Three years ago, Wes Piatt was asked to speak at the seniors’ home across the street from his gym.
- He didn’t hesitate to do so, as it was “a good opportunity to talk about CrossFit,” he told Morning Chalk Up in an interview. Piatt wasn’t expecting any new clients to come of it.
Still, the long-time owner of Coast Range CrossFit in Gilroy, CA, invited the adults from the home to his gym, and to his surprise, 10 people showed up.
Demand only grew from there, and before he knew it, Piatt was training a group of aging athletes with neurological conditions, ranging from stroke survivors to those with Parkinson’s, a progressive movement disorder of the nervous system.
That’s when Piatt, a 2013 CrossFit Games athlete, Level 2 coach, and CrossFit Seminar Staff member, realized he needed to start a class specifically for adults with these conditions.
Remind me: For those unfamiliar, CrossFit HQ has worked to highlight the benefits of high-intensity exercise for athletes diagnosed with Parkinson’s, providing articles (including this one to a BBC story featuring the benefits of CrossFit training as a Parkinson’s treatment), podcasts (including this hour-long discussion on the topic with CrossFit’s senior manager of health education), and more (like coaching guides explicitly designed to help those who coach athletes with Parkinson’s) on its website here.
- CrossFit’s website states: “When people who have recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s ask us what they can do to live well, our answer is always exercise. When people who have been living with Parkinson’s for decades ask us what they can do, the answer is the same.”
“Aside from dopamine-replacement medications,” the website continues, “exercise is the best medicine you can give a Parkinson’s brain and body because when it comes to a return on investment, the return on physical movement is life-changing.”
Three Years Later
Today, Piatt offers two classes: a “No Shuffle Club” on Tuesdays and Thursdays for beginners and those with severe symptoms, and a wellness class on Mondays and Wednesdays for more experienced members.
- “People start in the No Shuffle Club. It’s called that because they’re not allowed to shuffle their feet when they walk. They have to meet a certain number of benchmarks in the No Shuffle Club before they can graduate to the wellness class, which is a little more advanced. And some members even now come to the regular group class,” Piatt said, adding that the adults in both classes are generally anywhere from their 50s to 80s.
There is such strong demand for both classes that Piatt currently has a waitlist of 12 people, and he is training two more coaches to add another No Shuffle class.
- “It’s pretty crazy how many people have been reaching out,” Piatt said.
He explained that part of the reason is that his classes are the only fitness options in his area specifically for adults recovering from a stroke or dealing with Parkinson’s, which has only increased his motivation to keep expanding his program.
Piatt said that working with this demographic has been challenging from a coaching perspective, but after 12 years of owning a gym, he insists it has made him a better coach.
When he first started his No Shuffle Club, he said he tried many “crazy things.” At one point, he experimented with vibration plates, and at another, he had adults tapping their skin.
However, it became clear quickly that he didn’t need to reinvent the wheel. The results came from simply going back to the basics of functional movements.
- “Just having them squat, and get down on the ground, and push things over their head, and pull things,” he said. “It really just came back to actually doing CrossFit. That was a big lightbulb moment for me.”
That said, to be successful, Piatt had to learn to scale to a new level.
- “It has taught me to never underestimate the basics. For people who are in walkers or wheelchairs, or are missing feeling on the left or right side of their body, it has helped us even go further back into the progressions of all the movements and help people get into CrossFit with a low barrier of entry,” he said.
The Big Picture
For Piatt, nothing beats seeing his neurological athletes improve as fast as they do.
- “Some of them come in, and they can’t squat below parallel without the assistance of some kind. And now they’re squatting below parallel, getting up and off the ground, putting things over their head, and jogging by themselves,” he said.
Piatt added: “The results that we’re seeing are pretty amazing, and pretty life changing.”
