S1E6| Sara Olsen & David "Chef" Wallach with CrossRoads Adaptive Athlete Alliance on All Things Disabilities, Research, Coaching, and Building Empathy

Welcome to Episode 6 of My New Normal Podcast! Today I’m joined by the amazingly awesome Sara Olson and David “Chef” Wallach from Crossroads Adaptive Athletic Alliance.

Crossroads Adaptive Athletic Alliance is an amazing non-profit organization that helps adaptive athletes participate in fitness through education, grants, and competition.

Chef’s adaptive story started way back when he was a child and he tried to “stop himself too many times with his head.” He suffered multiple concussions due to his daredevil nature and was consistently trying to push the envelope. Chef had trouble in school and was labeled by some teacher’s as learning challenged or disabled. As he later discovered, the troubles he had as a child were more likely related to the injuries he suffered.

But by his own account, his true adaptive story started when a marine named Nick Tom walked into his gym. Nick was wounded very seriously fighting in Kandahar and was a bilateral, above the knee amputee, among other very serious injuries. Nick was so optimistic and so quickly progressing through his PT at Walter Reed that he was referred to the gym as a higher level of therapy.

When Nick arrived, it really started a conversation about how they should create a coach/client relationship between adaptive athlete and coach and how a set of metrics should be defined to show progress and data, and what are the places that progress should be shown. And not only that, but how do we make it easier for ALL athletes with permanent differences feel comfortable and included.

Sara’s background is in the Navy as an EOD tech, currently reserves, but by nature of her job she has many friends (of results of incidents in the field) are now adaptive athletes. She got a call from Chef and a mutual friend about hosting a functional fitness competition for adaptive athletes and thought “sure, how hard can this be!”

When they really started getting into it, they discovered that less than 50% of the competitors were veterans and that what the athletes needed was a community to get involved in deeper than a yearly competition.

In this episode we’re talking about:

• How Crossroads Adaptive Alliance helps the Adaptive Community
• Chef’s Adaptive Journey
• Sara’s Adaptive Journey
• The evolving nature of the coach/athlete relationship
• How to be a better coach to the Adaptive Community

To Learn More About Crossroads Adaptive Alliance go here:

http://crossroadsalliance.org/

https://www.facebook.com/CrossroadsAlliance/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqbpB-dkO4HvYvfWjP-xhrg

Listen to My New Normal Podcast here: YouTube iTunes Google Podcast Spotify

To learn more about wheeled athletes & most common injuries that put someone in a wheelchair such as spinal cord injuries check out: https://www.drtheresalarson.com/wheeled-athlete-spinal-cord-injuries/

To check out my Functional Training for the Adaptive Athlete Online Course (eligible for 0.5 CEU's for NSCA under Category D), visit: https://www.drtheresalarson.com/adaptive-trainers-course/

Help My New Normal raise $2,500 for Challenged Athlete Foundation in 2019: http://support.challengedathletes.org/site/TR/Events/General?px=1289385&pg=personal&fr_id=1611