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What You Probably Don’t Know About Adaptive Fitness (w/ Alec Zirkenbach)

Written by David Tao
Last updated on November 11th, 2024

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Today I’m talking to Alec Zirkenbach, Executive Director of Adaptive Training Academy. Alec is a military veteran, trainer, athlete, and entrepreneur who has played a key role in growing the adaptive athletic community in and around CrossFit. Through his work at Adaptive Training Academy, he’s also helped develop numerous training courses and modules to help coaches improve their understanding of and ability to train both able bodied and disabled athletes. This conversation with Alec is a great look into how far the community has come, along with what work can still be done to improve access in fitness.

Before we get into that, I want to give a quick shoutout to today’s episode sponsor, AIRWAAV. The AIRWAAV™ Performance Mouthpiece represents 15 years of research and development conducted with elite athletes perfect the most efficient way of opening the airway and optimizing performance. The AIRWAAV mouthpiece may improve the width of your airway by up to 9%, which may reduce respiratory rate and increase endurance. 

Alec Zirkenbach BarBend Podcast

On this episode of The BarBend Podcast, host David Thomas Tao talks to Alec Zirkenbach about:

  • Alec’s athletic background and trailblazing role in adaptive fitness (02:50)
  • Running functional fitness classes for active duty military (07:30)
  • The evolution of CrossFit’s specialty courses (12:50)
  • Adaptive Training Academy’s potential partnerships with sports beyond CrossFit (16:00)
  • Over 1,000 adaptive athletes registered for the 2021 CrossFit Open (20:20)
  • Some of the many things coaches might not realize about training for adaptive athletes (23:00)

Relevant links and further reading:

Transcription

Alec ZirkenbachAlec Zirkenbach

Anybody can do what we’re doing. I want people to know that if you’re a thoughtful, caring coach, you can coach down different athletes, 100 percent.

David TaoDavid Tao

Welcome to the BarBend podcast where we talk to the smartest athletes, coaches, and minds from around the world of strength. I’m your host, David Thomas Tao. This podcast is presented by barbend.com

 

Today, I’m talking to Alec Zirkenbach, Executive Director of Adaptive Training Academy. Alec is a military veteran, trainer, athlete, and entrepreneur who has played a key role in growing the adaptive athletic community in and around CrossFit.

 

Through his work at Adaptive Training Academy, Alec has helped develop numerous training courses and modules to help coaches improve their understanding of, and ability to train both able-bodied and adapted athletes.

 

This conversation with Alec is a great look into how far the community has come, along with what work can still be done to improve access and fitness. Before we get into that conversation, I want to give a shout out to today’s episode’s sponsor, AIRWAAV.

 

The AIRWAAV performance mouthpiece represents 15 years of research and development conducted with elite athletes to perfect the most efficient way of opening the airway and optimizing performance.

 

The AIRWAAV mouthpiece may improve the width of your airway by up to nine percent, which can reduce respiratory rate and increase exercise endurance. Learn more at airwaav.com. That’s A-I-R-W-A-A-V .com. Now let’s get on with this show.

 

Alec, thanks so much for joining us. I got to say, we’re a couple weeks removed from the CrossFit games. It was awesome meeting you in person for the first time, by the way. I have to say, I didn’t almost recognize you at first because you’re much taller than I expected.

 

I’m sure you get that a lot in the CrossFit community?

Alec ZirkenbachAlec Zirkenbach

Yeah, I do sometimes. Especially this past year, meeting people in Zoom and talking to others virtually. You only get to see shoulders up, so you really don’t know how tall somebody is. You told me at the games, you expect every CrossFitter to be 5’7″ and 5′ 10″. You don’t expect Fikowski to show up and pop-up when you meet him.

 

David TaoDavid Tao

I’m just expecting everyone to be Rich Froning-sized.

 

That’s the barometer I have at anyone who’s…

Alec ZirkenbachAlec Zirkenbach

For sure.

