“We come here to commune with each other,” she says. “It’s more like a home with friends so it’s been great.”
Drath is one the many students enrolled in Adaptive Physical Education, a program that specializes in providing individualized exercise training to students with disabilities within a social gym setting. She has been an Adaptive Physical Education student for two and a half years and credits others in the program with helping her reach the goals she set for herself.
“Everybody has been very influential in helping me lose weight and keep my epilepsy under control and helping me with my physical disabilities,” she said. “I have a muscle disability in my left arm and they’re like my physical therapists. Everybody that I have met in this class I became friends with and I am still friends with. So, they’ve been very influential and now I’m more athletic than I ever was before.”
Helping these students feel the benefit of exercise is the key to their success, according to instructor Kathy Moretti, who started the program in 1986.
“These students whose pictures are on the wall, my wall of fame, they’re students from last semester who have achieved their fitness goals,” she said. “I am very goal-oriented, and I try to encourage my students to be very goal-oriented and when they accomplish their goals they get their picture up. It’s a tribute to people that fulfill their goals.”
Moretti started the adaptive fitness program with only four students, and now has six classes with more than 200 students.
The overall program provides fundamentals of exercise physiology, exercise training routines and instruction on proper nutrition.
“I talk to every student personally about their background, about what medication they might be on,” she said. “Because some of the medication will inhibit heart rate from going faster. We also take blood pressure and we do a pre-test of their heart rate at the beginning of the semester.”
Helping Moretti provide her students with the proper exercise training are her two assistants, Cal Campbell and Steven Dulcich.
Campbell enjoys being a part of the adaptive fitness program, which includes helping students begin a personal training program.
“It gives you a sense of well-being just being able to help people,” he said. “Some days, you may feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders and then you have a student come in and they have more of a disadvantage than you and you see them with a great smile and a great disposition. If somebody comes in with a great attitude it makes you feel good.”
According to Moretti, many students will benefit from being a part of adaptive fitness.
“This is a room where you get stronger so you can do activities in your life,” she said. “It’s like a catalyst to go out there in the world and do activities that you always wanted to do.”