All right. Okay, welcome to the AdaptX podcast where we have conversations with individuals
building accessible businesses, advocating for inclusion or excelling in adaptive sports.
Our intention is never to speak on behalf of those with disabilities, but to provide a platform to
amplify their voices and share their ideas to a more accessible world. Today I'm joined by Justin
Hagel, the Colgate Darden Endowed Professor and the Director of the Center for Movement, Health,
and Disability in the Department of Health, Human Movement Studies and Special Education at Old
Dominion University. Contextualized within the interdisciplinary field of adapted PE, his primary
research interests center on exploring how disabled individuals experience physical activity
participation, including within school-based physical education context. Since joining Old
Dominion University in 2015, Dr. Hagel has amassed over 270 peer-reviewed research publications,
as well as several edited or authored texts. He currently serves as the Director of Project
CAPER and the Co-Director of the MAMC, two adaptive physical activity training collaboratives that are
funded through the U.S. Department of Education, focusing on training doctoral students in the
field. He is also currently the past President of the North American Federation of Adapted
Physical Activity and the Editor-in-Chief for the peer-reviewed Publications Quest and Adapted
Physical Activity Quarterly. Might have to redo that bio and not mispronounce afterwards, but
you gave me a good challenge there. So, Justin, thanks for joining me.
Yes, my pleasure. Thank you for the invitation. No worries on mispronouncing. I don't want to
be sad this whole time we're talking. Why did you dedicate your career to
exploring and understanding inclusion? That's a great question. I think I got into
the field of adapted physical activity after having some hands-on experiences
with various programs for people who are blind or visually impaired. That's kind of where I
started off at least learning about the field. I was also a teacher at a school for autistic kids
in Queens and New York for three years, also kind of helped build that passion. I didn't start
talking about or thinking about inclusion much until a few years into my tenure here at ODU.
There was this moment where I started thinking about the incongruence between what disabled
people were telling me about their experiences within general PE classes and the concepts of
inclusion, how I understood them. So, we were pushing kids into general PE in the name of
inclusion, but they weren't having positive or meaningful experiences in those classes.
To me, that just didn't make any sense. So, then I started spending a lot of time talking
to other researchers and scholars around the world about inclusion and trying to learn as
much as I could and then writing a bit about it afterwards.
Yeah, absolutely. I feel like most people that get into the space had some sort of formative
experience, whether it's a program like you mentioned or for me it was first volunteering
with Special Olympics in high school. Is there anything that you initially believed, I'm sure
there is, that you now think differently or that you no longer believe? Or kind of like,
yeah, I guess how has your understanding evolved over the years? And I'm sure we'll dive into
some of the finer details throughout this conversation.
Yeah, I think if my beliefs hadn't changed over the years, I think that would be more concerning.
As a faculty member, my job is to learn and it's to then share what I've learned with people.
As I've learned various things through research, through talking with disabled people about their
experiences, through understanding our field on a national and international level, and then
our field on a national and international level, I've learned a lot and it's changed the way I think,
changed the way I think about and talk about our field and changed the way I think about and talk
about disabled people within movement spaces. Initially, I probably thought, you know, it's just
great that people are active. So great, let's get people active without thinking about the why.
And now most of my life and most of my time I dedicate toward thinking about
that and asking other people the question why. Yeah, and that's hopefully what I hope I'll be
able to ask you today. But I started with special education. I was initially pursuing a degree to
be a teacher before I decided I wanted to open a gym. But I distinctly remember, and I've been a
caregiver for a boy with Down syndrome and autism since I was 19. And I distinctly remember in those
classes, professors, well one advocating exclusively for person first language, and I've noticed that
you use identity first language and I know there's nuances with that conversation. But I also remember
them advocating for the full integration of people with disabilities in general education
classrooms with no exceptions. And I just had Jacob, the boy I watch in mind, moderate to severe
disabilities if you classify him in that way. I'm like, there's no way he would be able to
participate in a meaningful way. There's no way he would enjoy it and there's no way it wouldn't
be disruptive for the other classmates. So like, why is that the standard? So I guess how do you
explore the intersection of inclusion, exclusion, sub-separate classes for exclusively for people
with disabilities? Like where does that exist in the education landscape? Yeah, I think that,
I think you bring up a lot of good points, right? I think the language piece is great. I think
one of the best examples of how my thinking has changed over time is the tension I now have
between the person first language that I was trained to use during my undergraduate, masters,
and doctoral work, and then the identity first language that I now believe in because of the way
in which disabled people are disabled through society and how that's reflective of respecting
that disabled people are disabled by society, not by the impairments that they have or exclusively
by the impairments that they have. In terms of inclusion within schools and spaces, I think
historically our field, adaptive physical activity generally, has had preferred treatment of
integrated spaces and so years ago, just for clarity, years ago I did the best I could to help
distinguish what integrated or general PE is versus inclusive PE. So for me, I try to use the term
integrated to describe the physical space or place where disabled and non-disabled people are
together and I use the term inclusive very differently as you know from some of the stuff
that you had read to represent an intersubjective experience of acceptance, belonging, and value.