David TaoDavid Tao

Fikowski, I’m just craning my head up like, “Hey, man. Nice to see you.” It was awesome meeting you in person. You were obviously extremely busy coming off the games, and I really want to dive into your games experience, looking back your recap and debrief, and then also looking forward.

 

I also want to dive into a little bit about your background, how you got involved in the fitness community the way you did? Your career so far with ATA, Adaptive Training Academy. If you wouldn’t mind, give us a little background as far as your fitness journey up to this point?

Alec ZirkenbachAlec Zirkenbach

Yeah, definitely. I love playing sports, whole life just playing sports and being active, mainly team ball sports type of things. I’m not too good at the balance sports. Even though I live in San Diego, I still suck at surfing.

 

I’m learning to ski, but I’m not too good at it just yet. Playing sports, soccer, and lacrosse, my two big sports. I played those my whole life, played lacrosse in college at Virginia Tech on their club team. I joined the Navy, became an officer in the Navy right out of college. That’s sent me to San Diego.

 

I still just playing everything I can possibly do, beach volleyball, everything. That was my fitness. I was just playing sports. I went to the gym, but it was just something I knew I had to do and I didn’t enjoy it that much. I just started to dabble into the original San Diego CrossFit. I went there for about, I think a month.

 

I couldn’t even do kipping pull-ups, because I didn’t really learn anything. Then I went on a deployment in the Navy. I had a really bad injury that led me to almost losing my leg and having a minor or a spinal cord injury. I didn’t walk for almost nine months. I was in a wheelchair, lots of recovery surgeries.

 

It was a really debilitating time and I became depressed because I wasn’t doing my job anymore, I didn’t have a purpose in my life. I was just basically rehabbing. I didn’t know where I was going to go in my life.

 

Then luckily I was working for a Public Affairs Officer for an admiral and one of his assistants. Their husband was a CrossFit coach at a gym at ThrowDown, which is actually victory, which Jocko Willink now…It changed over, but it was nothing special across the gym. It was in a racquetball court in the back of like an old YMCA or something. It was…

David TaoDavid Tao

That sounds like classic old-school CrossFit.

Alec ZirkenbachAlec Zirkenbach

…an afterthought. I think somebody there just decided, “Hey, let’s fill this with a CrossFit. Let’s find a CrossFit coach and put it in there. No big deal.” I don’t remember the instruction being spectacular.

 

I don’t remember anything being great about it. They had like three squat racks and one pull-up bar that went all the way across the racquetball court, but they asked me to go back. I got tricked into going and then I went, but then the first day was squats. I had been doing squats, and I knew I could do a lot of weight.

 

During the first day, I did the barbell and I was barely able to stand up. I didn’t have much balance. I was still using crutches at the time, and I was hard on myself. There was this supportive community, everybody’s like clapping and being like, “Hey, you’re doing great. Good job. We’ll see you again tomorrow.” I kept coming back.

 

That community support literally saved my life. I don’t know if I would have gone down a dark place after that not having a purpose in my life. I owe everything to the CrossFit community for that second chance of a happy and healthy life.

 

The training was effective, as we all know, and it got me back on my feet. I was able to do two more tours, and maybe because of that. I switched gyms eventually to a little bit bigger and more instructed type of gym and went on two more tours.

 

One of those, I lived in the Middle East, and I was living in Kuwait at the time. They had a small little army camp and a little gym. I met one of the L1 Flowmasters Chris Russell, who owned CrossFit jacks. I was doing CrossFit. He was doing CrossFit, everybody else was doing bodybuilding stuff.

 

We’re looking at each other, like, ”Hey, what are you doing?” Then we got together. We started doing cross workouts together. Him being a Flowmaster, he’s blowing my mind because I started dabbling in CrossFit. No clue what I was doing. I just loved it.

 

He’s teaching me technique and telling me to read the CrossFit journal. I’m downloading every article possible and watch five hours straight reading 30, 40 articles. That’s how I went through the entire CrossFit journal in a couple months.

