S02|E224 Adaptive Sport Strength and Conditioning with Abbey Phillipson
Availble 9/19/2025
On this edition of the Samson Strength Coach Collective, we sit down with Abbey Phillipson, Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for Adaptive Sport and Head ParaPowerlifting Coach at the University of Michigan. Abbey shares her journey as an athlete with a disability and her path to becoming a leader in adaptive sports. She discusses why strength training principles apply universally, the misconceptions about adaptive sports, and the competitive drive of adaptive athletes. Abbey also talks about founding Michigan’s ParaPowerlifting team and the importance of testing, data collection, and long-term investment in adaptive sports.
Key Takeaways
- Strength and conditioning principles do not change for adaptive sports.
- Abbey founded the first collegiate para powerlifting team at the University of Michigan.
- Misconceptions about adaptive sports often stem from lack of understanding.
- Strength training is essential for improving quality of life for athletes with disabilities.
- Adaptive sports are highly competitive and empower athletes just like able-bodied sports.
- Institutional investment in adaptive sports remains limited and needs improvement.
- Testing and data collection are crucial—“If you’re not testing, you’re guessing.”
Quote
“Then we’re creating the narrative that kids with disabilities, people who acquire disabilities, the normal is that you play sports. The normal is that you go to the gym. The normal is that you are living life like any other person.” – Abbey Phillipson
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Abbey Phillipson :
Then we’re creating the narrative that kids with disabilities, people who acquire disabilities, the normal is that you play sports. The normal is that you go to the gym. The normal is that you are living life like any other person. You just happen to be using a mobility aid to do so. And so I appreciate that you’re feeling so inspired, but check yourself. Would you be inspired by that same thing if that person was standing up? And that’s really a good way to kind of check out how
if your inspiration is coming from a place that would actually benefit the disability community.
Connor Agnew :
What’s going on Sampson strength coach collective listeners on today’s episode, have Abby Phillipson. Abby is the head strength and conditioning coach and parapower lifting coach for adaptive sports at university of Michigan. Thank you so much for coming on Abby.
Abbey Phillipson :
Thanks for having me, I’m super excited.
Connor Agnew :
Well, I’m really excited for this one too, because we were talking about this pre-show. I like to talk about things that are not just the sets and reps of strength and conditioning. ⁓ You you mentioned it, everybody knows that stuff already. So I like to talk about different avenues of strength and conditioning. I think it’s such a great career field and it’s so awesome to see how it can be used in different areas. So I’m really excited to dive into your work and what you do.
Abbey Phillipson :
Me too. think that one of the things that people think of when they think of adaptive sports in terms of strength and conditioning is that it probably looks a lot different. And quite honestly, it doesn’t. So we can definitely get into that more. But yeah, if you’re hearing adaptive sports right now and you’re thinking, my gosh, but I don’t know everything. I want to know all the ins and outs of the sets and the reps. It’s the same principles of exercise. Strength and conditioning do not change just because you’re sitting down.
Connor Agnew :
It’s basic principles. They stayed the same for a long time for a reason. So, well, can you just give us your background and strength and conditioning and then what’s brought you to your current job?
Abbey Phillipson :
basic principles.
Yeah, absolutely. So again, I’m currently the head coach of adaptive sports and fitness, strength and conditioning specifically. And I also started our first ever and only collegiate para power lifting team at the University of Michigan. So we, our program houses five different sports. have wheelchair rugby, wheelchair basketball, wheelchair tennis, ⁓ para power lifting and adaptive track and field. And so all five of those sports are also at the Paralympic level. So Paralympians and Paralympic hopefuls can go through the University of Michigan as students train with us.
and with the hopes of making now LA 2028. the word para just means parallel or alongside. So people often think Paralympics or Parasport and they think, oh, paraplegic, like wheelchair. But that’s actually not what it means. It just means it runs alongside the Olympics, Paralympic alongside the Olympics. but yeah, what led me here, I grew up with a physical disability called classical Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. My body makes incorrect collagen.
So my skin is super, super elastic. If you’re just listening, I’m stretching my skin for Connor right now and it’s like five, six inches. Guinness Book of World Records has reached out to me a billion times. ⁓ I’m not kidding on that. It’s weekly at this point. ⁓ But yeah, my joints and my internal tissues are also affected by the condition. So extreme hypermobility to the point of dislocations, really easy tears in tendons and ligaments. And then the structure of my organs and the…
Connor Agnew :
Seriously.
