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 intentions never to speak on behalf of
those with disabilities but rather to give them a platform to amplify their
ideas, voice, and learn strategies to scale our impact and help other businesses
become more inclusive. Today I'm joined by Evan Schwerbrock. A few months after
earning his bachelor's degree in health sciences from Bradley University, Evan
developed Lieber's hereditary optic neuropathy and became legally blind. While
adapting to this new normal, Evan went on to receive a master's degree in
kinesiology with a concentration in applied exercise physiology from the
University of Illinois, Chicago. We're big fans of U of I because of Adam
Bleakney and all the work they do for wheelchair racing. Now Adam is a
certified personal trainer and fitness nutrition specialist through NASM and
runs the online resource Cane and Able Fitness for individuals with visual
impairments. Evan, thank you for joining us today. Of course, thank you so much for
having me. Can you maybe take me back to first your first university
experience kind of going into Bradley and why you wanted to pursue health
sciences? Yeah, so I had gotten an opportunity to do a lot of really cool
things in high school. I went on to what I call boarding school but it was a
math and science academy where we had to do these different service hours.
I was always a kid who didn't care as much about math and science and I was
just staying afloat there. I really liked the physical stuff. So I would talk to
our PE teacher who was a former bodybuilder all the time and she was
super accommodating to me and just gave me all kinds of time that she really
probably shouldn't know because I was probably asking a lot of really dumb
questions. So I was very interested. I wound up helping start a student athletic
trainer program there where you can do your service hours by helping out the
sports teams and the athletic trainer in order to wrap ankles and get that
kind of stuff ready and we got kind of into some rehabby things there. And then
I got to do a study basically all on my own at the Feinberg School of Medicine
at Northwestern University with her physical therapy group with stroke
patients and then using a fancy robot to help analyze the force velocity curve.
So I really enjoyed that project and really wanted to help people but that
experience kind of lent me into physical therapy things and then once I got into
undergrad and was working out all the time and started shadowing the strength
coaches and doing things like that I realized I wanted to work with more
active populations not just help people after they're already broken but
instead get ahead of that and make sure they're able to help people way before
they're broken so that they don't break down nearly as early. So those initial
kind of experiences and fitness kind of led you to pursue this degree in health
sciences and during that time you became legally blind. So can you maybe kind of
take me through the months leading up to that? Were you symptomatic in any ways?
One eye, both eyes? Yeah so I had graduated from undergrad and then was
basically doing like a gap year assessing my options and working a couple
different jobs in the fitness industry. I was a high school strength coach for
that summer working as a personal trainer and overseeing a college fitness
center and I was playing just regular recreational volleyball at our YMCA and
this was in November 2014. I was usually pretty good so I had been forced to
play a lot in undergrad and everything with my friends and then one day I thought
my contacts were off, thought the lights were just bugging me or something was
something was weird and then I got hit in the face and I always like to kind of
use shock value of it was actually my eighth grade teacher who was on the other
team who hit the ball and I got hit in the face so I was like that that's like
never happened. I've never been hit in the face before I'm always able to
react really quickly but I didn't even see it coming so keep playing.