 

Eventually, we grew that in Kuwait, and more and more people wanted to start working out with us. We grew it and started military affiliate. It was one class a day. Chris would lead the classes. Eventually, he was leaving, going back home. His tour was over. He was like, “Hey, I’m going to pass this off to you. I have no clue what I’m doing.”

 

I took leave, ended up going to Switzerland. Got my L1, came back, still no clue what I’m doing, but had to start running classes of 20 people at a time. We’re talking true functional fitness. We had, rusty barbells, a couple kettlebells. No bumper plates, no rigged system pull-up bar. We’re doing box jumps onto concrete Jersey barriers. Carrying ammo cans, doing runs outside, and 120-degree heat coming back inside. It was fun.

 

I look back and that’s probably one of the best times of my life even though stuck in this little army camp. We couldn’t go outside and they didn’t have a lot of things to do. I was learning so much from teaching and reading the CrossFit journal. It was a really awesome time.

 

I eventually came home from that. I got medical retirement from the Navy because I can’t feel my right foot or ankle. Not being on stable services like a ship is not good for me. Decided to open my own CrossFit gym when I came home.

 

That was Fathom CrossFit. Open that in 2013, and immediately started a rec therapy program with the Naval hospital there at Balboa. Started rec therapy program and had some support from other PTs. I had no clue what I was doing working with other people with disabilities. I knew that they needed a space that they could go and feel like somebody was going to be there to say, “It’s OK, we’ll take care of you. We’ll figure this out.” That supportive community.

 

Started running that class once a week forever since 2013. Then 2017, CrossFit got wind of what we were doing, and asked me to create a specialty course. The CrossFit specialty course adaptive training.

 

I knew I needed to get some other smart experienced people involved. I reached out to Kevin Ogar, reached out to Logan Aldridge, Chris Stoltenberg, among other people to help me develop that course. We did and ran that for CrossFit as a specialty course until 2019 when all the specialty courses became independent.

 

That’s when we created Adaptive Training Academy to continue running that education for the community. We still run that course. It’s now called the adaptive and inclusive trainer certification course. We still provide that education in seminar format, but also in two different online formats. It’s self-paced, and a four-week cohort online format.

 

The big news now is, we’ve been doing that and we feel very effective educating the community and getting trainers to learn how to work with people with disabilities. We can make CrossFit gyms inclusive.

 

Anybody who walks and rolls in your door, the idea is they can have the same great workout anybody else in the classes. It only goes so far. Typically, people with disabilities have more barriers to entry. They have travel, accommodation restrictions. They have higher financial costs, such as medications and healthcare, just living costs. It’s tough for them to pay for a good CrossFit gym membership, which may be 200 plus dollars a month.

 

Also, the gyms I know that they want to offer services like I did. My class was a voluntary pro bono class for eight years or six years. It becomes a little bit of a burden after a while to give your free time, your space, your energy.

 

We are converting to a nonprofit so that we can be more effective in the community not only provide education but also provide resources. Either financial resources for gym memberships, financial resources to run adaptive or inclusive programs. That’d be one class a month or one class a week. Then also, financial resources to buy adaptive equipment.

 

You may need active hands to help somebody grip onto a barbell or a dumbbell. You may need a wider ski or base because wheelchairs don’t fit into the traditional ski or base. You can’t get close enough.

 

Lots of different things that we can help you within the community. We filed our paperwork. We’re not active yet. We have all these things in the works, and we’re planning it out. We’re really excited. As soon as we get that back, we’re going to be rolling.

David TaoDavid Tao

We’ll get back to that in just a second. First, a word from our episode sponsor AIRWAAV. Visit airwaav.com — that’s A-I-R-W-A-A-V .com — to learn why four-time fittest man on earth Rich Froning uses the AIRWAAV mouthpiece to increase his performance in training and competition. Let’s get back to the show.