Abbey Phillipson :
the kind of casing around everything joints, organs, arteries is very, thin and translucent and it just tears really, really easily. So sparring, dislocations, some internal tissue stuff as well. So with that being said, I wasn’t allowed to do gym class growing up. I never did sports. I never did gym class. I was the kid that sat out all the time out of fear that I was going to get hurt and I did. But I did gymnastics for a little bit because as you
might be able to guess the hypermobility is fairly good until it’s not for something like gymnastics. So I loved gymnastics. That first time being involved in sport, I was like, my gosh, this is what all the other kids are experiencing. This is freaking awesome. ⁓ That was short lived. I blew out both my knees from a hyperextension at a 90 degree angle of both of my knees landing a vault and dislocated everything, tore everything.
Didn’t really know what I had at the time. They thought I had like a form of muscular dystrophy But following that injury at gymnastics got diagnosed the guy doctor came in to one look at my scars and my hypermobility and This injury having happened to 11 and he was like Yeah, so I know what this is. Here’s ten interns that I’m gonna bring in to poke and prod you here’s a pamphlet You have classical Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and you need to stop gymnastics or you’re gonna regret it later on
So that was my last little, my first and only and last taste of sport that I got. And yeah, I had a huge spinal injury when I was 16, not from any trauma, just from over the course of time with my condition. My L4, L5, S1 completely separated in my lower lumbar region and tailbone. And then all of them just kind of fractured. So it’s called spondylolisthesis and I had a grade five, which is close to complete separation of the vertebrae there.
So lots of weakness and ataxia and some issues with horrible chronic pain and disfiguring of my torso and everything. So got that fixed. My doctor said, hey, instead of physical therapy, I want you to strength train. And I said, okay, doc, whatever you say will fix me. But I got super, super into it. I ended up starting the adaptive gymnastics program at the University of Michigan to kind of fulfill my dreams that I would have had as a kid.
⁓ All the while, got my personal training certification, got super invested in nutrition and exercise science, even though I wasn’t studying it at the University of Michigan. I just started kind of researching and doing all my papers about adaptive sport and recreation for folks with disabilities. I just got super invested in it, even though it wasn’t my majors there. And then upon graduating, saw this job posting for adaptive strength and conditioning. I I want that. Had a CSCS ⁓ that I didn’t have at the time, but you needed one.
for the position. So I said, when do you need me to get that? They said, we need to hire in six weeks. So I quit my current job to study full time for the CSCS, basically teach myself a kinesiology degree. ⁓ And here we are, I passed and I got the job. So now I’m here. That was a long story, but yeah. ⁓
Connor Agnew :
Wow, that’s incredible. I mean, that worked out so well. No, no, no,
no, no, seriously. I love to hear it and I love to hear the background and especially what makes you so passionate about what you do. You know, it seems like you had a separation from yourself and other kids from a young age. Like, what was the, were you just told, no, a lot that you can’t do these things? Was that your kind of your experience growing up?
Abbey Phillipson :
Yeah, so still today, and it’s getting a lot better, but physicians and folks in the medical field, ⁓ our bodies are fragile. That is true. Folks with chronic pain and various conditions, whether they’re congenital or acquiring a disability, you can be potentially more fragile depending on what the presentation of the condition is. That being said, it was kind of the thought process of, this is bubble wrap girl. This is somebody that…
that I don’t want to be responsible for hurting ⁓ instead of, hey, the basic principles of exercise science, we know for a fact that with any condition, unless we’re getting super, super specific with certain ones, bone density and muscle mass help. Bone density and muscle mass lead to longevity and better physical and mental health for any individual. And so out of fear, we kind of went right over
right over those facets ⁓ of exercise science that would have been very beneficial to me at the time and said, no, I’m scared she’s going to get hurt. So physicians awfully wrongfully, I’d say contra indicate strength training for folks with chronic pain out of fear that they’d be responsible for them getting hurt. But that’s kind of what it was growing up.
Connor Agnew :
Yeah, you know, on a very micro level, I remember I hurt my back deadlifting and I was told, you know, okay, never deadlift or lift anything over 50 pounds again. And I was like, that’s obviously never going to happen. You know, I got to make sure that we train and I felt way better once I actually went through a full lifting protocol to make sure that I felt better. So it’s interesting. And I appreciate you bringing up the perspective because I feel like a lot of training conditioning coaches can kind of just blame physicians and just say, you know, well,
they just don’t like lifting or whatever, but I appreciate you bringing in the fact that it says, well, I don’t want to be responsible for hurting this person further because there is inherent risk with anything that you do, even tying your shoes in the morning. But you know, with lifting, I think there is some amount of risk while it is minor ⁓ that it could worsen the condition or it could make something, ⁓ you know, more dangerous, whatever the language may be that physicians may use for it. So I appreciate you saying that because it gives me a little bit more understanding of why they would not.
prescribe it, but I’m ultimately very happy that you found a physician who recommended that you strength train. Like how did you meet them? How were you able to find somebody who made that recommendation for you?