Wanda was going to serve and I throw the ball up and I lose it. I don't even know
where the ball is so I just randomly swing and it like hits the ground like
10 feet in front of me. So it was that day I realized something's up. Wanda
was getting an eye appointment and very quickly realized nothing was being able
to be fixed in the front and then we took pictures of my nerves, my optic nerves
and they were pretty well shot already. So within two weeks I'd gone from
correctable vision, contacts and everything, drive in all that stuff to a
death ride in a car, put my keys away after I got that preliminary diagnosis
and we were done just figuring out how to adapt and go from there. I believe since
it's a mitochondrial disease it can only be inherited by them through the
mother. Is that correct? Did anyone in your family have it? Yeah we've got a
couple people on my mom's side who have it. So was it always on your radar or
something you were concerned about or? Not really especially we were told like
it is onset later in life and has to do with like alcohol or drug abuse and I
was like well I'm not very old or anything like that and in terms of
we were kind of misinformed it can show up and usually does show up in younger
guys who are about you know early 20s or so. But I still had doctors telling me
like you're like the healthiest person we've ever seen with this disease or
anything so I was kind of a weird anomaly still but yeah I wasn't really
going through life thinking anything about that until all of a sudden I was
like oh that's right it's probably it. Yeah so how does that manifest just for
people who aren't familiar with the diagnosis so what what amount of usable
vision do you have today? So where where mine stopped is I have some vision in my
peripherals and then down the middle is pretty dead. I always talk about well
everybody has that kind of little blind spot in the right eye where you can
like kind of there's always like a piece of paper tests I remember doing in
school and where it teaches about this but your brain actually makes up what's
there so it takes context clues and tries to fill in that gap so it's not
confusing a blurry spot. So my brain is constantly trying to do that with what
tiny little blurs it actually gets down the middle so it winds up being a bunch
of little dots and stars jumping around and trying to confuse me and that leads
to some hallucinations and little things like that that you learn to control and
understand what's real and being manifested and what's not but my
peripheral is what I kind of rely on a little bit more. I would imagine that can
be both physically and emotionally and intellectually exhausting. Do you find
that like you fatigue a lot quicker just over the course of the day trying to
work or kind of do you have a different setup for how you for how you can work
effectively? Yeah the first couple years was pretty rough fatigue wise. I would be
able to focus very long bright lights you know I couldn't sit in a movie theater
for that long or I'll just sit there with my sunglasses on things like that. I
still have some white sensitivity a little bit nausea things like that but
able to control it a lot more you tend to get used to it pretty well. Yeah what
was your initial response to the diagnosis and like what do you think is
like the social emotional differences between an inherited disability later in
life as opposed to someone who was blind from birth? That's a good one. Me
apparently how it's pretty chill. We had my brother's birthday party that day when
I when we figured out what was going on and I tried to keep a hush-hush but the
eye doctor called and read me out but it was I don't know I've got a very tough
family especially my mom so she will just shrug off surgeries or literally
cancer at times just power through treatments and stuff so it's kind of
ingrained in us to be able to power through and just figure out solutions
through action so I was just kind of locked into that how I was gonna adapt
so I gave myself a couple days and and then we were trying to just figure out
life and faking my way through that it was a couple jobs still and zooming on my
phone when people weren't there so I could do my computer work things like
that but I'm not sure so much how it compares to someone who would have had
such a disease all their lives I just know that as long as you have a good
support system that social emotional aspect can be a lot easier yeah that
mindset and like the support system is a pretty similarly echoed sentiment when
we talk to clients with like SEI or who've had like a drastic overhaul to
their lifestyle due to a disability later in life and I think it's an important
message to communicate because a lot of times like the medical model of disability
people assume that everyone with a disability resents their condition or
that we should sympathize for them whereas a lot of the conversations that
I've had people have the mindset that they've taken towards their disability
is is pretty motivating so I kind of like the the message you communicated there
did you ever were you ever concerned that you weren't going like you were
gonna have to change occupations or that you weren't going to be able to do what
you want to do I'm pretty stubborn so I kind of just figured I figure something
out because I hadn't even applied to grad schools yet when this happened I was
I was working on it and researching ones to do and things like that but then after
after we figured this out I quit applying anywhere except for University