 

That is a fascinating business development. You rarely hear the starting as a specialty course, within CrossFit kind of spun out when the specialty courses became independent. We’ll talk about your continued work with CrossFit.

 

It’s not like you’re not working with CrossFit in the suitable capacity, now spun off into a separate company and becoming a nonprofit. You don’t hear many business people in fitness or otherwise having that trajectory. That’s an exemplification of how you all are keeping your eyes on the prize, which is making adaptability more of a priority for the community, whatever it takes.

Alec ZirkenbachAlec Zirkenbach

Exactly. Definitely. All of our specialty courses, the gymnastics course, which used to be the CrossFit best course of gymnastics. I know burners weightlifting course. They’re all doing great. That’s a testament to how great of a course they are already providing.

 

We all needed to figure out how to run own registrations, take care of all the admin that CrossFit was doing for us. That was the only separation and the difference when we separated from CrossFit, but we are not separate by any means. Technically we are, but the staff members are all true cross-fitters.

 

Kevin Ogar had his injury doing a competition and ended up using CrossFit as his rehab ended up opening his own affiliate, which he still runs CrossFit WatchTower in Denver, Colorado. Kevin earned his way on the level one staff, level two some of our staff. He’s the regional rep for Nevada, Colorado, and that whole Western Midwest region of affiliates.

 

Same thing for me the same time we created the specialty course. I got an invite to earn my way into level one staff and I did. I teach level one seminars and I’m very proud to be on the level one redshirt staff.

 

I know [inaudible 14:04] earlier, but our team is the driving force that created the adaptive divisions for CrossFit competitions. We don’t have an official title within CrossFit, but anything adaptive or inclusive by nature in CrossFit. They come to us for guidance, and consulting, or whatever they need to make things right.

David TaoDavid Tao

I think at this point, with the combined experience that your team brings, they be stupid not to come to you all first. That’d be a little bit of a bad move for a lot of reasons.

Alec ZirkenbachAlec Zirkenbach

There’s a lot of people in the community that have been doing adaptive fitness and adaptive CrossFit specifically. That have come either for us or have been doing it simultaneously and we owe them everybody out there a lot of credit. We’re one big team, one big community.

 

I would love for anybody out there listening, who’s involved in any type of adaptive or inclusive fitness, if you want to try to help us make our education better, or competition better, please feel free to reach out to me. I would love to learn from you and gather your knowledge.

 

I’m by no means the smartest person in any room, but my superpower is knowing that I can lean on other people, and try to digest it and make whatever your education is, your experience is, make it into little bits to then educate and put it out to the community. I’m just amalgamator and then just spitting it back out to everybody else.

David TaoDavid Tao

That is the first time anyone has at least correctly use the term amalgamator on this podcast. I’ll give you that. Congratulations. You’re also stealing my line. I’m the one who says I’m never the smartest person in the room on this podcast. Man, you’re making it. I’m kidding.

 

Let’s talk a little bit if you don’t mind. I’m curious because at BarBend we don’t just cover CrossFit. We cover a wide array of string sports and as time goes on, we’re covering more and more.

 

We started with weightlifting, powerlifting, CrossFit, strongman. We cover mass wrestling these days. We cover more kettlebell sport. The world of strength competition and strength-related competition is broader in our American-centric view. It’s not just what’s popular here in the US right now.

 

Have you all made any inroads with or done any work to partner with other strength sports governing bodies and institutions outside of the CrossFit space?

Alec ZirkenbachAlec Zirkenbach

Yes, we are reaching out to some. CrossFit is the sport of anything and everything. If you’re thinking about it, we need to be in tune with what weightlifting is doing and what powerlifting is doing. Gymnastics is doing. Everything from running, swimming, cycling, all of those.

 

We need to be touching base and seeing how those sports are developing as far as training and in competition. We have a close relationship with the powerlifting because of Kevin Ogar. Kevin Ogar was on the powerlifting team for a little bit and he represented Team USA in a couple of meets.

