Nov. 25--Like most parents, those who have children with autism want them to be physically active and healthy.

And like other parents, their first option is often Little League or soccer, says Elliot Frank, chairman of ABOARD, a local autism advocacy and educational group.

"For some of our kids, though, running around a field kicking a ball to put up a point on some abstract scoreboard doesn't track very well," Mr. Frank said.

In addition, many children with autism have mild physical disabilities, from toe walking to lack of coordination, that make it difficult for them to succeed in regular team sports.

Or, as autism fitness expert Eric Chessen says, "if kids fail at something over and over, they no longer will want to do it."

Mr. Chessen, who says he is one of the few people in the nation focusing exclusively on autism and physical fitness, spoke at a conference sponsored by ABOARD Friday at the Regional Learning Alliance in Cranberry.

"You have to be physically fit to participate in sports," he said, "but you don't have to participate in sports to be physically fit." Besides, he said, "there's a big difference between kids who want to play sports and parents who want their kids to play sports."

Building on that philosophy, Mr. Chessen, founder of Autism Fitness, a Long Island business, has built a phys ed program for children on the autism spectrum that focuses on five basic movements: pushing, pulling, rotation, squatting and locomotion.

Using volunteers from the physical education staff at the Seneca Valley schools, he demonstrated all five motions, using simple equipment like pouches filled with sand and giant rubber bands.

For pushing, one volunteer lay on his back and threw a sand ball to someone standing over him. For pulling, two people pulled in opposite directions on the oversized rubber band, and a third man pulled back on the center, turning it into a slingshot.

For rotation, two men stood back to back and then swiveled to pass the sand bag to each other; for squatting they stood back to back and passed the sand ball between their legs; and for locomotion, one of them put the rubber band around his waist and tried to run forward while another pulled back on it like a leash.

By teaching such basic movements and then building them into a chain of activities, Mr. Chessen said, "we work to maintain their strengths, overcome their deficits and move on from there."

Mr. Chessen, 29, got his bachelor's degree in forensic psychology, but then became a fitness trainer and earned a master's in exercise physiology at California University of Pennsylvania.

One summer, a friend asked him to develop a fitness program for teenagers with autism in New York City, and "I was fascinated by it, and I thought, this is something really worthwhile for them and also worthwhile professionally for me."

Brimming with energy and pacing constantly on the stage at the Regional Learning Alliance, Mr. Chessen emphasized how important it is to make sure fitness activities also enhance the children's emotional control and thinking ability.

Children with autism often have distinctive repetitive behaviors, and "if I've got a child who usually jumps up and down and makes a loud vocalization and then runs across the room, and I can substitute working with a medicine ball or moving around like an animal, that gives him a larger repertoire of things to do that are functional that are going to enhance his life overall, and will eradicate some of those maladaptive behaviors."

The animal movements are a major part of his toolkit, he said, and he made sure that many of the 170 people registered for the conference experienced it firsthand.

After asking everyone to move to the back of the room, he demonstrated a bear crawl, and then asked everybody to use it to get back to their chairs. The movement involved people getting on their feet and hands and kicking their legs upward toward their rear ends as they moved forward, many of them huffing and giggling along the way.

"You can devise an entire fitness program based on animal movements," Mr. Chessen said, "and my kids especially like the bear crawl, because they love the fact they can kick their own butts."

The fitness exercises can easily add an educational component, he said. One example is having children jump from one large letter on the floor to another to spell a certain word.

And they enhance education in another way, he said, because study after study has shown that regular exercise helps children think more clearly and have longer attention spans.

In the end, he wants to give the children fitness habits that can last a lifetime. And in the process, he hopes they avoid the maladies that afflict many people later in life.

"These kids already face a lot of challenges," he said. "To add certain cancers or type 2 diabetes to that would be a real disservice to the population as a whole."

Mark Roth can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or at 412-263-1130.

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