Abbey Phillipson :
Yeah, so from the jump, this doctor, we were kind of interviewing doctors because I was one of the youngest people to have this severe of a case of spondylolisthesis. And usually if they are young, it’s a result of a car accident or some sort of blunt force trauma. So was really bad. given the nature of my condition, I had three physicians before this surgeon turned me away, say the case was too complex, they were scared. They genuinely, they would say it, they would say I am not comfortable.
doing this operation and then would refer me to the next one who would say the same thing in the next one. ⁓ And this guy just, he didn’t care. He was like, he actually did a case study on my condition with this surgery. And so he looked at me and I was fine with this. He looked at me as like an experiment. He was like, I’m smart. I’ve got the tools to make this person better if I do it right. If I really, really research the presentation of this condition and all of the different ⁓ outcomes that could happen here.
I am going to be potentially the only person who says, let’s do it and fix this person who’s 16 and has a whole lot of life left to live and can barely get out of bed in the morning. So he ended up doing a case study on the condition. We always said like his, people who don’t love this doctor, he has like horrible bedside manner cause he’s just blunt. Like when I came into the office the first time I’m 16, I’m scared out of my mind. And he looks at me and my mom face and he’s like, she’s almost paralyzed. That was like one of the first things he said.
We were just like, wow, but I kind of needed that. I’ve had people kind of just skating around what I am and who I am and what my body is like for so long that it was nice to hear someone say, you’re really messed up, but I’m going to fix it. And so with that being said, it was the same kind of discourse following the surgery was like, my mom was like, okay, physical therapy, when’s it happening? Like medications, what? And he’s like, he went, no, no, no, no,
She’s gonna she’s gonna go back to her normal life and she’s gonna start strength training. She’s gonna get really strong We’re hold her joints in her muscle tissue is largely unaffected by the condition. So that’s what we’re gonna build So it was nice to hear someone say after you know having having strength training having strong having athlete as This list of things this long list of things that I could never be Have someone as smart as this guy who just saved my life Say yeah, I’m gonna cross a couple of these things off this list. You can be strong
and you can be an athlete and I want you to go do it next week.
Connor Agnew :
Well, that’s awesome. I mean, especially like you said, people were kind of treating you like you had to be bubble wrapped and very delicate when ultimately this is something that could change your life for the better. And I hope it has. I mean, truly.
Abbey Phillipson :
Absolutely it has, absolutely. And I try to be cautious in the realm of disability here because I don’t want to speak for everybody who has a disability. ⁓ But with the hundreds now of athletes with disabilities that I have worked with, there is not a single one who has not greatly benefited both in their sport obviously, but also in their daily life from strength and conditioning. There’s not a single person whose life has been worse off or all of these scary things that
Physicians and folks within the fitness and the medical industry have told them You can’t do this. You’re gonna get hurt. I haven’t had one person whose life hasn’t been made better by this
Connor Agnew :
Wow, that’s incredible. And I’m really excited to have you on again, just to be able to kind of expose adaptive sports to strength and conditioning more. ⁓ It’s something that I think we’ve always been familiar with. Like everybody’s aware of the Paralympics and everybody kind of has an idea about it. But even like you said, just the basic misconception of, ⁓ para means paraplegic, not parallel. And so I’m excited to kind of dive into it more. You know, what are some of the things that you would really like the world to know about adaptive sports?
Abbey Phillipson :
Yeah, absolutely. So I think first and foremost, when we talk about adaptive sport or parasport, we are not talking about sports for disabled people. Parasport is sport. And for that reason, most parasports invite also able-bodied individuals to play either competitively or recreationally. So adaptive sports are for everyone. It is a way that everyone can play together. So it’s not like this side thing that’s of
It’s wheelchair basketball is basketball for people with disabilities. No, it’s wheelchair basketball. It’s a separate sport. It’s not a version of basketball for people with disabilities. And so for that reason, Connor, if you wanted to come play wheelchair basketball, you could come get in a sport chair and play wheelchair basketball. It is not a version of basketball that is only for disabled people. So we use modified equipment or rules to make
sure that we can have equitable participation, meaning people with and without disabilities have a sport that they can play together. So even in intercollegiate basketball, the collegiate division, you can have two able-bodied student athletes play on your wheelchair basketball team. So we just found our one. We hold a little tryout selection process for finding the two wheelchair basketball players that do not have a disability to play on our team. And so we’ve got one locked in, but we still got another spot open, Connor.
Connor Agnew :
Yeah
I promise you, I’m so bad at any ⁓ athletic event that doesn’t involve just one burst of power, like shot putter or anything. I would make your team worse. I promise you, but I’ll, ⁓ I’ll, I’ll let our basketball players here know as well too, and let them know that you have a spot open. But I really appreciate you giving me that perspective too, because it makes me think back to what you just mentioned with your childhood. Like, do you ever see this kind of trickling down to where
Abbey Phillipson :
Hahaha! ⁓
That’s how I feel too.
