How To Start An Adaptive CrossFit Class

“Starting an adaptive class is impactful, rewarding and absolutely doable.”

When I started my class, I didn’t own a gym, in fact I wasn’t even a coach. All I started with was the desire that I wanted a class to exist in my box. Through concerted effort I became a coach, founded the Adaptive Athletic class and slowly built it into what it is today, the largest consistent adaptive CrossFit program in the country (maybe the world?). With the benefit of hindsight I can look back and see the process of how I got it started. If you are reading this, you are maybe a gym owner who wants to add an adaptive class, a coach who wants to coach the class or maybe just an individual member, like I was, who just wants an adaptive class at your box. Whatever your current role, here are steps to get it done along with a rough timeline:

1. Prelaunch (Month 0)
   1. Find a coach
   2. Teach the coach
   3. Decide on class specifics
   4. Find your first athlete
2. Launch (Months 1 – 6)
   1. Launch the class
   2. Keep it small to start
3. Grow (Months 7 and beyond)
   1. Grow the class
   2. Setup the class for lasting success
   3. Transition athletes to standard programming

Prelaunch (month 0)

1. Find a coach to spearhead the effort. It is vital that someone is taking the lead and owning the class. A single coach that is going to show up for the class every week and is dedicated to learning how to coach the adaptive population. If this person is you, then great, you’ve found them. If you are an owner or athlete of a box and are looking for one of your coaches to step-up, the number one criteria is dedication. Someone who is committed to be the guy or girl that will own the class. Later on you can have multiple coaches rotating on the class but to start I recommend a consistent presence. When I brought the idea of creating the class to the owners of my gym they said ‘yes’ because I offered to own it see it through. Be that person or find that person.
2. Get smart on coaching adaptive athletes. If you’ve never coached someone with a physical impairment it can be intimidating, but it doesn’t need to be. With a little knowledge anyone can get started. I’ve created a course of how to start coaching individuals with physical impairments. This can be your intro.
3. Decide on the class logistics. Specifically decide: cost, day and time. To put it simply I recommend the class be free for all individuals with physical impairments, and to have the class on the weekend in a relatively empty (but not totally empty gym). Make the class free to encourage attendees. The owners of the gym should look at this class as community outreach. In reality some of the attendees of the class will eventually become members and the class will pay for itself but to start just think of it as an awesome service that the gym can provide to the community. Select a time and day of week that works for the potential class attendees and works for the box. It can be a “dead time” at the gym. I recommend doing the class on the weekend at a time when the gym is relatively empty. Doing it on the weekend will work for most potential attendees, there is also typically a lot of dead time for the gym on the weekends so it will be easier to add another class to the schedule. If the gym is relatively empty it gives you plenty of room to spread out, which the new coach will need as they are learning with this population. If you can, avoid the gym being totally empty. I like having other box members there to demonstrate what the culture of the gym is, and potentially make friends with new attendees. Your current members will love seeing the new class and it will better prepare your new attendees to transition into general membership. I started my class on Saturday afternoon after all of the morning classes were finished, during an open gym session. This ensured the gym wasn’t chaos but there were still members training giving the gym a “CrossFit atmosphere”.
4. Find your seed athletes. Rather than open your doors and expect people to come, be proactive and find your first couple of attendees before your launch. Chances are that if you are considering creating a class you already have someone in mind. If you don’t, reach out to the members of your gym to see if they know someone with a physical impairment that they think would be interested. Once you find a couple individuals you are ready for launch.