Illinois Chicago because my sister was there and she was willing to be
supportive and and help me out just surviving during that time so I just
kind of put it in God's hands and said if I'm gonna go to grad school it's gonna
be here that's gonna be it and then we'll figure it out from there and
luckily I got in and we kind of just kept trucking did you know that U of I
was National Paralympic Training Center and worked with a lot of Paralympic
athletes so I get to kind of relive that experience every year through this this
camp that I work in St. Louis where these young adults come in with visual
impairments they're like I've never met a blind person so I would thought I was
gonna be part of that statistic as well not knowing how to advocate for myself
not knowing what resources there were I thought there was gonna be nothing
except maybe a software to help me and that be about it so I had no idea for
like the first probably half of grad school how I was going to adapt let alone
understand there was a bigger community up there so we actually did for one of
my classes one of my teachers brought in a guy who was really good and on the
Paralympic team for wheelchair basketball and they had a whole wheelchair
basketball day for us had all the equipment there at the gym apparently
tucked away in a closet and we we played that for a whole class so that really
helped me understand that there was a bigger community there and get
to appreciate it yeah absolutely and now are you working full-time as a personal
trainer I'm in between jobs right now I'm actually trying to just build up
can enable fitness currently there there were some different issues with my
disability and a workplace actually up in Alaska and we're having to deal
legally throughout all of that and figure it out but in the meantime making
the best of things this is giving me a really good opportunity to work on
can enable fitness a lot more so being able to create more content and then
got to do a trip and do some seminars in Medellin, Colombia and all kinds of fun
stuff like that so trying to put my focus into this population currently yeah
absolutely maybe we can dive into that a little further when you were first
diagnosed did you were you able to find any resources for training with a
visual impairment or did you find the information to be pretty scarce I had I
found nothing really I'm especially approached at level I wish to a lot of
help for people with disabilities is a little bit more like yeah you did it and
just doing a little bit of something I know you guys are different but I've
worked with many different disability groups growing up and that seemed to be
what it was it's like a pat on the back I go you stood up and down in a chair
five times yay we're done so I wanted to make sure that something really
efficacious what was going on out there and yeah I did not find that in my first
few years of having a visual impairment yeah that's one of the narratives that
we try to combat against is like the idea that solely due to the presence of a
disability that you should expect less or that you should congratulate someone
for performing rudimentary tasks and while it's like well-intentioned it
continues to kind of marginalize and lowers like expectations that people
have for people with disabilities so it's a intended to be positive but ends up
actually having negative repercussions at least from my perspective but I try
not to be like too cynical because I know people are doing their best to
support people with disabilities but they aren't always knowledgeable enough to
know how to push them appropriately or maybe it's just what they've been
exposed to so I can appreciate I can appreciate the approach to trying to
like raise the standard and raise the bar for people with disabilities you
competed in strongman currently or previously yeah I'm revving back up
trying to get back in shape to do some some cool competitions again but I think
I've done 11 strongman competitions and those have all been since my diagnosis
yeah and what kind of drew you to strongman do you find that it's a sport
that has fewer barriers to participation with your visual impairment there?
No the strength sports it's probably the has the most barriers but to me it's the
most fun yeah there's something different every time so I was drawn to it
because I'm a farm boy at heart and it's just moving weird junk and getting
do cool things picking up stones and pulling trucks and things like that so I
was really drawn to just how less A to B it is and said you just get to kind of
bully things around have fun with it yeah that's awesome and do you want to
maybe highlight some of the successes you've had so you want to do an estate
championship a few years back yeah yeah a few years ago I won Illinois strongest
man swept my weight class and then they actually it was really cool sometimes
they do it where all the guys do all the same weights regardless of weight class
so if it's a speed event then you know a benefit smaller guys and if it's a heavy
event then it's larger guys things like that and pound for pound I got barely
second place to a guy who travels internationally and does it pro so that
was that was really fun that was a good day for me I always say I was listening
for two that day because my mom was competing too and she got a little
injured so we kind of just made up for that and went into a different mode that
day and then there's another competition that I had one back in
Peoria Illinois as well which had to dig deep for that one too but it was one of
