Any Athletic Aspies Out There?

Post Reply New Topic

I played 4 teams sports in high school(3 for the school): football, basketball, soccer, volleyball(originally baseball but at 14 switched to vball for this season), started playing most of them when I was very young. After went on to play American football and volleyball at a division 3 college.
Was diagnosed when I was young, but already had been playing sports for a few years and enjoying it..had my share of difficulties but ultimately was successful and happy playing team sports. I've heard that I'm more the exception than the rule, but that said I wouldn't let the diagnosis psyche you out from team sports if you enjoy them

Yup was very athletic and sporty, i actually think it was one of my special interests when i was younger, as i was a boarder at private school and needed something that removed me from everyone else and focus on my own, Was in team sports but preferred practicing on my own at night.. basketball was a funny one as when i was fully focused it seemed like time was slowed down when i was in amongst it... I represented County at rugby and had England rugby trials and was shortlisted, i represented SW England in Athletics, was offered Scholarships for rugby and swimming, was at the nationals Clay shooting championships 3 times and came 5th last time, i would mountain bike none stop for 6 hours... played cricket ( but hated the game, found it too boring!).. Actually liked squash, but the lights made me feel totally spun out! Have been a surfer most of my life and have surfed many breaks around the world, was with coastguard for 13 years and led the jetski crew here.... I used to have to have at least 2-5 hours a day doing some sport...... but as soon as i was taken away from those sports i would be walking into corners of doors, tripping over my feet... etc... My resting heart rate at its best at about 23 was about 50..... After a few injuries ( rugby related) I am not as sporty as i used to be, and have noticed it has effected me in a number of ways...

I'm a cyclist. I never liked team sports too much as you always had to interpret NT signs and then I'd miss something due to coordination. However cycling requires no more signs than driving and the motion (especially with toe clips or special shoes) is basically impossible to get wrong. As a kid, the sport i did most was swimming (also individual and no complex coordination).

Sorta. I don't weight lift or anything like that, but I'm in pretty good shape and eat relatively healthily. I was in the habit for a while of running several miles a week at the track at my college, but I'm not there anymore.

Started lifting weights casually and eating extremely healthy senior year. Starting to take up swimming here and there.

Decently fit, but forever feeling skinny/average.

I'm not sure what the average lifts for a 17 year old are, but I feel like mine are poor.

Stats are:

Bench press: 70lbs (but I can't go up because I've maxed out - home gym set is only 70lbs).
Squat/deadlift: 70lbs
Hammer curls/biceps: 26lbs
One Arm Dumbbell Rows (back): 35lbs
Lying Dumbbell Triceps extensions: 22lbs
Deltoid Raise/shoulders: 13lbs

Swimming max. speed: 75m in ≈45 seconds (calculated with the pool's clock by my Dad).

Stamina is high and I'm a decently fast runner, except I'm wayyyy too over-confident and would just fail in school races from over-shooting.

Outrider, keep in mind that if you're 17, you're likely two to five years from your peak still. I don't know your height and weight stats, so those numbers you posted may be way better than you think. My maximum bench success wasn't much over 100 pounds at age 19 and I never did a single pullup without cheating with my feet on the walls until age 21. In addition I can't recall if I ever reached 35 pounds with freeweight dumbell flys.
FWIW, I was a non-swimmer until around age 15-16.

I have some stats way outside the norm (BMI of 30 while BF about 14%), remember this is just a general rule not your practice.

5'8'', 158lbs. Body fat %: ≈12%

LBM: 138lbs, apparently.

Yeah, I've done 35lb hammer curls (alternate to bicep curls) before, just that it was a struggle.

With swimming, that was actually just the first time I've ever tried to swim a 100m pool and time myself.

Because some of the pool was blocked off, I only swam about 75m. But, I like to think 75m in 45 seconds is a decent achievement for a first try, considering the world record for 100m men's is 100m in 46 seconds.

But, I've been purposely trying to train to get a 'swimmer's body' without actually swimming yet, so I prepared myself for it. I'm going to actually start taking up swimming one day a week as my cardio source, because all I've been doing until now is a moderate run for 5mins after every workout.

This is a message to all parents like me who have a child diagnosed with aspergers and who are wondering if their child could be good at sport as all specialised doctors and websites for aspergers mention the problem of coordination, lack of social skills etc.

Well, this is the story of Aaron, my son, who was diagnosed with aspergers when he was six years old. At the start, his repetitive behaviour, his lack of eyes contact, his anxiety with changes led us to consult our local GP. We have four kids but Aaron was different, he could not understand indirect messages such as expressions, he could not read people's facial expressions etc. After a 10 minutes visit our local GP said that Aaron was fine and that we were over anxious parents and that there was nothing wrong with him. But with time and in comparison to his siblings it became more and more obvious that Aaron was not a typical functioning six year old child. After a long battle through the medical world, we finally managed to get him assessed by a group of child psycholgists in the UK specialised in children with autism. And the diagnosis came without much doubt.

Although the fact that Aaron was diagnosed with aspergers did not bother me at all, it helped us a lot to explain to family and friends that Aaron 's behaviour was not just due to the fact that he was badly behaved or spoilt or that we were bad parents but that he just did not understood the world in the same way as most of us. At that time we moved to France, a country lagging behind in terms of accepting and understanding kids with autism. So we decided not to label Aaron as an asperger kid but to treat him in the same way as any of our other children. He is a high achieving child and I did not want to limit his experiences just on the basis that he has aspergers. I thought that when problems arose we would deal with them. We registered him at a local soccer club where at the start he stood out with his mannerisms and way of walking. He could not get too close to the other kids, he felt uncomfortable. We did not say anything to the coach or to other parents and something truly amazing happened. Quite rapidly Aaron developed tactics to adjust to his environment. He learnt French and English expressions by heart with their definition and each time something did not make sense he guessed that this was likely to be an expression and even started to use them. He did the same with facial expressions and I worked daily with him to look at people in the eyes when he spoke as not looking in the eyes in a social environment was too much of a weird thing to do.

With soccer, in a same way he developed an above average ability through obsessive behaviour. Initially he stood out as he had an extremelly advanced theoretical understanding of the game. At an age when most kids can only look at their feet, he could position himself in parts of the pitch where there was no one and so he could cover the balls when the others could not. He said to me that he saw the game from a birds eye view and during matches he could see the whole distribution of his team mates across the field like on the playstation! Then everyday he worked out new skills and practiced things that he saw on the internet. Then in some competitions there were skills tests like juggling or precision shots and he won several of them to the great astonishment of the other parents who thought at the time that he must have been lucky. Slowly but surely he became more confident and dominant in the team by the way he plays but he was still very quiet and good at listening to instructions which is a trait appreciated by coaches. He decided that he wanted to become a professional soccer player and in the last couple of years, he has worked very hard at it. His progress are amazing and he has now become really popular with his team mates. [if you want to see Aaron's soccer google 'Sport Guyanais U10 Aaron Gozlan Football (8 years) ']

Aaron still has difficult moments in particular at home but he works really hard to adjust and fit in. He still has a unique vision of the world, which is refreshing for us and his siblings. We keep not labelling him as asperger as where we are now living autistic kids are not accepted in mainstream society even if they do not need any help to adjust. That is the way it is. We have not even told Aaron as until now he has found his own way of coping and he is pretty successful at it. He now speaks two languages, does high level sports competition and...has quite a few friends.

So from my own experience, the capacity of some asperger kids to find their own solutions to problems they are facing daily is limitless. It has been an extraordinary journey to see our child, removing one by one all the barriers and fears we as parents had put on him and on his future.