And so with that, we have been prioritizing integrated spaces for a long time and I think
unfortunately when we've done that, we've done it at the risk of further marginalizing disabled
people by dumping them into spaces and people have been bringing this up for years. There are
scholars in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s in adaptive PE who have brought this up and have
written about this. So most of the stuff I write today that's about this is not really different.
We're not really pushing things forward. We're actually kind of circling back to ideas that have
existed already and just providing more of a platform for them I think and hearing disabled
people say it themselves I think is a bit more powerful. Yeah, well that while that research
might have been around for decades, I don't think I really was exposed to it outside of your material.
So whether that's a testament to how the dissemination of content and material has evolved
over the years with advances in internet and just how we consume information or not, those concepts
might be around but I'm curious as to why they were not initially adopted. What do you think is
the resistance to those ideas? It's a good question. I mean I think it's hard to really look at
the etiology for why some ideas take and why some don't. For me at least, when I first started
writing about integrated spaces not necessarily being inclusive, I had a handful of people who've
been around for a long time, some recently retired who reached out and said I'm glad you're writing
this but you know we did this 20-25 years ago and that actually got me thinking like that means
we need to keep going and some of it is to respect those voices as you had said when we opened
you know the podcast is about amplifying disabled people's voices. Part of what we need to do at
least in our field is respect and listen to what disabled people are telling us and that doesn't
mean a wholesale movement away from integrated spaces. What it means is listening to disabled
people about what's best for them and allowing them perhaps choice into which spaces they're
existing and participating within and respecting that like acceptance and belonging and value can
happen across space and place. It doesn't depend on non-disabled people being there. That's a
pretty ableist concept isn't it? Yeah yeah absolutely. I had a conversation last week with
someone with cerebral palsy and she was like you wouldn't be able to pay me to come work out at
your gym and she referenced back to gym class in elementary and middle school and how she was
integrated into gym class but in that sense she had to do the warm-up laps with everyone which
required everyone waiting for her to finish and staring at her as she finished and all these
negative experiences to the point where now she won't be active into adulthood and it made me
like as I was reading your papers and as I was thinking back to my experiences in middle school,
high school, PE, it's tricky because like if you look at
people don't always want to participate in PE whether they have a disability or not.
So how do you value and in the same lens and they might not want to participate in mathematics or
science but these are things that they should do. So how do you balance student feedback,
student preferences with also expectations and standards? Yeah I think that there's a
difference to me between engaging in the class and engaging in a class in a setting that is
most educational or appropriate for you and so you know within special education including within
adapted PE there's supposed to be a variety of spaces or places or placements offered for
disabled kids to engage in any material whether it's math or physical education and so I think
it's a matter of listening to feedback to say you don't need to participate in PE. I think it's
listening to feedback to ensure that the environment in which PE is provided is the one that's most
appropriate and meaningful for the child and I think the same is for math, same as for whatever
topic it might be and so you know if we're shoving or dumping whatever word we want to use,
disabled kids into integrated spaces without like providing a specific
or with providing modifications and trying our best and we have very kind-hearted adapted PE
people or PE people trying to do so but it doesn't provide meaningful experiences for the child.
It still means we need to rethink what we're doing in the schools regardless of you know how great
the teachers are you know how wonderful the peers are if the kids not participating or having a
meaningful experience why are we doing them? Because we're not doing them because we're not
doing them because we're not doing them because we're not doing them because we're not doing them
and so it means why are we doing them? Yeah I think I've read that PE teachers on average only have
one to two classes in pre-service education that's related to adapted PE or disability
inclusion as a whole. Do you think that's one of the primary underlying factors or I mean even if
they could be misled to assume that as long as they check the box of there's people with
disabilities in my class I'm being inclusive like where do you think the disconnect is and how can
it be addressed? I don't think it's one disconnect. I think there's many many many disconnects. I think
one is what you said that there's this conceptualization that as long as disabled kids
are in the room it's an inclusive class and for for administrators and perhaps for teachers but
probably more so administrators and parents for them oh we're an inclusive school we're good to go
kids exist in the same space regardless of what they're doing within that space.
The piece about training is is interesting but it's also and it might have some impact but that's
probably the most villainized piece among APE folk. It seems to me that over time APE people
specifically faculty have said over and over that all they need is more training all they need is
more training we only have one class in higher ed programs if they had more training everybody
be better at this. You know that might be true but you know our field's been around for about
40 years now and more training isn't on the horizon and so we have to rethink what we're doing.