the first ones I've had I had both my brothers there for so it's really fun
because you kind of sit around and hang out with your buddies and and your
family and eat fruit gushers and then go listen stuff and it turns into some
really fun days that's yeah that's awesome awesome way of recounting those
stories do you do you find that like event organizers are ever concerned or
taken aback by the fact that you have a visual impairment no I wouldn't say that
at all I they have been incredibly accommodating I wouldn't say to a
fault but like very very very nice I get an extra minute to kind of feel things
out and set things up and understand where where transitions will be if I
move from one stone platform to another things like that and it was pretty funny
at 2019 Nationals there was like it was at that point the biggest
strawman competition ever the most people ever out in Columbus Ohio and the
promoter at the rules meeting is like no one gets a coach on the floor except
this one person who is blind that is that there's a only person I am allowing
to have anything and don't say a thing about them getting anything and just
told all thousand people that were there like they get an accommodation don't
even talk to me so it was pretty cool because everybody you know you got
everybody look around the stands like oh who is it who is it so it was was very
very fortunate that they are just super helpful it's a very very kind community
for sure yeah I was gonna ask if you ever use a guide like I'm in the marathon
world and obviously a lot of people with visual impairments run with guides do
you do use a guide and competition or it depends on the event and strawman it
could be a bit of anything so if it's like a truck pull where you use a rope
the rope is your guide really there so that that isn't too bad but then there's
been some events where it's just like I don't know left from right if I throw a
sandbag and it doesn't get as high and I will get it again and help with that so
just different things like that I don't know where starting lines are finishing
lines are so depending on the event is how we'll use a different guide whether
it be in front of me I've had even like a farmers walk down like a city street
what it was so it's easy to be left to right because I had no guidelines with
my peripherals I had two guys yelling at me on either side of me in order for me
to like want to believe you know what I was going straight or not so it's really
cool because if that by event have to adapt very different ways yeah like that
what is since I'm kind of in the content creation space as well putting
together our course what is your approach to creating information like
disseminating information do you look for literature is there really even that
much literature on fitness strategies for people visual impairments or is it
more anecdote yeah it tends to be more anecdote there's there's a little bit of
research but not very much at all you kind of have to delve into other issues
and that's where my master's degree in kinesiology really helps out is able to
kind of have a unique perspective of experience mixed with education so I'm
kind of mixing the biomechanics physiology of different diseases think about
the stability of some things like that in order to create pertinent content and
then that also changes how I address people so a lot of people you know want
to create Instagram videos with better just share video and not describe things
very well so it's working on audio description and then I have different
ways of creating teched out cues for someone to feel intrinsically and then
turning that into more of an audible cue so that you're able to tell a client
with a visual impairment what to do and they understand how it's supposed to
feel because they can't just watch you and pick it up yeah maybe piggybacking
kind of on that topic maybe if you were to walk into my gym or if you were to
go to a gym and work with a personal trainer for the first time maybe someone
who doesn't have any experience working with someone with a visual impairment we
only have one client at our gym who is fully blind and has been since birth but
if you were to go into a gym and work with a new coach what would you want
them to ask you kind of what would you want that process to look like maybe
from start to finish so building that report is huge from the get-go and I
actually have to do this myself every year at that camp I mentioned in St. Louis
the programs was called so the SOAR program they bring in these young adults
a lot of them haven't been allowed to do PE there's a really sad this trend of
children being just put on the side for PE class and so they don't have very much
physical capacity or kind of understand those cues so we started building that up
just by asking what they like to do what they've done before and then being able
to go through some basic movement assessments and then kind of during that
process when you're you're figuring each other out always asking like okay what
is your level of visual impairment and then another really big one that I
always hammer home with different medical professionals and stuff who I'm
consulting with is make sure you ask about other symptoms of their disease
everyone thinks oh they're blind that's the biggest problem but there are
tend to be a lot of other issues that come with different diseases that
manifest that blindness so you have to make sure to take that into account as
well and sometimes there'll be even other parts of a disease that mess with