Launch (month 1 – 6)

1. Start small and keep it small for a little while. Once you have a couple of seed athletes you are ready to launch. I recommend you don’t try and grow the class quickly, focus more on getting coaching reps. Get the coach confident coaching these athletes. Put these few athletes through lots of types of movements and workouts. Try new movements. Run into obstacles (you will run into obstacles). When you do, reach out to folks like me for help getting past the obstacles. The more classes you put on, the more the classes will start to feel like a standard CrossFit class. Your athletes will learn the movements, their adaptations and how to setup their equipment. My program, started with one or two athletes a week. The small class sizes helped me really get good at specific impairments. As the classes grew slowly it allowed me to grow with the class. When the classes reached 15+ athletes, I was able to handle it.
2. Leave time and space to integrate new athletes. By getting the coach really comfortable with the small set of existing athletes, you free up the coaches attention to accommodate new individuals to the class. A practice I recommend is telling a potential new athlete to come 30 mins early to the class that way I, or one of my other coaches, has time to register, meet and quickly assess the new athlete for inclusion in the class.

Grow (month 7 and beyond)

1. Grow the class. Once you’ve built a core group of attendees and are comfortable coaching all of them it’s time to grow your class. Your class members will most likely know other individuals in the community, have them spread the class through word of mouth. The next step is to make connections with organizations that consist of or serve the impaired population: physical therapy clinics, neurological clinics, orthotic prosthetic clinics and community groups. I get the majority of my referrals from clinics that believe in my program. A great way to facilitate this transition is to open the class to volunteers. Not only will these volunteers help your class to run more smoothly (setting up equipment, enforcing movement standards) they will begin establishing connections for future referrals. On a weekly basis in attendance as volunteers we have coaches from other gyms, physical therapists, rehab students, prosthetists and medical device reps. It creates an amazing learning environment.
2. Setup the class for lasting success. To ensure the persistence of the program beyond the original volunteer coach, additional coaches from your gym will need to be added, and a normal coaching rate will need to be paid. Volunteering will only attract coaches for so long. To build a lasting program, a program that will outlast the generosity of an individual coach, I recommend the box eventually to treat this as any other on the schedule with standard coaching pay. For my class, I volunteered with the program for about 6 months before we decided to start paying a standard rate. If you need a way to justify the expense you can do it as soon as the first athlete transitions and pays for a membership, this should cover the cost of the weekly coach. Or if can be your annual “donation” to a good cause. Lots of boxes do fundraisers for various causes, this can be the cause for your box. You can even do an annual fundraiser to pay for the coaching for the year. There are lots of different ways to justify it from a business perspective. Not to mention the class will be the most amazing PR for your gym, My class has been covered my ABC News and Fox News. By paying the coaches for the class, you’ll be able to bring other coaches on board. Eventually one coach cannot be there for the class every week. Coaches get sick, go on vacation and eventually leave to do other things. As the program grows other coaches will become interested in being involved in the program. Have the new coach learn the basics, then shadow the class to get familiar with the athletes and adaptations. As with the original coach select additional coaches based on desire to learn about the population.
3. Transition to standard programming, prep the coaches. The goal for the class should ultimately be for the attendees to transition to standard programming. This does NOT mean that this class is one long sales pitch to those who attend. It simply means that there is no unassailable reason for most of the athletes of the adaptive class to eventually become standard CrossFitters. To get the benefits of a physical practice all of us should be training multiple times a week, adaptive individuals are no different. The class can be an unintimidating environment to learn the movements, learn adaptations and learn how to get equipment (or ask for help in getting equipment). Once an individual has figured all of these things out they can make the transition. It doesn’t mean they need to stop coming to the adaptive class, they can still come to get specialty coaching and work out obstacles that have arisen during standard programming for the week. I consider it a success of the class if an athlete has used to class as a spring board to join general CrossFit programming (even if it is at another gym). Some athletes may never make the transition, for various reasons, and that’s okay too. The ultimate goal for all my athletes is to use the weekly class to inspire them train throughout the week. Either at my gym in standard classes, if a gym that’s it their city, start their own physical practice at home or train with me privately. What ever serves them the best. As more adaptive athletes start to join standard programming you can have your remaining coaches trained to smooth the transition and make your whole box truly adaptive.

There is the cookbook. If you have a question, there is a form below for you to ask. Starting an adaptive class is impactful, rewarding and absolutely doable. Time for you to get started.