You know if you need more training to teach in an integrated placement but you don't need more
training to provide a high quality experience for children in a different placement why are we so
focused on the placement why aren't we focused on the high quality experience. How can you gauge
acceptance belonging or the experience as a whole with someone like my Jacob who doesn't have any
verbal language and might not be able to comprehend what you're asking him? Yeah that's that's a
question that we've talked about often in like research circles about how do you talk to kids
with like limited expressive or receptive language skills about acceptance belonging and value or
you know disabilism or exclusion within any setting and so you know there's a variety of
different types of data collection or assessment that people might use. We've used with a faculty
member out in Illinois named Wes Wilson we use drawing based inquiry where we've asked kids to
draw what PE looks like for them and then we've asked them questions about those drawings and
we've used a variety of different techniques to elicit what that meaning is for them with a couple
of master students in the past we've had photo based inquiry where we've asked kids to take
photos of what is meaningful for them within a PE environment. There's a lot of different ways to
talk with disabled people who don't necessarily speak the same way that typical data collection
would collect like not every kid's going to want to be interviewed regardless of disability.
So there's ways to do it to me the first step isn't figuring out how to talk to them it's opening our
minds that we can communicate if we can communicate with a child with a disability or disabled child
then we can ask them questions about acceptance belonging and value. Yeah absolutely that brings
up a good point because as I was reading through this I'm reflecting on my own gym and my own
space and my own business and just my understanding of inclusion and how it exists in those spaces and
I'm thinking of specific clients of mine who like you said don't have the receptive or the expressive
language and thinking about smiley face scales and how I could find a way to help them understand
to like gather their experience within my gym as a whole but I also wonder they don't have other
opportunities to be physically active so they don't have a frame of reference to compare
inclusive fitness too so you had mentioned in one of the previous responses that like assuming that
programs that only train people with disabilities as exclusive is an ableist comment but I wonder if
too often people with disabilities don't have the opportunities to experience different environments
to forge like a complete picture or at least to have something to compare to I'm not sure I'm
articulating that well but if the only experience and the only opportunity that people with
disabilities have is to participate alongside other people with disabilities then they don't
know what the other environments are like yeah no I think that's a good point and you know if you
think about how schools are generally structured there's not a lot of choice for any child with
what kind of placements or spaces that they're experiencing sport physical activity in right
there's generally just one thing offered and that setting or that concept I guess of funneling
people into settings kind of goes into adult life as well where you know if you came through a school
for the blind a lot of the connections you have likely are within like the blindness community
and so therefore you like are more likely to engage in like blind sports in environments that
are you know blindness specific and likely dominated by blind people whereas I suppose if you went
through an integrated school and the only physical activity or p.e. experiences you might be offered
are integrated you likely will have those experiences more readily available to you after
graduation or at least hypothetically that's how it should be it's probably not actually that way
but I guess going back to an earlier point if that's the case and you're within the integrated
space and the experience is not pleasant or you don't feel valued within it you're more than likely
learning that you don't belong in that space which likely then perpetuates inactivity after graduation
so it's a really difficult double-edged sword where you'd probably want people to have both
opportunities at some point during their forming experience but it's very uncommon I think
especially in like low low income areas or rural areas where access to like adapted sport outside
of school is limited yeah well that's why we've it's probably the biggest thing that I think I've
shifted on over the years is my first model for my gym was heavily influenced by Special Olympics
like Unified Sports Models so I had high school volunteers helping with our quote unquote adaptive
programs that met a few times a week and we worked pretty hard to transition to a model where the
presence of a disability is just another factor to contribute to your program design process and
you can train at whatever time of day or with whoever you choose you would like to so our
wheelchair users with CP like maybe they're most comfortable with other people with disabilities
and there's a few sessions throughout the week where the gym is almost exclusively people with
disabilities and they can choose that but they can also choose other times so I think when
adaptive fitness is just viewed as a program or an initiative and it meets once or twice a week
that's not enough so I guess that's that's I'm kind of advocating I guess when I speak to fitness
professionals to find ways to not allow the disability to be a defining characteristic of
when and how someone trains yeah I mean I like the idea of a comprehensive offering where
people can look at the calendar of the gym and say at this time only disabled people are here
or at this time only autistic people are here and the setting of the gym is designed for
you know the strengths of autistic people or disabled people or whatever group it might be
and if you know if the value of the gym is also to include those integrated programs to make sure
that this is clear and obvious in the schedule you know so that when people show up at the gym
they understand that like here's what's happening at these times you're welcome to join the gym
but you're making that decision yourself like we're not funneling you into our values you're
