To us at CrossMag like to talk about fitness at 360°, we love the sense of community and the concept of inclusion that this discipline gives us every day. Precisely for this reason, we are always looking for new stimuli and interesting initiatives.
This is how we came across a reality that really fascinated and surprised us!
Unhe beautiful initiative implemented by two wonderful people: Andrea De Beni and Luca Casciello (Coach Red), from the box CrossFit® The Turin Mole.
Let's talk about the Adaptive Academy, the first Italian initiative for the development of an adapted and inclusive sports training culture!
Inaugurated in October 2020 and now in its third edition, their The course includes two days of training for coaches, students and athletes, in the context of the adaptation of sports activities.
Do you think that in the first 3 years of activity, Adaptive Academy welcomed 70 people with motor, cognitive and sensory disabilities, offering over 1.800 hours of training adapted across 4 different disciplines: fitness, climbing, self defense and weightlifting.
All this to create a common knowledge base that allows coaches to share training practice with anyone with motor, sensory and cognitive disabilities! We let our two founding heroes tell you all the details, in this beautiful chat!
Hi Andrea, Hi Coach Red. It is an immense pleasure to be able to speak with you. We'd love to get to know the face of the Adaptive Academy and discover your personal story!
Net: Hi everyone! The pleasure is ours! I'll start: my name is Luca Casciello, I have a degree in Sports Science and, over the years of study, I began to get to know a world outside the weight room, first approaching weight training and then meeting CrossFit® by chance, now 15 years ago , when no one knew exactly what it was yet.
Between studying, comparing with the first Italian coaches and seeing the realities abroad, I came to open my box, the CrossFit® La Mole, which I still manage.
Andrea: Instead my name is Andrea, I am a husband and father of 3 daughters, I live in Turin and in my life I deal with communication for a banking group.
I approached CrossFit® six years ago with Red at CrossFit® La Mole, at the age of 37, after 24 years spent playing basketball, also associating a strong passion for quads, which led me to compete in endurance, cross and enduro around Europe.
I was born with one congenital malformation of the right femur so I walk, run, jump and train, wearing a prosthesis.
The naturally inclusive approach that I have had in sport, in which I have never experienced the exclusive logic of categories for people with motor limitations, has led me to extend this concept to CrossFit® as well: people must have the opportunity to experience the sports experience together.
Only this, for me, is true and proper inclusion.
In effect, your meeting gave birth to an exceptional project to say the least: the Adaptive Academy. How did the idea come about?
Net: By chance! It went a bit like this: one day, one of my athletes took Andrea to the box (I overlook the whole part where I started training him, etc.). The real idea of creating this project was born when we sat down at a table with Carlo Mazzola, from the Mazzola Foundation of the same name.
I make a note: this foundation aims to give the opportunity to play sports to anyone with a disability!
Alla domanda: ''What do you need? What do you have to buy for the box?'' we realized the answer was ''Nothing''! The only thing that really served was the training of coaches.
At this point, we started training, but we weren't satisfied, it wasn't enough for us! Therefore, we decided to bring together several professionals to create a course that we would have liked to have done, if we had been trainees.
Andrea: In fact, that's right! The idea was born from a motivational boost given by the Mazzola Foundation with Carlo, its founder, who prompted me and Red to think of a project to be financed philanthropically, with the aim of not buying things, but creating value.
It was at that moment that, with Red on the technical side and me on the communication and concept side, we launched the Adaptive Academy: an ecosystem of services that aim to amplify the culture of inclusion in the sporting arena, with a focus on movement and fitness.
In fact, our next question is precisely this: understand what your goals are!
Red – Actually, the training course is only one of the projects! We would like to create a community of professionals (not just coaches) who interact, discuss and support each other through videos, consultations and workshops. Even for those who don't have a disability, we have created a workshop where we can simulate it, so we can reach people!
We can talk to coaches, adaptive athletes and non-adaptive athletes.
Andrea: Working with people with disabilities is not our primary focus. We believe that to help the maximum number of people we need to act on the general ecosystem: coaches, first of all, but also students of Sports Science and, why not, citizens too.
The goal is to be a point of reference for adaptation in Italy and to create a different culture and awareness of limitations.
Let's clarify for the coaches and owners who read us: can all boxes accept an athlete with a disability?
Red: From a coach's point of view I would say yes, but if you ask us if all disabilities can be managed in the classroom… Well, no!
Some need longer or parallel routes, it can't be an absolute yes to everything!
From the point of view of the owner, I would say that the only discriminating factor is architectural barriers and this is also why the Adaptive Academy has its own architect within the staff, so that he can help companies that need it.
Andrea: The real and big obstacle lies in the unawareness of being able to do it. Many coaches and many owners of boxes and gyms take the impossibility of being able to welcome so much for granted, that in the end they believe it to the point of not really being able to do it.
Those who have experienced the MAAFA course on their own skin discover that the obstacles are not so insurmountable and that it is simpler than you think.
Let's imagine that in addition to the physical limits there are also psychological blocks. How do you approach this?
