Module Summary

Introduction

In this topic you’re going to learn about the most important part of Special Olympics: our athletes. We’ll talk about intellectual disability, how those with intellectual disabilities can participate in sport, and our approach to fitness.

What is intellectual disability?

Here is the World Health Organisation’s definition:

“Intellectual disability means a significantly reduced ability to understand new or complex information and to learn and apply new skills (impaired intelligence). This results in a reduced ability to cope independently (impaired social functioning), and begins before adulthood, with a lasting effect on development.”

How can you best support athletes with intellectual disabilities to play and develop in sport?

We want to understand the needs of our athletes to help us to better support them during sport. To help do this, we’ve created a quick reference coaching guide to help you when working with athletes who display various different behaviours. The guide suggests strategies and solutions for behaviours that are commonly associated with intellectual disabilities. In fact, you will see many of these behaviours with any athletes you might coach, whether or not they have ID.

Obviously, all of our athletes are individuals with their own likes and dislikes, so it’s important that you get to know them. Their families, caregivers, teachers and coaches can all tell you more about the athlete. Don’t forget though, that the best way to get to know your athletes is to spend time with them, talking to them and asking them about their interests, likes and dislikes.

Here’s an example of how the reference guide can help you.

Meet Jamie

Jamie is an athlete who attends the weekly coaching session that you help out at. He’s friendly and talkative, but is very easily distracted, which can be disruptive to the coaching session. The coach, Joan, often has to stop what she’s doing because Jamie isn’t paying attention and is distracting other athletes.

Consulting the guide

You look in the quick reference coaching guide and see that ‘short attention span’ is listed as a common behaviour. There are various suggestions, such as ‘use short training sessions’, ‘allow athletes lots of practise time’ and ‘provide 1:1 coaching’.

Your suggestion

You talk to Joan and suggest that you provide some 1:1 support to Jamie when he is finding it difficult to concentrate. This will allow Joan to focus on communicating the instructions to the whole group. You will be able to help Jamie to stay focused on what Joan is saying and remind him if he has trouble remembering the instructions. Joan agrees and the result is a coaching session which is better for everyone involved – the group is not disrupted by Jamie’s behaviour and can get Joan’s full attention and Jamie has extra support to help him to focus on the task at hand.

Click here to read and download the quick reference guide.

What is fitness?

Our athletes’ fitness is very important to us. Special Olympics defines fitness as:

The state of optimal health and functional ability (movement) as a result of:

Physical Activity

Healthy eating habits

Adequate hydration

The components

This component displays an image gallery with accompanying text. Use the next and back navigation controls to work through the narrative.

All of our sport training sessions have the same key components, these examples should give you a good idea of what they involve.

Warm-up

We start each session with a warm-up activity. For example, a coach may lead some light aerobic exercise of increasing intensity followed by 5-8 minutes of dynamics stretches.

Review of previously learned skills

This is a simple recap of skills learned or practised in previous sessions. For example, athletes could be asked to practice the dribbling exercises that were covered in the last football training session.

New skills/drills

In this section the coach introduces, demonstrates, and explains the new skills/drills being covered. Athletes are then given the opportunity to practice and receive feedback from the coach. Continuing the football theme, athletes could be learning how to pass the ball.

Competition style practice/scrimmage

At this point, athletes will use their new skill in a game scenario. This could be a small-sided game where only goals scored from headers count or where teams must successfully complete a number of passes before trying to score.

Cool-down and review of session

The cool-down could involve some light jogging and relaxation exercises. The coach will then review the session so that athletes know how they’ve done, how they can improve, and what will be covered next time.

Your turn

Now that you’ve learned what they involve, it’s your turn to plan a session. Pick one of your favourite sports and imagine that you’re creating a training session for it. You need include a warm-up, review of previously learned skills, new skills/drills, competition style practice/scrimmage, and a cool-down and review of session.

Remember, you can always refer to the above for inspiration.

Top tips

So how do you take responsibility for health and safety? Here are some tips:

• Check for hazards – are there trip hazards, poorly maintained pieces of equipment etc?

• Eliminate or reduce any risks – always play it safe.

• Make sure you know the emergency plan and your role within it.

• There should be a first aid provider present at all times.

Athlete medical forms should be kept on-site.