allowed to pursue your own values within your gym experience is it fine to not be inclusive to
everyone like is there like I I'm probably not competent or uh skilled enough to support
certain levels of spinal cord injury or like I don't have a skill set to be able to do that
I don't have a skill set to help everyone and there's environments in my gym that might not be
ideal for someone who doesn't prefer a lot of sensory stimulation like is it fine to exclude
people on the grounds of this isn't going to be the best place for you or do you think it's fine
I mean that's a personal decision no yeah yeah I think I I would trend towards being transparent
with what the environment is what we can offer and give them the opportunity to decide if if
that's something they want to try yeah I think it would be more dangerous to say we're fully
inclusive depending on what you how you use the word inclusive but we're fully
capable of supporting everybody's needs and then people show up and you can't support those needs
then tell them up here are the people who we know we can support these groups of people
and so that's what we're going to do yeah so for all the years my gym has been around I've referred
to it as an inclusive strengthening conditioning facility um with just inclusion being the primary
word I was familiar with um and it's necessary from a marketing standpoint right like gyms aren't
typically designed with disability in mind so uh until it's the expectation and not the exception
I do think you need to articulate that people with disabilities are welcomed in your space and
inclusion is just kind of the term I know in one of your papers you talk about how it's hard to uh
like hang your hat on a word that's so vague and can mean so many different things but do you think
I should not call it an inclusive strengthening conditioning facility should I call it an integrated
strengthening conditioning facility or I mean I think you should call it whatever you want this
is uh I think if you think from a branding perspective and a marketing perspective calling
something inclusive is typically attractive to people um but you know as you know from the
writing that that I sent you um for me to say something is inclusive is is a promise that
you're making that you might not be able to fulfill so if you're saying everybody who shows
up at your gym is going to feel accepted a sense of belonging and a sense of value every day that
they show up I think you're making a promise that's impossible to keep it doesn't matter disabled
non-disabled um I don't think you can keep that for anybody and so if you're striving toward
inclusion and striving toward those you know meaningful subjective or inter-subjective
experiences I think that's really the only thing you can promise or anybody can promise PE teachers
gym owners you know higher ed faculty you strive toward providing an environment that people can
feel supported accepted have meaningful experiences but to say that it's happening
before anybody even shows up is uh it's difficult yeah yeah and as I was kind of thinking through
what we could do better with goal reviews and client conversations putting more of an emphasis
on that experience and not just the quantifiable performance goals of are you improving your 5k
time are you improving your lifts but looking at the community aspects and the sense of belonging
and value are there scales and assessment protocols that ask these questions and do so effectively
yeah I don't think so um I don't think they exist I've worked with uh well briefly worked
with an AP teacher up in Fairfax County who I think is probably the best one in the country
that I know his name is Brad Wiener and he's put together a website that has resources for PE
teachers to talk to kids about feeling accepted a sense of belonging sense of value I think he does
remarkable work I say we briefly worked together because it didn't take him very long to figure
that stuff out whereas for me it's very difficult to figure out like the practical side of things
but I don't think scales or questionnaires are going to do it I think it's like constant and
consistent engagement with people and so if you know your people as a gym owner and you can talk
to those people not only is that going to enhance the likelihood that they feel accepted and valued
but you also can gather a sense of what is helping them feel accepted but like the sense of belonging
and sense of value it's about meeting and talking with people not about you know just checking some
boxes to say you're inclusive yeah is he at UVA no he's an he's an AP supervisor Fairfax at
county school district okay all right so he's an actual like physically in schools and teaching
AP not not a researcher he's actually working on my committee no because there's a there's a student
from UVA completing his PhD dissertation and he reached out to me last week he's with Dr. Block
and he asked if he could it could develop yeah Matt so his PhD thesis project I guess is going
to be on developing assessment protocols for the course that I teach and so we kind of talked about
what those outcomes would be and it's it's something that I've struggled with so just I guess for
context we teach a course to personal trainers and strength conditioning coaches on how to create
more accessible spaces and more effective programming for people with disabilities and
you can improve confidence I guess but that doesn't mean that they're competent and there's
probably some degree of selection bias if you're looking at like attitudinal beliefs towards
disability that people that seek out my course probably already feel pretty strongly about the
value of disability inclusion so we're trying to figure out I guess what we want to measure
and the primary objective is to create more environments for people with disabilities to
train that's a second order effect to help them get to the level of success that they want to
to us training the trainers who then go and deliver those services so with Michelle actually she had
mentioned like well why don't we interview some of the clients that coaches who've taken your course
and like why don't you why don't you talk to the clients themselves instead of the coaches
to see how they're benefiting from the services that those trainers provide and that would be
good insight into I guess the sense of belonging and value and acceptance that they feel but I'm
interested in how to quantify that I guess maybe it doesn't even need to be quantified but
