of fatigue so mostly my more in
my legs than my arms um so I guess that would be kind of the main things that I would talk
about to just like coordination issues or something might be hard because of that and
then you know just being aware that like spasticity will show up as I get fatigue but that's
just normal for me kind of thing yeah I think we we see in the research that like stretching
doesn't necessarily seem to improve spasticity um whereas like like you said it might be
more so a product of fatigue and if you can improve your fitness as a whole then maybe
you prolong the amount of time until you kind of have those spastic episodes so um it seems
to be a case by case basis but it's definitely not definitive in terms of how to treat spasticity
outside of like Botox injections seem to be useful is that something you get every so
often no I've never been Botox you've never been Botox that seems to be one way to uh
reduce the tone in the spasticity that's present have you ever used any walking aids or mobility
aids or have you always been ambulatory um I've always been ambulatory yeah um so I
think it's uh it's been good to kind of cover like what a personal trainer um should focus
on when they're first working with someone with a disability just kind of hammering home
that point that it's more so the conversation that you have and understanding the individual
on an individual basis as opposed to a diagnostic basis um is there anything specific that you
think you would want personal trainers to know about CP or about adaptive fitness as a whole
that we haven't already covered or do you think we touched on the basis that you think would
uh maybe make someone more comfortable working with adaptive athletes yeah um I mean I guess
with the individual kind of mindset just knowing that like cerebral palsy is so different from
person to person and displays in different ways um so it does important and also I think
understanding that people's goals might look different from person to person um I was also
kind of thinking in my story one thing that I really enjoy about CrossFit um or just kind of the
environment is that I've learned a lot about myself and kind of learned to take initiative of my
fitness and you know I could go to any class and see the workout and know kind of how I want to
adapt it and modify it and change it and um kind of feel like my input is like is important and
like reliable and like people trust my decisions and kind of choose the right things so that's
really cool to kind of have that in my in kind of my CrossFit environment in my in my gym um
and I think that's something I really like hey that was important to me and that was something
that came through kind of dialoguing with coaches and kind of working and kind of
thinking how different workouts affected me um are those decisions that are those decisions
that you're more so making or that the coaches are helping you make um decision more than I'm
making so I think that's been really cool to be like hey I can learn to do this myself and make
these decisions myself and I don't need a coach like looking over like shoulder to so um you know
and that's maybe kind of a personal thing but I think we coaches should be mindful that um
I don't know that individuals can be taught um can be reflective can think about how the work
out went and think about how those people already affected them and um I think taking that approach
of like hey you know it's not always just telling them what to do but like telling teaching them
how to think about themselves and think about the workout and um so I guess it's kind of dependent
on the individual what they want but um for me I really I really like that and I think that's
something that kind of drew me to CrossFit and the competition is that I get to kind of see what I
could do and learn about myself and learn what I can and can't do and focus on that so yeah I
mean no one knows your ability better than you do so um to be able to get that input from the athlete
themselves is is integral but it also might also might ease some of the concerns that coaches have
like um maybe they're concerned that they're not always going to have the right answers or not always
be able to support the athlete but if they understand that it can be the athlete advocating for themselves
and kind of problem solving alongside the coach and it's not always up to the coach to have all
the solutions but it's more collaborative effort that might be more reassuring for the coaches
that they don't have to have a significant background working with all different disabilities
to be able to start accommodating some people with disabilities so I think that that can be kind of a
a good takeaway that a lot of times you're just looking for an environment where you can be supported
and you can kind of challenge yourself but like you said not everyone has the same aspirations in
terms of competitive fitness I think sometimes the narrative that um in CrossFit is individuals with
disabilities that are real high performers and that's great it gives gives younger individuals
someone to kind of look up to it gives them representation in the space but I think it's
important that a large percentage of individuals with disabilities aren't going to be competing in
in fitness competitions but they still deserve the right to be able to go to a gym and improve
themselves and in kind of whatever the way they want to be and whatever way they want to focus on so
we'll really enjoyed having you learning kind of about your experience finding ways that we can
apply it and extrapolate it to other fitness environments appreciate the time that you took
today to talk with us and look forward to staying in touch thank you for listening to the AdaptX
podcast our effort to amplify the ideas of our guests and create more inclusive and accessible
industries is futile unless these episodes reach a larger audience if you enjoyed our discussion
today please leave us a rating or review on whichever platform you use and if you would like to
learn more about AdaptX the course that we teach to health and fitness professionals in the projects
that our organization is working on you can subscribe to our newsletter through our website
www.adaptx.org until next monday