This week is Dyspraxia Awareness Week and so I am taking a little detour from my normal blogs and posting a whole week of guest blogs by Lancashire Personal Trainer, Simone Sirmon.
Why?
I am Dyspraxic – and so is my daughter. It is a massive part of who we are and it is also why I am self employed.
Being Dyspraxic means exercise is very important for us to build and maintain core strength. But anyone with Dyspraxia who has been through school PE lessons will tell you that we are often not terribly well accommodated and going to the gym can be a bit of a disaster too.
Knowing how to work with someone with dyspraxia to build their strength takes a lot of skill and patience. I was lucky to find Simone (via twitter of course) who has those skills and she kindly agreed to write these posts, despite being a total blogging novice. .
I do hope you enjoy them and of course find them useful. Please feel free to leave comments.
Day One of Simone’s Blog on Dyspraxia and Exercise
Hello, my name is Simone and I am an experienced Personal Trainer with specialisms in GP Referral, Children’s Fitness and Mental Health and Exercise.
- My experience and knowledge of Dyspraxia has come from over ten years of working with young people with dyspraxia and dyslexia as Head of Care in a residential school .I was responsible for their day to day care and taught sport and outdoor pursuits to them.
- Over the next five days I’m going to write a daily blog about my experience of training Jane Binnion, who has Dyspraxia and how it impacts on her exercise routines.
- If you have Dyspraxia you will know some of the exercise considerations can be; poor balance, coordination challenges, muscle weakness, joint instability, memory difficulties and sequencing. So that makes it all the more difficult as many of us find exercise hard at the best of times!
- I first met Jane when I attended one of her brilliant Social Media courses in Lancaster. We arranged to do some PT sessions and during the planning of this I discovered that she had Dyspraxia .During our fitness assessment session, Jane said that she had run in the past and done Boxercise, both of which require good levels of balance, fitness and coordination. She is currently doing yoga which is great for Dyspraxia as long as your joints are stable enough.
See tomorrow’s blog for more on Jane’s progress and workout.