and I guess that's the that's really the question is why are we quantifying stuff you know why are
you why quantify somebody's personal and lived experience where you know there are stories about
the experience is going to be far more meaningful than just a number saying it was good you know
right like the the color and the gray that you can develop from learning from the person and
listening to what they're saying and not reducing what people think and feel to a number is you know
going to be of much higher quality I think so yeah I would encourage you to talk to the clients and
or engage with a research team and have that research team do the work because you probably
can't and shouldn't do that work being invested in having obviously a conflict of interest with
talking to clients and hoping to get positive results out of it but you know having a research
team come in and speak with you know 20 of your clients to see what those experiences are like
would probably provide to you really valuable information that you wouldn't get from you know
a survey or you know a scale or something of that nature yeah one of the bigger projects I guess
that I hope to tackle is is coming up with some sort of standards or systems to I guess define
it's not the word but to characterize whether a gym is making the appropriate efforts to being
more inclusive and accessible I framed that a different way than I might have framed it before
speaking to you like the standards of how can a gym become inclusive so standards for inclusive
fitness facilities so I guess that's where the the quantifiable stuff seems like it's relevant
but maybe it's it's not well I think I think the way you word it is is it's fun to to pick apart
right so is it about effort to be inclusive or or is it about people feeling included because if
it's about effort I mean you know I could put a lot of effort into pushing a wall over but that
wall is probably never going to move I'm not strong enough to move it but you know if you
if you want to measure whether people feel included or what they can what can be done to have kids or
have people feel included I actually again think listening to the people is the way to go and
perhaps you know engaging in some sort of project where you're working with the clientele to develop
that framework and they can essentially tell you exactly what you need to do in order to
support feelings of inclusion within your settings you know of course gains and like gyms are about
games right drinking protein shake you know bench pressing all that stuff and that's important stuff
as well but to me if you want to make a gym environment inclusive then it's about talking
to the clients and asking them what can be done or what is being done that makes you feel welcomed
here and then you can develop your whole framework on what an inclusive fitness facility is and
what an inclusive gym feels like based on the voices of and opinions and experiences of your clients
yeah that's a good idea I think like so addressing obviously ADA standards as the base level and then
going beyond that and having consistent conversations and a feedback loop and a
performance improvement plan type of thing where you're addressing the barriers and the issues
of creating a lack of a sense of belonging or acceptance yeah I think there's a there are
qualitative methodologies that people talk about like either participatory research or
co-production research depending on you know who you're talking to and like what specific
particularities of the research that you'd want to do in order to construct like these recommendations
or criteria or what have you but there's ways to do it it takes a lot of work but the outcome if
well and you're working with those clients that you're talking about I mean you could have
something that's very unique that doesn't exist elsewhere because honestly I don't think people
take the time to listen to and develop ideas with clients I think instead it's easier to
think about and develop those ideas without them and then apply it and hope that it works
yeah yeah that's where we've been revising and rewriting courses alongside people with disabilities
who are either sharing their lift experiences in gyms or they're sharing their expertise or
subject matter expertise on various topics but what is your vision I guess for an ideal
physical education class or environment oh I don't have a vision for an ideal class I don't
think that's reasonable I think for me people entering PE and exiting feeling like they can
be active as adults is the objective and I don't really care what it looks like I think that's what
it has what we need so when we look at national shape standards or national shape objective
shape is our our national organization shape America the objective is to help people develop
into physically literate adults and I think oftentimes that's the goal of PE for non-disabled
kids and I think oftentimes among adapted PE people the goal ends up being how do we get our
kids into the gym instead of how do we have our kids reach that same or aim toward that same
objective becoming physical literate adults and so there were definitely times that I thought
differently about this but today my thinking is that I don't really care what PE looks like
and I think we should think beyond what PE currently looks like but for me the goal has to
be developing physically literate adults and so how do we do that the best possible way for every
kid I don't think there's an answer to that question I think cognitive flexibility is really
important on the teacher end and engagement with the kids is really important to help develop the
best strategies for reaching that goal but should each kid have the same path toward that goal I
don't I don't think that's a thing that I could I could say yeah and and you see in youth and
adolescence that people with disabilities tend to be more active during the school day and then
less active on the weekends and then significantly less active into adulthood because I guess the
opportunities aren't there to continue to be physically active because of transportation
barriers and all the other socioeconomic barriers that people with disabilities might feel like
disabilities might face into adulthood so it is interesting I haven't really thought of it as
physical education the experiences in physical education through school is what might incentivize
or motivate someone once they graduate once they turn 22 plus and they age out of the school system