Connor Agnew :
Physical education classes can take on adaptive sports so that people with your experience don’t just feel left out and have to just completely sit out of sport.
Abbey Phillipson :
Yeah,
I’m so glad you asked that because a lot of folks see me on social media or they just see me in the weight room with athletes and they think all that’s to this, she’s a coach. She is a coach, she programs and she runs ⁓ sessions for the adaptive sports program. Our day job as coaches when we’re not coaching or at competitions or programming, we actually have an initiative funded by the state government of Michigan ⁓ that we bring adaptive sports into the physical education classes of.
Southeast Michigan schools. ⁓ So middle schoolers and high schoolers in Ann Arbor, Saline and Ypsilanti, and we’re expanding this year, will have played adaptive sports, wheelchair sports in their PE class as a unit of PE. So we teach teachers how to teach adaptive sports.
Connor Agnew :
That’s incredible. I love to hear that. I mean, how has that experience been?
Abbey Phillipson :
It has been incredible just seeing the young students come in on the first day and they’re like, huh, I don’t know if this is for me. Like, what are all these wheelchairs doing here? Like, isn’t this a little weird? Like, I don’t use a wheelchair. Can I just sit in a wheelchair and play this game? Like, this is for disabled kids. And then by day two, day three, day four, when they learn how to navigate the equipment that is used for the sport. ⁓
learn how to navigate a sport chair, for example, the competitive nature that you would see in a middle school game of dodgeball or blob tag or whatever it is comes out and they are so invested in their own progress. They’re chirping each other from across the court for wheelchair basketball and wheelchair tennis and sitting volleyball. So they are having a great time and it’s initial apprehension and then a couple days later we’re seeing them just yelling at each other from across.
the room, making contact with other chairs, wheelchair basketball and wheelchair rugby are both contact sports. ⁓ So learning how to make legal and illegal contact with other folks’ And they’re just so invested in it. We also have a researcher with Adaptive Sports and Fitness who compiles their responses. Both the kids and teachers have ⁓ response forms that are quite extensive that talk about what they’ve learned, how they’ve enjoyed the process, what things that they have seen develop in themselves and in their sport.
based out of sports and we use that research to further the mission and make the program better for next year.
Connor Agnew :
I mean, that’s incredible. And I really, I really hope that continues to expand not just in Michigan, but in other States as well, because I mean, what I talk about all the time is just how sport has changed my life and being involved in an athletic team and just being able to do something that kind of, was my form of therapy. Like, I don’t really like talking about my feelings a lot. My wife doesn’t love that part about me, but I do like to process things and work through things in the weight room or on the court, whatever it may be. ⁓
And so I really appreciate the work that you’re doing and I really hope it continues to expand because again, you’re mentioning a group of people who have been told that they can’t do something, which they absolutely can, ⁓ and it’s something that can end up changing their lives.
Abbey Phillipson :
Exactly. And we know from research, we’ve known it for a long time, that sports, just participation in sport, whether you’re good at it or not, let’s take the physical benefits aside, the social emotional benefits of strength and conditioning, of sport, of team is exponential. And to say that those are benefits that are only for kids that were dealt a perfect hand is ridiculous. There is so small modifications, such small modifications that we can make.
to sport to make it for everybody. And it’s in a way that doesn’t take away from able-bodied kids. It’s in a way that still feeds that competitive, that team camaraderie, all of those building blocks of sport. It feeds it for both able-bodied children and children with disabilities. ⁓ So to say that benefit is on that list of things that disabled children can’t have is crazy when it’s just up to us to make small creative decisions to make it equitable participation.
Connor Agnew :
Yeah, I really appreciate that. And I love hearing about it. again, I do hope it continues to expand. What are some of the, we’ve already talked about a couple of the misconceptions, but what are some of the other misconceptions you see surrounding adaptive sports that are maybe questions that you receive that are just completely out of left field that people don’t really understand about adaptive sports?
Abbey Phillipson :
Yeah, so I think an initial response from folks, and I do think intention is important. So I’ll start by saying, if you have been inspired by somebody with a disability, I know that is well-intentioned. ⁓ However, someone like Chuck Aoki, who’s a four-time Paralympian, he’s arguably the most decorated Paralympian in US history. ⁓ He’s the captain of the wheelchair rugby team. He’s also our rugby coach at the University of Michigan. And so someone like Chuck has gotten high fives at the grocery store.
has been doing his laundry and it’s like, you know what, good for you, man. And it’s like, wait a second, there are so many things that I do that are inspirational and that are awesome and that are worth celebrating and not a single one on the first list of 50 things have anything to do with the fact that Chuck uses a wheelchair, right? And so when we see disability representation in the media, it is usually from an angle of, let me inspire somebody without a disability.