 

I know a lot of the athletes including Logan Aldridge who’s on our team. He competed in a couple Spartan races. Spartan has done a couple specific adaptive races. Right now, I’m in New York City helping the veterans administration. They put on a huge event for veterans who are in wheelchairs every year and they do a powerlifting event.

 

There’s an adaptive powerlifting event as well, as we added adaptive fitness this year too. There’s a couple things I’d like to see happen. Specifically, I would love to see Olympic weightlifting develop some standards and classification for adaptive athletes.

 

That could be starting with single point of contact, upper extremity, and then working with some lower extremity, may be above the knee and below the knee athletes to develop some standards and classification. We could even go so far as to adding and figuring out how to do some seated athlete cleans or snatches, as well.

 

I’d love to see powerlifting…Right now, powerlifting is only bench press. I think we could figure out a way to also do deadlift, there’s a seated deadlift, we can figure that out, we can find ways for upper extremity and lower extremity athletes, or muscular athletes, to all do some form of a deadlift and make it fair.

 

Same thing that we do in CrossFit, that’s the challenge really, in CrossFit is if we can figure it out to make it somewhat inclusive, and have a wide pool of athletes competing and make it fair than these other sports should definitely be able to figure that out. It’s a smaller little portion of what CrossFit is.

 

We may have an event in CrossFit, there was snatch, a rope climb, some type of cycling, all of these different modalities in one. We had to figure out some way to make it fair. I would love to work with any organization and try to come up with standards, classification systems, and borrow each other’s knowledge to make all sports adaptive and inclusive.

 

That would be amazing. That would give people who are daily fitness training outlets to express their fitness. That’s what CrossFit is in the competition sense. It’s an outlet to express your fitness.

 

Maybe not everybody wants to be a CrossFritter. Maybe they don’t want to lift heavy things and do powerlifting or Olympic weightlifting. Let’s find some ways for them to have a fair way to compete against their like peers.

David TaoDavid Tao

I love how you bring that up. It’s an expression of the fitness and the training that you might be doing. CrossFit is one example. They’re a business that had to be very clear like, “We are not just the CrossFit Games. In fact, most of the business has nothing to do with the CrossFit Games.”

 

The visible competition aspects of these different sports, it’s a motivating factor. It’s something that helps build community. It’s the best marketing tool that these sports and training modalities have.

 

They see people at all levels, elite, masters, you name it, beginners. Having those competitions as a sign poster or marketing for your sport, that’s the best way to get the word out about that training modality, even if most of the work is happening in the local gyms, the garage gyms, at the local day-to-day training level.

Alec ZirkenbachAlec Zirkenbach

Yeah, most definitely. This year, we had over 1,000 athletes registered for the open in CrossFit, which is amazing.

David TaoDavid Tao

1,000 and over 1,000 adaptive athletes?

Alec ZirkenbachAlec Zirkenbach

Total, 1,000 adaptive athletes registered for the open. Then in the games, CrossFit decided to invite three of the eight divisions. That was based on registration participation. We only had 30. We were supposed to be 30 athletes, but one guy couldn’t make it. We had 29 in the game.

 

There was over 1,000 in the open. Those are only people that registered that also were able to be classified through eligibility to compete as well. The number of adaptive athletes participating in daily CrossFit training, I would say it’s probably 10 to 20x of what the open registrations were.

 

The competition is one part of it. What we want to do at Adaptive Training Academy is make sure that the gyms that are affiliates, and any gym that even if you’re not in CrossFit affiliate, help you prepare your trainers to work with people with disabilities, and make sure your physical space is accessible. It’s an inclusive type of space.

 

Also, your digital space, something that people don’t think about your web presence, your social media is also accessible to all different types of people with abilities. What we want is to make you be prepared to work with, like I said, anybody who walks or rolls into your door.