if if they're on that track or if they go to university but they to be more active into
adulthood I guess so PE is almost a segue into kind of what I do at a gym I mean it should be
that should be the goal of PE I mean no different than learning math in school going back to math
like you don't learn math in school so that when you graduate you don't math don't engage with
mathematics right you never do math again right yeah just ends or you know english like you don't
learn how to write so that you never ever write again like it's all taught so that you could be
functioning members of society the point of PE is not so you play sports and run around as a child
and so that you have the skills and the interest and the passion to be physically active into
adulthood and throughout the lifespan and so what you do with adults should absolutely be the segue
or it should be a segue from PE it should build from what's done in PE and perhaps PE needs to
look at what you're doing and then reverse chain down with kids or help teach them to generalize
what they're doing into settings like that that you work in so that that lifelong physical activity
can can continue yeah I wonder how that would change the curriculum and what's taught like
whether you have to learn all these different sport skills whether you have to have a unit on
uh badminton or whether there's better ways I guess to encourage people to be physically active
well like how many people have played badminton because yeah I guess that's why it was one of the
first things that kind of came to mind like it might be helpful to learn how to kick a ball and
throw a ball etc for a lot of different sports but um let's trash badminton I probably played four
times in my adult life you know for I played zero so you got me yeah but you know I go to the gym
every morning I mean maybe not effectively but I go every morning right and like I learned how to
lift when I was in a high school weight training class and so that likely is the only high school
PE experience that I functionally use on a daily basis now I still like to engage in sports and
you know I was playing basketball up until I had ACL surgery last spring so like some of those like
interests and passion in sports probably got developed in PE but functionally like the weight
training skills that I learned transitioned really well to going to the gym after almost like it to
me it almost seems like new partnering with high schools in the area and helping them learn how to
teach you know fitness to disabled children in high school is like the goal like that would reach
the goal of developing physically literate people afterwards yeah yeah absolutely I mean we've always
kind of viewed one of our roles to be the bridge between like PE I think that's a misconception
sorry PT that's a misconception that I I write about a little bit maybe misconceptions too strong
because it implies that I have some unequivocal truth that's the opposite but like that PT
shouldn't be reserved or activity for people with disabilities shouldn't be reserved for PT
if the only opportunity that people with disabilities have to train is physical therapy
then they're never going to meet the CDC's levels of daily recommended physical activity so just this
idea that disabled is not synonymous with injury and there's obviously things that I can't do the
physical therapist can do but that doesn't mean that I can't try to start supporting people with
disabilities and kind of welcoming into our environment and then learning alongside them but
language is a big piece of what you write about obviously the definition of inclusion
versus integrated and other things special needs is something that pops up more recently in my
world just people not being fond of special education and special needs as terms do you
have any visceral reactions to that I mean not not anything that's profound I don't understand
why special needs I don't know the history of special needs as a term maybe that's something
I need to think about more and read about more before having like a really sound opinion on it
I know it doesn't feel right I'm thinking about disabled people who I talk to on a regular basis
and thinking about how they would react to me saying that they have special needs would be a
pretty interesting conversation I think I probably would curse that or yell that yeah well from what
I've heard it's like I don't want my needs to be viewed as special I want them to be viewed as
basic human rights so and then you see special ed special education I still see a lot of parents
of people with disabilities refer to their kids as special needs or sped students which is interesting
but maybe that's just a generational thing and just what they've become accustomed to over the
years and maybe it will take years to reverse some of that stuff but yeah it was just something that
came to mind when you think of special education and special needs students well I think with
language generally it takes a lot of time to change language it takes a lot of time to change
ideas and so like for us to have an idea perhaps the idea is to discontinue the phrase special
needs I don't think this like that like you know the inclusion stuff it's not overnight stuff like
this is like teaching generations of people to think differently about the way they talk about
disabled people and allowing that to seep down generations so that that becomes you know the new
phraseology when thinking about or talking about or speaking with disabled people but with that
being said by the time that is reproduced across generations it probably changes a lot more
probably changes again that's the other thing it's like we need to be very reflective and
responsive to changes in the way people talk and think about disability and yeah because if we're
not then we will you know get left behind at some point yeah if you're trying to sell inclusion or
these concepts of inclusion to a PE teacher how how would you convince general education
physical education teacher that they need to learn about these ideas no that's not my job man
I don't you know I think there was a time that I was thinking about like how do we get these ideas
in front of people and I think that ideas are ideas and what I write about is ideas and scholarship
I write our ideas and thoughts and perspectives and I don't think it's it's not who I am to push
my own agenda I don't want my agenda to be misconscued as truth these are perspectives and