This person was born without an arm and look at them, they’re playing volleyball. So it’s this idea that doing something physically active or even take sports out of it, someone getting a PhD or someone becoming a doctor or something just high accomplishment that somebody does without a disability and you’re like, cool. ⁓ It’s sensationalized just by having a disability. And so if we stop sensationalizing it,
Then we’re creating the narrative that kids with disabilities, people who acquire disabilities, the normal is that you play sports. The normal is that you go to the gym. The normal is that you are living life like any other person. You just happen to be using a mobility aid to do so. And so I appreciate that you’re feeling so inspired, but check yourself. Would you be inspired by that same thing if that person was standing up? And that’s really a good way to kind of check out how
if your inspiration is coming from a place that would actually benefit the disability community.
Connor Agnew :
It feels to me like it almost takes out the human aspect a little bit, right? And just treating people not like human beings.
Abbey Phillipson :
It does.
Yes, it does. And I think especially within athletics, it takes out the fact that we are elite performance ⁓ athletes. ⁓ And so if you’re saying, if you’re looking at somebody who uses a wheelchair and is playing wheelchair rugby, let’s use Chuck, for example, just like somebody with, you know, really tight springy tendons, they’ve just got the perfect genetics to be a ridiculous sprinter or perfect genetics to be a basketball player.
really fricking tall, they got nice vertical. There are people who are genetically perfect for excelling within a certain sport, right? Chuck Aoki has the perfect genetics to be the best wheelchair rugby player. That is factual. And so when we’re looking at athletes only from the angle of, wow, look what you can do even though you have a disability. It’s like, look what Chuck’s doing, period. He was born with the perfect genetics to be.
best wheelchair rugby player of all time and he is.
Connor Agnew :
And he makes some hilarious videos too. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I love those videos too, because I feel like, ⁓ I don’t know, maybe I might be speaking out of turn, but just, feel like a lot of it comes from uncomfortability from people with ⁓ not being familiar with adaptive sports or like you say, just like they see somebody in a wheelchair, so they automatically feel like, okay, this person is.
Abbey Phillipson :
and he makes hilarious videos that I am so happy to be a part of.
Connor Agnew :
less than or this person just does not have the same abilities as me. So they’re different instead of just being another human being. And so I love the videos that you make because they don’t like they poke fun at that idea that other people have. Like it’s like these like the trust fall video that you made, you know, where you’d pretend how to do trust falls and everything. Like it’s just to me. So ⁓ enriching and enlightening. I like it because I think it really exposes ⁓ that everybody who competes in adaptive sports is an athlete and they are people who are human beings as well.
Abbey Phillipson :
Yeah, absolutely. And I think to that point, Connor, if I asked you what facets of athleticism would you still have, even if tomorrow you acquired a spinal cord injury that affected you waist down, there are still most of your facets of athleticism would still be present. They don’t go away because now you’re sitting down. You would still have really great maybe unilateral ⁓ pushing strength, or you may have an incredible throw.
or your bench press would probably stay the same. And so there are still so many facets of athleticism that whether you have a disability or don’t, you still have them. It’s not like you wake up from whatever surgery and all of sudden you’re not an athlete anymore. And so disability doesn’t discriminate. It can happen to anyone at any time. It doesn’t have to be something you’re born with. Disability will affect one in three people. And so when it comes to adaptive sports, changing that perspective is not to just benefit the disability community.
is to benefit you, your parents, your child, your sibling, your friend, an athlete on your team who may acquire a disability someday, right? And so we never know. You may think you’re immune to that, but you’re not. It’s not something that you have to be born with. It is a minority group that you could wake up and become a part of. And so you better get on board because it really could affect anybody or anybody that you know. ⁓ And so with that being said, it really is important to normalize.
that someone may acquire an amputation or something and they wake up from a surgery and they’re like, I’m going to play a sport. If they had the identity of an athlete, you can keep that identity of an athlete. ⁓ And so it’s just about getting it out there and having solid representation so people don’t see disability as the worst thing that could ever happen to them and start writing on their list of things they can’t do, stuff that they absolutely can do.
Connor Agnew :
Yeah. And again, I really appreciate you giving me that perspective ⁓ as well, because ultimately, again, it’s just athletics is just competing. Can you talk to me a little bit about the competition aspect of adaptive sports? Because one of the things I’ve heard when people were talking about Paralympics versus the Olympics was, well, it just might not be as competitive, right? Or people may not have that same competitive spirit, which I know is completely incorrect. But I would like to hear your thoughts on it as well.
