Eric's Story

Eric Chessen

Eric is the CEO and Founder of the Autism Fitness Program. As a personal trainer, with an educational background in functional fitness and behavior science, Eric combined his knowledge and research to create a best practices approach for fitness programming with neurodiverse individuals, ultimately creating the Autism Fitness Program. Eric assesses each client’s physical, adaptive, and cognitive skills and then creates a customized, effective fitness and adapted PE program for each athlete.

He spends most of his time certifying trainers through the Autism Fitness Certification course and consults with professionals and parents worldwide, but also maintains his skills by providing 1-to-1 training with ASD/ND individuals in Charlotte, NC.

Eric first started working with the ASD population through an Adapted Summer Camp and was then recruited for a research program. One of Eric’s client success stories includes an athlete who started the fitness programming with aggressive and self-injurious behaviors, but within a month, this athlete was self-guided throughout his sessions!

In collaborating with other professionals, Eric recalls overseeing the Adapted PE program for a small private school. During this experience, Eric partnered with the Speech Pathologist to create "speech gym" wherein the Speech Pathologist worked language targets into their gym sessions.

Learn more here: Autisim Fitness-Home (autismfitness.com)