I'm kind of a jock and that's ok--series introduction

A common stereotype about autistic people is that we are unathletic, that we are bad at sports, that we don't like to move our bodies.

This is not strictly true. However, our community is full of people who have had really bad experiences with sports and other physical activity because the environment was wrong or the instructors were wrong or the activity was a mismatch. I have had some of those experiences, but I've also had some great ones.

I did gymnastics, and it was wonderful. I danced, and the activity was fun but the people were Problems. I played both wheelchair and on feets basketball (at college and in middle school, respectively) and it worked out ok. I do archery and while my favorite range isn't open in the winter, it's a thing and it works for me. I currently do aikido and it's managing to fill the gymnastics shaped hole in my life enough that I no longer dream about going back to the gym (that's pretty amazing).

There's reasons these things worked. Some are in common among all of them. There's reasons the environments did, or didn't, work. There's common themes. And the prevailing wisdom is that we are bad at moving our bodies and we're in a weird space with access to such activities anyway that it's important to offer an exception, if you will.

So over the next week or so I will be writing about the structured movement things I do, to offer a narrative of "actually we totally can do this".


I'm kind of a jock and that's okay.