someone way more than the visual impairment any any specific examples of
that or do you have any co-occurring like symptoms yeah me I get neuropathy in my
hands and my feet at times so everybody's it's like hey your shoes are untied
and it's like well that that helps it not be too tight so I can feel my feet
better throughout the day and then kind of disorganization or people being too
loud or getting in the way and things like that that'll throw my my just
nervous system off more so actually get blinded so if things are organized and
I'm able to understand what's in a space that helps a lot what level of physical
support should a fitness professional provide and obviously they shouldn't
assume that you want to have like a hand-on-hand or hand-on elbow guide but
what level of physical support do you like or have you found that most people
are comfortable with I think it really depends on the individual a lot of
blind people use human guides especially in a newer environment and especially if
they're newer to using a cane or being visually impaired me I hate human guide
where you hold on to somebody's elbow and like back of their arm and follow
them I kind of like just just rolling and having my cane and using my what
little I have and everything so it's gonna kind of depend on the person so
opening that gate and asking like hey do you want do you do human guide or any
any assistance going around you just ready to roll and making it really nonchalant
and not weird that that can always be helpful to ask that and see what they
like and then also know that might even change over time yeah absolutely that's
a good a good framework for I mean most of these things can be alleviated by
just having genuine conversations with the client I think sometimes fitness
professionals are concerned about doing or saying the wrong thing whereas at
least I've found if your intentions are pure most people are are eager to explain
as much as possible or they're eager for you to make mistakes under the premise
that you're doing what you can to support their needs so I think kind of
alleviating some of those concerns for fitness professionals is one of the
things that I hope we can provide absolutely and it's nice also as the
client no matter if you're visually impaired disabled or not it's good to
feel understood in a bit so person putting forth that effort is really great
instead of someone who is just really awkward and then yells at you because if
you have visual impairment they also need to scream at you so yeah it helps when
people do it right that is one of the communication things I see so much that
like I take care of a boy with Down syndrome and autism and he's 19 and
there's some people that just like elevate their voice and like yell at him
like it's going to improve his comprehension if they talk louder it's
just such a weird phenomenon to me but I guess it's just people talk either
woefully slow or woefully loud it's just kind of a funny thing well not not
funny but I do often tell people that like whether you currently work with
people with disabilities or not like these experiences make you a better
coach for all populations like you said like when you're working with someone
with a visual impairment your ability to communicate audio cues has to be so much
stronger and it has to be concise and it has to be precise and that's gonna kind
of make you better when queuing any any population so I was curious like as a
trainer did you work obviously you worked with some able-bodied and and
clients without visual impairments did they ever have assumptions about your
ability to coach them some people you know there's always gonna be people who
doubt or don't understand and then make a lot of assumptions which has led to the
the the wrong information we talked about before but I've been in some
different situations where people are very understanding and even just like
you you can't even tell that he's blind and all this stuff or people will think
other people when they tell them about my condition they think those people are
lying about me even you know stuff like that so I can be a pretty good actor and
I I take a lot of preparation and thought into kind of rigging the room or my
space in order to be able to get the right angles and put people in the right
position so I still a lot of overthinking and I think people understand
that and appreciate that and we still get the job done I was a professor at a
college for four years teaching this stuff and then also did four years at a
chiropractic clinic as a rehabilitative exercise specialist and we didn't really
have any issues in either of those realms people were able to understand and
we're just able to adapt. That's awesome I love the educational background in
addition to the to the lived experiences it makes you better than anyone really
for communicating on this topic both having that academic prowess and and
the anecdote what have been your greatest influences from a from a
training standpoint? Probably like Louis Simmons from West Side Barbell, Charles
Apoloquin who you know passed away sadly but probably the greatest strength
coach of all time from a numbers perspective and then Caldeeds is another
big one from University of Minnesota and then you know if if you're good at
training you're constantly learning and cherry picking from other people things
like that so I was watching like Josh Bryant you know hardcore arms training
videos yesterday to pick up different techniques and kind of keep those fresh.