Red: I generally expect a coach to already be an empathic person. Anyone arriving at the box may be scared of physical activity, or ashamed to be seen because they are overweight or not particularly athletic.
In the case of an adaptive athlete, you can add the fact of being seen with or without a prosthesis and thinking about slowing down a class.
My advice is always to speak clearly! I don't see the problem in asking an athlete if he is ashamed to be seen without prosthetics, in this way he will move accordingly.
I also don't see the problem of asking one athlete to help another one pick up a piece of equipment. Which of the two is the adaptive one? What helps or what is being helped?
Andrea: There is a very strong aesthetic theme, but which, fortunately, is gradually crumbling in the new generations. However, the embarrassment is still there, sometimes we even talk about shame.
This is why it is important to work culturally on coaches, owners and athletes: it is the inclusive context, which hardly cares about diversity, which becomes welcoming by definition and breaks down those psychological barriers dictated by fear and fear of judgement.
What are the difficulties during a workout from the athlete's point of view? And what are the problems from the coach's point of view?
Red: From my coach first concern is and always will be safety.
If my athlete has adequate space, if tools and equipment are placed in an appropriate manner, I find myself thinking about the "my athlete” and not to a “adaptive athlete”.
If we want to talk about competitive spirit, then we will ask ourselves how to make the transitions between one exercise and another easier; do we do the WOD with or without prostheses? Does it put on and take off? Is there space for the wheelchair? Do we have any tactile references?
Andrea: As an athlete I don't see any particular difficulties compared to a non-adaptive athlete. For me do i double under on one leg, for example, is normal and I don't have the possibility to compare the difficulty with doing them with two legs.
Therefore, for me the fact that something appears difficult or more difficult than its standard version is not an element of departure from that particular skill: for me, either you do it like this or you don't!
In addition to these difficulties, let's imagine there are some taboos that you find yourself facing?
Red: We are a society that is not yet used to being disabled. We have trouble saying things or maybe making jokes, as if a blind person didn't know they were blind.
Another example is that of tending not to touch aids, as if they were soap bubbles that risk breaking at any moment.
Well I'm more worried about breaking a real leg than a fake one...
Andrea: Actually the world is going a little upside down today and from the “poor thing” we have moved on to the superhero, with the result that myths have often been created where these do not exist at all or, worse, a narrative is created which, instead of bringing sport closer, scares and distances.
We have to work on the concreteness, ease, simplicity, feasibility of things, getting rid of the concept that "an athlete with a disability has already won his challenge” because all one does is mythologize and martyr him.
Andrea, you are a competitive crossfitter. Tell us about your achievements? Coach Red, on the other hand, how do you prepare him for competitions?
Andrea: I prefer those of a community that needs to grow and that can give so much to the whole fitness movement over my personal goals.
Being the first to participate in some prestigious competitions counts as a goal only if 10 enroll afterwards, otherwise it will be an experience for its own sake and good only for me.
From a competitive point of view I realize that, despite my 43 years of age, I'm still improving constantly: this leads me to find great satisfaction in daily practice and to enjoy every hour spent in the garage.
I wish, paradoxically, that the goal didn't exist, building new goals every day.
Red: Instead I can tell you that I prepare it exactly like everyone else.
All the coaches work to acquire the motor patterns that allow the development of the various skills and, consequently, have increasingly better performing athletes.
Once the movement has been acquired, the strategies to increase the force, stamina etc. are the same.
This means that, first of all, we need to start from what the athlete can do and find out what his weaknesses are, regardless of the disability, so as to create a programming.
If you work on the ability to perform 10 unbroken hang power cleans, there may be an additional indication on balance in the case of a lower (lower limb disability) or on the choice of tool in the case of an upper (upper limb disability).
Coach Red, what advice can you give to a coach who wants to train an adaptive athlete?
My advice is not to worry: talk to the athlete, discuss with colleagues, try new proposals even if they may prove to be unsuitable: maybe they're not all useful advice or it's not the right time.
With Andrea I even said to him: ''do it like this… wait, it doesn't work! Let's change!''.
The important thing is to remove the athlete from under the bell jar, because this is a limit that the coach places on the athlete.
Andrea, what advice can you give to a disabled athlete who wants to approach CF?
Nothing different than what I could tell anyone else. In other words, every element that you see in the box starts from an extremely simpler base, therefore you can really stay together and grow day after day starting from scratch.
At the beginning the challenge is to get to know your body and see it do things that were impossible before then, then the mastery of the skills begins and then the performance becomes measurable; this makes this discipline virtually infinite. I mean, the same things I could say to anyone.
Finally, can you tell us about your future projects?
Creating a community means building something that feeds on itself. We would like future Adaptive Academy projects to be paradoxically initiatives promoted by others, based on new needs, new themes, new athletes, new ways of training.
Adaptive Academy cannot and must not have only one face, but must be able to be a community that proposes, creates, unpacks, tries again, falls, gets up and reinvents itself every day on the basis of ever new needs and stimuli.
If you want to know more about this beautiful reality, we strongly advise you to follow them on Adaptive Academy page on Instagram!