Abbey Phillipson :
Yeah, I think first and foremost, challenge yourself and attend a para-sport sporting match. Wheelchair rugby would be my first recommendation if you like football, if you like anything context sport. If you’re looking for a para context sport, wheelchair rugby is probably the most context sport I’ve ever seen, period. It’s like bumper cars, aggressive bumper cars. There’s bumpers actually placed onto the sport chair that is specific to wheelchair rugby that is meant for
hitting people really, really hard, dumping people out of their chair. That’s kind how you play defense, is you crash. ⁓ And so I would challenge you to maybe watch the documentary Murderball, which is all about witcherucky. ⁓ So challenge you, go watch some para-sport. Go watch some Paralympic adaptive track and field. See that folks with amputations are sometimes jumping higher, longer, running faster than folks without disabilities. So challenge yourself. ⁓ But I will say.
If you are a person that has ever had that competitive drive, that grit, that sport specific thing that you want and no one’s going to stop you from going after, I promise you that that is present in people that are sitting down or that is present in people who were born without a limb. That is present in somebody say with an intellectual disability. That same thing that is human, that is human nature. ⁓ And so that is something that I want everyone to recognize about.
competition scene is that it is the same chirpy, competitive grits, heads down, do the work, shut up, and win as any other sport.
Connor Agnew :
Yeah, I remember I watched murder ball with my family when I was younger and I was like, this is sick. Like it’s just such a fun environment and it is absolutely brutal. And the same I’ve seen with wheelchair basketball as well too. I remember actually watching, think it was, I think it was Auburn and Alabama both had teams that they ended up posting like the highlights from and Auburn like, or Alabama totally blew out Auburn. And then I watched some of the highlights. I was like, this is, it’s just such a fun sport. And it’s just something that I think to me is actually
great to watch because it’s something different from what we’ve seen from all these other sports that are the same thing time and time again. So I’d like to see the competitiveness. Yeah.
Abbey Phillipson :
Absolutely.
I agree. And I think too, I will die on the hill that you can’t convince me that if adaptive sports, wheelchair rugby for example, got the same broadcasting time and got some media and had some athletes with NIL deals and sponsorships and it was, it’s in your face, you can watch it on TV, you can turn it on and something para sport will be on TV for you to watch. You can’t tell me that people wouldn’t tune in.
And we see this, like Murderball was one of the acclaimed documentaries of its time. People loved Murderball. It was a very high performing athletic documentary. And same thing with wheelchair basketball. This year we had a game at the Chrysler Arena at the University of Michigan, the Chrysler Center at the University of Michigan. It was against Michigan State and we took months to just chirp Michigan State and we were making it so public. had, you know, how to get your tickets broadcasted everywhere.
⁓ This was in news outlets and radio. We sold out. We had 3,200 people in attendance at the Chrysler Center to watch a rivalry wheelchair basketball game. The crowd was doing the wave, screaming, the marching band was there, we had half court shot, we had competitions, we had announcers. It was the real freaking deal and it sold out. So if those two examples don’t prove enough that if we got the same showcasing that people are bought in, people like it.
Connor Agnew :
Yeah, and I just, when you think about, like you say, things being in your face, I think about my wife’s experience with NFL coming on, right? Like I’m a big NFL fan and so she’s like literally, I mean, on every single thing, she’s like, can’t believe there’s football today, there’s football Thursday, there’s football Monday, and then I’ve got to watch commercials for football in between this. Like, it’s just ridiculous. I can’t see it anymore. Yeah.
Abbey Phillipson :
cereal boxes, have a quarterback
on it, and you know what I mean? if we can push adaptive sports to a point and people will argue and say, well, like the data doesn’t show that people will watch it. We don’t have data to support that people will watch it because it’s not on. So give us the chance. And I think people would tune in, us on a cereal box.
Connor Agnew :
Yeah. So
what do you think that people could do to help ⁓ push forward adaptive sports in that direction?
Abbey Phillipson :
Yeah, I think by watching adaptive sports and actively seeking that out, ⁓ it will automatically start to of rewire what people already think about disability, these preconceived notions that they have about disability. And so when you get invested in an athlete’s story and you get invested in athletes come up in their triumph, just like they give us those little stories about NFL players, for example, you connect with quarterbacks first because they’re good, but then because you get to know their family and their…
their home life and their upbringing. And so kind of give us that same angle and not just come at it always from an angle of disability. It allows you to connect with the athletes that are competing beyond just, you know, if you can agree, yeah, they’re elite performance and look at this guy play rugby, he’s nuts. But also being able to connect with them on a level that’s not just disability, because that’s not relatable for most people. Just having a disability is not that like really relation point.
And so for an able-bodied person to connect with an athlete that way, I think it’s just about seeing it, respecting it as an athlete, but then knowing about that athlete beyond their disability.
Connor Agnew :
Yeah, you you think about one of the most sentimental shows is like Hard Knocks where they go home and they show the, you know, NFL players who are trying to make the team like their actual family lives. And I think you bring up a great point. It’s the relatability of it. It’s being able to see, okay, this person has a lot of similar experiences to me. And so that’s why I’m invested now by end of this person.