Yeah the tri-phasic stuff from Cal was a great resource for me and obviously
cherry picking Louis Simmons stuff like we work with high school and collegiate
athletes a lot and it's obviously a different population than powerlifting
but the special strengths and and learning how to how to develop different
physical qualities is imperative and I kind of always say like being a
effective adaptive fitness coach is first and foremost being like a really
good strength-conditioned professional as a whole because you can't really like
creatively apply these principles unless you have a a wide depth of
information to pull from so like you can you can't creatively come up with
solutions for someone with a visual impairment or someone with an
intellectual disability unless you have a variety of experience and
intelligence to pull from so while you might just be interested in the
disability piece it's imperative that you learn the strength and conditioning
and learn from the people that have done it to a very high degree so you can
better serve those clients. Absolutely I think of it kind of like a tool belt like
you need more tools in your arsenal and with people who have disabilities you're
gonna need some more specialized tools as all you can't just use a hammer and
screwdriver you have to be able to have these more unique pieces to your
knowledge base so if you're able to have a broad set of tools and learn from
many different things you're gonna be able to very creatively apply it to our
population. Yeah absolutely what technology do you use in the gym or what
technology do you think gym should have to support people with visual impairments?
I don't think that they should have much extra technology I'm kind of a
stickler for you can't just magically create an environment that is is going
to really fit a very small percentage of our population. Instead we as a
visually impaired population have to learn how to operate within certain
systems. There is certainly a middle ground that's not being met yet I think
that we're heading towards that direction though I've had some different
colleges and things like that reach out and want some different ideas of how to
make their facilities more accessible but being over the top and I even think
about somebody's brought up like oh let's put Braille on the machines and
then you can have every weight set like labeled on every pen loaded machine with
Braille and we're like no it makes no sense like people are just gonna think
that's that's just like some goo or something and like just flick it off and
it's not gonna make it a week so like can you imagine like people who don't
know what it is during rest periods just like I'm gonna be a hero you know yeah
yeah take this off so instead I think a lot of it is gonna be about learning how
to navigate typical gym settings I had to do that down in St. Louis where I went
to a big commercial gym on my own I had to figure it out and it was a very
unique experience especially trying to get the people who work there to
understand like oh there's something different about this guy we have to
treat him a little bit different like you can't just be like oh yeah the
shoulder press machine is over here and they just sprint away that's not gonna
work so there's these different accommodations and a lot of this I
cover in my free gym acclimation program which we put up on our website have
audio description for and everything like that where we created a program that's
just three weeks long and slowly stair steps you into being a blind person
starting at a gym where day one you're figuring out where the bathrooms are
where the general weight area is where like the stretching area is a spin room
things like that and then starting to build in more pieces of like how to work
a pinloading machine how to load weights and hit certain weight numbers on a
barbell and get used to doing that memorizing the dumbbell rack and what
order is supposed to be in things like that if you really chunk these things
out I think it's a visually impaired person you can have a lot of success
yeah I would love to share that guide with our audience if that's a free
resource on your website we can definitely link it in the in the show
notes because that acclimation period is probably essential it's interesting that
you're the the second guest I've talked to the other one was with an SEI who
kind of adopt this perspective like it's not the gyms responsibility to adapt to
me it's my responsibility to adapt to the gym I think that's that's an
interesting obviously it's a reassuring standpoint from like my perspective as a
gym owner but at the same time I want to do everything I can to kind of be
proactive and making sure my facilities as accessible as possible are there any
like small universal design like aspects that you would that you would want to
see at a gym that you think and because I think sometimes people think you have
to drastically overhaul a facility to make it accessible when in reality you
can make a few small steps like any small steps that you can recommend for
people with visual impairments
different sort of tactile maps I think are useful and I've had a lot of positive
feedback about oh that system would be really great helping to understand the
layout of a gym because a lot of it is once you get to a gym floor it's it's
usually loud you know there's usually music going there's people talking
because apparently that's what you do with the gym now you can throw on weights
things like that and it's it's a lot of stimulus and it's hard to understand
where things are and like play the echoes of the room and understand what's