ideas and there's people who have conflicting ideas and so I won't spend time you know selling
stuff to people I won't go to conferences and try to sell this idea if somebody asks me to talk
about it I'll talk about it with Brad again like he and I worked on some resources for teachers a
few years ago there was a person named Matt up in Fairfax as well not the Matt you're talking
about a different Matt there's loads of Matt's in Virginia who made a video for us just explaining
what we meant by inclusion but I think you know maybe I'm misunderstanding or over emphasizing
the selling piece but I think we as a field oftentimes are trying to sell ideology and trying
to sell our own perspective as truth and that's just not who I am what I believe is what I believe
it's not a universal truth it might not be a universal truth but it's the concept that people
should be exposed to if you've if you never heard about it I had never heard about it when I was
starting my gym if you taught me it when I was 22 I would have expedited the developments that I've
made over the years so while you say it might not be your job to sell it I'm not sure whose job it
would be it's nobody's job so you're on the forefront of this idea that could positively
benefit a lot of people with disabilities so why would you not try to get more people to adopt it
you know I also don't know if I'm on the forefront so like the first time I saw inclusion as
subjective experiences in papers was I believe it was 2010 Nancy Spencer from University of Alberta
wrote about it and I was like this is I love this like this is incredibly like smart and thoughtful
and this this disabled person centric focus you know I also learned about like the differences
between integrated and inclusive PE from different people I saw a presentation in Brazil years ago
about this and so what I've done is just moved things forward I've kicked the can down the road
per se as far as like developing the ideas and probably writing a little more about it
but this is it's also still relatively new I mean the first paper I wrote about inclusion I think
was in 2019 so that's only five years ago and then we've written a bunch of that since whose job is
it to sell it I don't I don't know if it's anybody's job to sell it again you know we we if you start
selling ideas or pushing ideas too far the problem becomes that you're trying to recolonize knowledge
with your own knowledge and your own ideas I very much believe that we should share our ideas we
should publish ideas and thoughts but it's up to the consumers to decide whether or not to implement
ideas based on these thoughts it's not researchers job to push things to sell ideas some people do
it some people spend a lot of time trying to sell that's who I am yeah I can appreciate that and I
definitely respect that but though the woman that you referenced that started writing about in 2010
like if she adopted that same perspective of it's not my responsibility to change this then these
ideas just live in the silo of people that are already doing these things but it doesn't spread
to people that aren't doing them so yeah but who's to say that these the ideas that those people
should adopt I haven't come across a better one than how you articulate inclusion oh well thanks
but I mean again Nancy's the one that started that idea and I think I'm sure Nancy Nancy and a lot of
people have influenced you so I also appreciate that recognition but like I think it's it's an
idea that's worth exploring and worth implementing if there's always a disconnect between those who
do research and those who impact the people on the ground then the idea is never no no and I agree
with you there I think that having having mechanisms to talk with people who are in the field who are
practicing in the field is it's critical and that's why I started working with Brad these are
conversations Brad and I had where I believe he said these are cool ideas but it doesn't mean
anything for us and I thought okay well let's work together to figure out what it means for you and
so those resources have been developed and you know again have worked with people when those
um when those requests have been made so there's never been a time that teachers or school districts
or the state of Virginia for example has acceptance belonging and value in their state learning
objectives for PE now there's never been a time where I've said no to sharing the idea but selling
the idea is different because selling means I'm pursuing profit or I'm pursuing capital yeah I
guess I did I when I said selling I guess I I'm more so from the lens of how are you going to
convince people to adopt these things and implement them for maybe no benefit of your own outside of
you would want to see the fruits of your labor benefit people with disabilities yeah I think
with that it's been a long process of trying to develop resources but it's also not my skill set
um one of you brought up Marty earlier Marty Block from UVA and one of my favorite conversations
with Marty is about like he's he's so much better than I am at figuring out how to share ideas in
consumable ways that teachers will adopt them whereas I am like you know flying around like
a space cadet in an old Looney Tune movie right or a Looney Tune show and so he actually wrote a paper
in palestro which is the journal he edits which is for practitioners explaining inclusion as a
subjective experience and acceptance belonging value and I loved it because like to me being
able to translate that information to that particular market is critical but it's not
something that I work really well at I would need to work with practitioners in order to understand
their context to translate what we're thinking conceptually to what they want to do practically
yeah well we quoted your definition of inclusion in a NIH grant application for the value of our
program so hopefully we can hopefully we can implement it into the into the fitness space in
some ways how do you think the fitness industry at large or as a whole could be more inclusive
and accessible for people with disabilities um I think the fitness industry should be talking to
disabled people more um I think our industry the adaptive physical activity piece is like has
shifted considerably in that direction there's a lot of people now that this is like the core of
their research and the core of their scholarship is centered on disabled people and I think there