Abbey Phillipson :
Absolutely.
Peacock has an adaptive athletes ⁓ podcast out right now. I think it’s just called adaptive. ⁓ And it’s, I’m not sorry, not a podcast, a docu-series, a limited series. And so there it’s a three episode thing and they follow ⁓ three different Paralympians and their story. And they very rarely talk about like their acquisition of the disability at all. And they come at it from that athletic performance lens. And it was so well done.
So well done. And I’ve had folks who have very limited involvement with para sport who have watched it and they’re like, that was a sick documentary, an athletic documentary, not a disability documentary.
Connor Agnew :
That’s awesome. I guess what I’m curious about and what you were so gracious with beforehand was you said this was a safe space for me to ask any question and go ahead and ask away. ⁓ How do you want people to approach adaptive sports? I think we’ve almost touched on it a little bit, but it seems like people are hesitant or like you said, there’s a lot of inspiration behind what people see with adaptive sports instead of just seeing the human aspect of it. How do you want people to talk about adaptive sports? How do want people to approach it?
Abbey Phillipson :
Yeah, absolutely. So really as a blanket statement, whether you’re a coach or just listening to this podcast, think approaching adaptive sport like you approach any sport spot on. But as I know that probably a lot of listeners are from a coaching or an athletic background here, I would say that if you ever are coaching an adaptive athlete or encounter an adaptive athlete or talking about para sport, I think it’s really important to remember that all of these adaptive athletes have probably had most of their
coaching advice or medical advice about physical fitness and wellbeing with solely a medical approach, a medical lens of let’s fix a symptom, let’s alleviate something, let’s make you seem less disabled in your day-to-day life. And that’s probably their form of physical fitness has been treatment or fixing something, right? And so as a coach and in the sports space, that is not only out of your wheelhouse, but…
Two, it’s not what the athlete wants and that’s not what they hired you for. That’s not what you’re working for them for. You are working with them with the lens of athletic performance. How can I better you at your sport? How can I program you to make you better at your sport? Not, you know, have less tremors in your right leg. Would you, an able-bodied athlete who has a history of, let’s say they sprained an ankle twice in high school sports, are you programming?
them and their whole team around trying to make their ankle different? No, not at all. You’re a soccer player. You’ve got a soccer approach. You’ve got a let’s perform well at soccer approach. You’re medically informed. You know, hey, this person’s ankle has been giving them some trouble in the past. You know, I might find ways to make this exercise more safe for them or more beneficial for the health and safety of their anatomical structure that has been damaged before. But you’re medically informed, not medically based.
Connor Agnew :
Yeah.
Abbey Phillipson :
And so if you’re a coach and you’re working with an active athlete, do not medical base your programming, athlete base your programming with medically informed. As you would really with anybody, you need to be medically informed.
Connor Agnew :
Hey, you know and that brings to light something that I remember seeing you post previously about how your programming can be ableist and there’s a lot of Okay, we can’t go heavy. We just need to focus on you know, lightweight high-volume ⁓ Can you just expand upon that a little bit?
Abbey Phillipson :
Yeah, absolutely. So I always say there’s three big things that you can tell as an adaptive athlete if you’re working with a coach. If they prescribe or they take the approach of these three things, you’re with the wrong person. One is that they’re not testing. Okay, so our testing measures are largely based on, not largely, they’re entirely based on able-bodied data, right? So we just happen to know, you know, what a good vertical or what an average vertical.
slightly above average vertical is for a division to football player defensive lineman, right? Like we have all of this actual data from research studies and so people are very quick to assume that like okay I don’t have anything to compare this data to so therefore I am not going to test. Wrong. If you’re not testing you’re guessing and so whether it’s within some groups of disability for their classification so everybody’s got like a different
point system based on what disability they have, how effective they are. So whether it’s within their classification, ⁓ within their specific sport, so if it’s a single leg amputee and you’ve got another single leg amputee, I need to see how much both of them, how high both of them can jump, you can compare them together. ⁓ But also, it’s just really important to test and retest and retest. Make sure your programming is working for what you want it to work for. And so just prescribing exercises that you know.
they could do because you know what really the only thing that got left functioning is their shoulder and chest. So I guess we’re just doing shoulder presses and bench. No, there’s so much more you can do, but you got it. You have to be informed about what they need. And that is from testing. If you’re not testing, you’re guessing and you might be using a little hint of a little sprinkle of ableism in your programming. ⁓ Number two is that the high rep, low weight recommendation, which we know is
not suitable for building bone density, building muscle in a way that you are going to, then you might get a little tiny little bit of hypertrophy at least at first, but then you’re not going to be able to take that cross sectional area and develop it into strength and therefore develop power, which is what we are trying to do for most of our athletes right now. So remember that if you would not prescribe three sets of 25 bicep curls for
an able-bodied basketball player, why would you do that for an adaptive athlete? It’s the same like that doesn’t work or you know, four sets of 50 air squats, you’re not giving that to a soccer player at the collegiate level, you’re not doing that. So why would you do it to somebody just because they have a prosthetic or something? So that one is one. And then last I already touched on if you’re thinking, oh, well, this person looks like they have a little bit of issue
with tremors in their right foot. Let’s see how I can program to fix that. They don’t care about that. That’s not going to affect their sport. So think sport, sport, sport, sport with medically informed information.