 

Let’s make sure that you are prepared. You may not have the experience, but now you can either then know, “I had a spinal cord injury come in, and they are a T10, a thoracic level 10 spinal cord injury.”

 

You may not have any clue what that means. Then you can lean on the knowledge that maybe we already provided you and the quick reference guides that we’re going to be able to provide you so that you can now be prepared to work with that athlete. That’s really our goal is to make gyms more inclusive and not be so scared to work with people with disabilities.

 

There’s a huge fear factor when it comes to any trainer. I didn’t know what I was doing either and halftime, I’m like, “Hey, I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to push you too hard, but I also want to push you enough that you got to work out, find that sweet spot.”

 

It can be challenging. I do always tell our trainers especially at seminars, myself, Kevin Ogar, Logan Aldridge, one of seminar staff, Chris Stoltenberg, none of us have any degrees or advanced certifications, what have you, in exercise physiology or anatomy or anything that would be pertinent to maybe working with people with disabilities. All we have though is our years and years of experience, and hands-on trial and error.

 

A good feedback loop with our athletes and saying, ”Hey, how does this feel? How was that workout? Did you get this type of challenge?” Did they finish it about the same time domain as everybody else in the class? Was it effective? Did they feel the muscle groups that we wanted to work?

 

One of the examples we always do in our seminars, and I hope I don’t give away too much. People show up at…We had people do a seated row. They’re mimicking being in a wheelchair and they’re using the rower.

 

We have them row without using their hip, no hip flexion or extension. You can’t lean forward or back. Essentially, turns it into an arm movement and when you roll like that, get a severe bicep pump, which is amazing. It’s a great bicep pump.

 

You don’t feel any of the cardiovascular respiratory challenge that you would feel if you’re doing a full-standing body rowing. It’s not the same stimulus at all. We give them that experience so they know, ”OK, even though this looks like rowing, it’s not the same stimulus at all. I need to figure out a better way to challenge a seated athlete who’s only using their arms and shoulders to do cardio versus somebody who’s a standing athlete to do their cardio.”

David TaoDavid Tao

It’s something that you’ve referenced before in conversations we’ve had one-on-one. A lot of the principles that you’re teaching, it’s not just improving people’s ability to coach adaptive athletes, it’s improving their ability to coach anyone.

 

These questions that you’re asking, are people getting the proper stimulus? Are the scales, or the adaptations a coach is giving any athlete for a workout such that the intended stimulus is being received for that workout?

 

This is true for an athlete who’s completely able-bodied, but maybe undertrained or untrained or newer as it is, for an athlete who might have a disability or might need some other adaptations.

 

One thing that I know, that you’re pretty humble guy. I would guess that taking a certification and going through content you all produce is going to help people be more aware of how to coach about any athlete.

Alec ZirkenbachAlec Zirkenbach

It’s extremely true. That’s what I was getting at and saying that anybody can do what we’re doing. I want people to know that. If you’re a thoughtful caring coach, you can coach adaptive athletes, 100 percent. We would love to give you some baseline knowledge and help you not have to go through years of trial and errors.

 

That’s what we’ve done and work with medical professionals to make sure you can train athletes safely. We’ll make sure you touch people appropriately. You don’t do things you shouldn’t do to cause injuries. We’ll teach you things that your skin irritations and overheating, and you’ll know all these precautions ahead of time. It’s figuring it out.

 

It’s knowing what’s going to be the best workout for the person. It doesn’t matter if you’re adaptive or able-bodied. The challenge is you got 10 people in your class, and they range from teenager to 60-year-old, and from collegiate athlete to just started training last week. A good coach is going to be able to make sure everybody in that class has an individualized workout.

 

I coach and run my programs out of Invictus. I closed my gym in 2018 to focus on running ATA. Something I got from Invictus and the coaches there was, we’d like to try to use the word customize as much as possible versus scaling or adapting because everybody in the class is going to have a customized workout.