are a lot of newer people who are doing a lot better job than I do and that I can do with it
and so we're seeing a lot of really cool pushes toward further um centering disabled people in
decisions and adaptive physical activity in the fitness space I've seen a lot less um and that's
not to say it's not happening because you know I don't see everything I don't know everything
that's going on of course I'm a human but I think that um to learn about fitness facilities that are
co-designed with disabled people would be really interesting and to see scholarship on it because
I think while doing it is important and doing it is going to have an impact locally I think
scholarship on it the research on it but also like the concepts and theories on it and on paper
allows it to then spread faster and a wide to a wider space than just doing it locally
yeah absolutely are there any projects at ODU or that you're working on that you're particularly
excited about in the in the coming years now we are always doing something um right now I think
the most exciting stuff is the stuff our PhD students are working on they each have very
different perspectives there's um four full-time students two part-time students each doing really
interesting stuff I'm not going to go too deep into it because I don't know if they want me
sharing their stuff yeah but that's been really cool we're we have a grant application out for
something I'm quite excited about which is developing a PE curriculum with blind and visually
impaired kids to be disseminated to PE teachers so allowing them to help construct what those
experiences should look like we're hoping to hear back soon of whether or not we got the funds to
execute that project and I think that's the beginning that to us is going to be a model
for how we want to help develop and suggest PE curriculum and adaptations and all that good stuff
for the future instead of non-disabled faculty making statements about what should happen in PE
we're trying to bring together groups of kids and kids with various disabilities to make those
recommendations maybe quickly kind of tangent off of that do you think having people without
disabilities experience adaptive sports like beat baseball by wearing a blindfold or by having that
sense removed is acceptable I've seen I've seen contradictory thoughts on disability simulations
yeah that's a good question so we've done quite a bit of work on
research on disability simulations I work with a guy named Anthony Maher in the UK on a lot of it
he's done more work than I have in that area I think at this stage I would so I've spoken to
we've spoken to blind or visually impaired people about this and because of the research we've done
I would hesitate to think that that's a high quality experience I don't know I think there's
this perception that you learn what it's like to be blind by being blindfolded which I think is a
really difficult thing to state because you can't really learn how to actually embody blindness just
from 30 minutes in a blindfold right yeah so the message is really difficult for the participants
to get um on with that said I mean people still do this constantly so you know yeah I guess I
the idea that disability is kind of a transient state I could see being seen as offensive like
it could be offensive to someone um who's in a wheelchair when someone comes up to him says oh
yeah I feel yeah I broke my leg back in middle school and they're like yeah you don't feel me
um but like I just I wonder if adaptive sports being integrated into general PE
curriculums can be beneficial I know from a motor learning standpoint and like movement variability
it can be uh even if it's like only being able to use one hand when you play basketball and
and that could be beneficial for the students with hemiplegia that that's their everyday life
and then they're participating equally with their peers but like at our 5k this past June we had a
beat baseball clinic where a beat baseball team came and they they had some of my athletes without
disabilities try to sprint to a base a beeping base with a blindfold on and try to hit a ball and
it was an interesting experience and I enjoyed watching my kids kind of
gain a different appreciation for adaptive sports as different not less but I wonder if it is a
blessed or offensive in any ways I think it can be and I think it's about messaging right so if it's
you're going to learn what it's like to be blind or you're going to learn what it's like to be a
wheelchair user that's just that's simply not true but if it's we want to introduce sports to you
and you're introducing a series of sports and some of those sports happen to be disability sports
but you're not saying this is what it's like to be blind you're saying we're going to play
beat baseball here are the rules here's the functions behind it here's why we're doing it
I think that makes a lot more sense yeah I like that yeah but but if yeah if you start saying this
is what it's like to be blind when you put a blindfold on someone for 15 minutes I mean that's
probably I would assume that's going to offend some people yeah yeah I think that's a fair
assumption uh well Justin it was uh it was an honor to talk to you uh these are all concepts that
are really important to me hopefully I was able to articulate them in a way that was somewhat
coherent uh throughout the conversation but I think gyms could benefit from learning from the
ape space um and specifically the ideas that you that you write about whether you want to
sell them to people or not I think they're worth selling so uh thanks for the time this morning
yeah no my pleasure and yeah I'm not going to sell them but you're welcome you're welcome
and you know I think for those people in the the gym space the fitness space there's loads of
research and loads of work to be done in those areas and and centering it on inclusion or
exclusion as these interests objective or interest objective experiences would be quite interesting
it's just something that you know has to happen we are grateful for the support of our first show
sponsor resolution fitness offers leading brand health club equipment and accessories for residential
and commercial use in addition to traditional exercise equipment they specialize in adaptive
fitness products and wheelchair accessible machines if you're interested in outfitting your
fitness facility or home gym to be more accessible visit www.resolutionfitness.ca or the link in the
show notes below you