where so it's really good to be able to have some sort of like tactile map as
well so there was a college who was just like oh we could create these like braille
maps or something like that in order to help us like just have it at the desk
and then show a blind person how kind of the setup is so they have a general
layout in their head and then definitely walking around with someone who works
there getting the full layout understanding where stuff is is huge
and then even being willing to do that more than once
I know when I just went to the commercial gym the second time I went in
I still didn't know even close to where everything was because you can't just
memorize a hundred machines and where the squat racks are and how that
went all that stuff let alone not run into people constantly so
it's gonna be about just chunking it out so I think that's that's really huge
is taking that that very intentional time to learn certain areas and that's one
of the biggest accommodations that help a lot
yeah that's that's a perfect small small recommendation easy to implement
not super cost not super costly from the gym owner standpoint not time consuming
just something that would be easy to make people feel good about the gym and I'm
sure people without visual impairments could probably benefit from some sort of
some sort of mapping system as well it would help them
learn how to navigate the gym do you do you see any like mobile solutions
becoming relevant have you tried any of the things that
like kind of map out environments and and give you audio cues to a phone
um not so much I know a lot of that's being developed
um there's actually a a blind Japanese woman named Chieko
at Carnegie Mellon who is doing a lot of like artificial intelligence work
in that realm where it maps stuff out and then makes it more accessible and you
can use different apps I have not uh really dug into that too much yet
but it sounds very interesting yeah there was one company that I had a few
conversations with and the premise of it was that you have these beacons
that kind of physically map the entirety of the gym and someone can go in and
get these directions through their phone but the thing that seemed to be a
little tricky with the gym environment is like
sometimes my prowler sleds get parked in like slightly different areas or the
orientation of the med balls kind of gets changed
um or maybe a rowing machine gets moved over a few feet to the left and
I don't know if the the beacons really have the capacity to make those small
adjustments that would be pretty essential if you're being told to walk
straight and they're used to not be a rowing
machine there but now there is like it becomes a little bit of a liability so
I wonder how um the combination of AI and these technological solutions will
will kind of come up with a better alternative to that but
it does seem like it would be something that would be a great addition
if it if they can come up with a solution yeah it's it's certainly a great
start and I always say like at the gym usually people are the problem you know
leaving junk out or getting in the way or like I'm trying to a sandbag run and
I can't see what's going on um so you know trying to do that with a heavy
sandbag and people just like kind of just like lollygag in the way and like
that guys so I always have to have someone if the track is clear things
like that um so maybe AI will create a solution for them too
maybe yeah I feel like half the time my job is just to make the 10 or 11 people
training at my gym aware of what other people are doing because they just seem
to be in their own in their own space and own world but
we kind of wrap up a lot of these conversations with and we've already
talked about this topic a little bit but like as a whole or globally what do
you think gyms need to do to be more accessible and inclusive
not maybe only for visual impairments but for people of all abilities
it's a great question um I think just providing
more willingness to help um and maybe it's just a little bit of side training
in order to understand how to work with someone with different disabilities
um it doesn't have to be necessarily too in depth because again we're not going
to have a three hour seminar at every gym
to figure out how to treat someone with visual impairments and they're like I
have never seen a blind person at the gym anyway which is a whole other problem
um so I think a little bit of background how to work with people with
disabilities and just be kind of have it in the back of everyone's head of that
mindset of being accommodating adaptive inclusive and then just
willing to help in unique ways they didn't really expect to
I think that's really a great start um the gym is a beautiful place to be able
to work through a lot of stuff and improve yourself physically mentally
um even literally get smarter with some of the hormones that get produced
um so we need to make sure that's that's doable for for everyone and I think
making it much more inclusive and especially when the staff is involved
that becomes much more manageable absolutely I think that's a uh
a good thing to wrap up on that was a good conclusion to to that discussion
so Evan thank you for uh for joining us today and sharing the wisdom and we'll
definitely link to the resources that you provide in the show notes and uh
we'll share on our social media stuff leading up to your episode
but really appreciate your time and your expertise
of course thank you so much for having me on and thank you for the work you're
doing out there
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