 

What’s on the whiteboard is a suggestion. It says, that’s your base. Then everybody should have something off for that base. Maybe at a 10 people, two or three that are doing the prescribed workout and load and calories are repetitions. Everybody else should be doing some alteration to a movement, a range of motion reduction. A different piece of equipment from barbell to dumbbell, or something like that.

 

You’re going to apply the same thing to adaptive athletes. You’re correct. If you do take our education, you will become a far better coach. It opens your eyes to understanding, “Hey, here’s my stimulus. This is what I’m intending this person to get out of my workout today. How do I apply that to anybody?” You have this athlete, has a special needs or has amputated arm or leg, or is using a wheelchair, no big deal. Let’s figure it out. Be very creative, be thoughtful and talk to the person. You can do it.

David TaoDavid Tao

If a coach is hesitant to customize a workout or they say, “Oh, I can’t do that. I don’t have the knowledge base to do that, or I don’t want to do that.” Those are all red flags by the way, for any coach just for anyone listening.

Alec ZirkenbachAlec Zirkenbach

There are times when somebody comes up and they’re asking questions, whatever, and the coach appropriately say, “Hey, just do it. I don’t want to hear it, just do it.” Maybe they’re complaining about having you burpees or running when they just don’t like running.

 

If you have a coach who’s like, “Hey, do what I say, you shouldn’t alter anything.” They should probably look a little bit deeper, you should be asking questions. I think a thoughtful coach should always be able to explain what the stimulus is. They should always be able to tell you why you’re doing something.

 

Sometimes the reason is just, “Hey, you’re going to do some grunt work, you’re going to suffer, you’re going to do burpees, you’re going to do devil presses,” Or whatever it may be, or, “Hey, you just need to run because we haven’t run this far in a long time. I just want to see that you can make that distance.”

 

That’s perfectly fine. The coach should be able to give you a very thoughtful reason why you’re doing a movement, an exercise, a certain rep scheme, a weight, whatever it may be, that should be happening.

David TaoDavid Tao

Alec, I really appreciate this insight into what the ATA is doing today. There’s a lot more to come. Where’s the best place for people to follow along with the work you all are doing to learn more, potentially sign up for a course, or stay up to date with the latest developments?

Alec ZirkenbachAlec Zirkenbach

Definitely. Our website is www.ata.fit.

David TaoDavid Tao

It’s a great URL, I love that URL.

Alec ZirkenbachAlec Zirkenbach

Short and simple. We used to be adaptivetrainingacademy.com. The amount of times that I just misspelled that, because we’re typing it fast. Many people try to email me, it’s such a long URL. Eventually, I got ata.fit. Check that out, the website. We’re very active on Instagram, it’s @adaptivetraining. On Facebook, Adaptive Training Academy.

 

If you’re listening to this, and you want to learn more about how you can get involved, we are starting an affiliate program for our nonprofit. When we get that nonprofit status and hopefully when we get some fundings. If there’s any funders out there that would love to donate to our cause, we would love to have some funding.

 

We are going to be setting up ATA affiliates. Affiliates will be gyms that we make sure are accessible so make sure your facility is accessible. You have to have at least one trainer there with our education, we’ll provide you extra resources and guidance, we’ll list you as an ATA affiliate so that athletes can start finding you or people that have never trained before start finding you for your gym.

 

We will then be able to provide you those affiliates with grant funding for equipment or grant funding for your programs or for memberships. Look for that coming out soon. You can go ahead on the website already, fill out your information just to be notified when that application window comes available.

 

David TaoDavid Tao

Awesome. Alec, thank you so much for joining us. Always a pleasure to catch up and I really appreciate the deep dive today. Talk to you later.

Alec ZirkenbachAlec Zirkenbach

Definitely. Thank you very much.

About David Tao

BarBend's Co-Founder and CEO, David is a veteran of the health & fitness industry, with nearly a decade of experience building and running editorial teams in the space. He also serves as a color commentator for both National and International weightlifting competitions, many through USA Weightlifting.

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