Connor Agnew :
Well, it seems to me by the testing, the more you test also, the more data that you can actually compile and then have for future use.
Abbey Phillipson :
Exactly, exactly. So we do use a programming software that was new this year that I super pushed for because I was like, I’m thinking while I’m making these programs, want a graph. I just need to see within subgroups of someone with cerebral palsy compared to another person with cerebral palsy compared to a group of folks with spinal cord injuries. What’s the recovery difference? This is information that really up until this point, no one’s really given a crap about. And so with the handful of people that we have that are involved in the para sport world who
do give a crap about this kind of data. Maybe we’ll be the first ones, because we care. Maybe we’ll be the first ones to be able to present data with, ⁓ you know, when it comes to ⁓ speed strength training, it looks like a subgroup of athletes with CP versus a subgroup of athletes with spinal cord injuries, they have different recovery times. Let’s try to figure out why. So it opens the gate for us to be able to test with actual standards later on.
Connor Agnew :
and then how to actually program from an athletic standpoint. Well, okay, so you also, you’re not only the head strength and conditioning coach for adaptive sports, but you’re the head parapower lifting coach. And you mentioned starting the team. Can you talk to me about that process and any challenges that you may have faced along the way?
Abbey Phillipson :
Exactly.
Yeah, absolutely. So I think right off the rip, when you hand an athlete with a disability who has probably never touched a barbell, when you hand them a barbell, everything changes. And so I think up into that point, and into the point again about having a lot of their physical fitness related to physical therapy, occupational therapy, recreational therapy, rehab, all this medical approach. And then you hand them this equipment that the lacrosse player next to them is using, the Olympic gymnast next to them is using, the football player over there is using.
and you put that same equipment in the hands of an athlete who has never had access to that equipment before, never been told this is something good for you, changes the game. And I realized that within the first week or two of people who hated coming to strength and conditioning because they’re doing a bunch of banded mobility work and lightweight high rep, I hand them a barbell and I say, watch this, do this. And then they’re good at it. They’re like, all of sudden they are the ones there on time when they were saying, hey, I’m sick five minutes before.
these are the people who became bought in. The buy-in after introducing technical barbell work was crazy. for us, that was seated deadlift, ⁓ seated barbell deadlift, which for folks who don’t use their legs a lot can be enough stimulus for the hamstrings and glutes. But for someone who’s able-bodied, still would recommend a seated deadlift. It’s a nasty lower back workout and grip as well. So seated deadlifts, seated cleans, seated snatches. ⁓
a seal row, a lot of landmine presses. So just so many different things you can do with the barbell, even if you have an athlete that’s seated. And so yeah, the buy-in was immediate, immediate when we introduced the barbell. So with that being said, I’m thinking, you know, I’ve got a bit of a lifting background. I’ve had a mean bench press for whatever reason since I was like 17 and recovering from full spine surgery. And I was like, you know what? I think teaching…
parapower lifting is in my wheelhouse. I think given everything that I’ve done so far, the certifications that I have, said, I don’t know. I’ve never actually dove into power lifting. I don’t know if this is completely out of my wheelhouse, so let’s try it. So started taking a couple athletes who loved barbell. I was like, yeah, I’m gonna teach you this. I’m gonna teach you a bench press, Larson bench press so your feet are up. And that’s how they do it in parapower lifting.
So I started just teaching that. I moved their wheelchair to the end of the bench and they would put their, I’d put their feet up onto the wheelchair so that they were in a strict ⁓ position for a Larson bench. And I had a couple of guests, power lifters come in that I had met in my fitness journey along the way to just support me in coaching proper technique. And we had this one girl who used to hate strength and conditioning so much. She hated it. She said it to my face. I hate being here.
She’s like, I’ll try it. She tries it, gets 115 right off rip. Five months later, she just became our national champion and record holder. She benched 170 pounds five months later. So everyone is so invested in their strength when it’s something like parapiloting where maybe, like myself, I wasn’t really involved in team sport. And so team sport isn’t the right fit for everybody. Some people like a really individual approach to sport where they’re beating their own personal best.
Connor Agnew :
Wow.
Abbey Phillipson :
and competing with themselves. And so the athletes who may have not found a place in our other para sports, para powerlifting ended up being their shtick. So it grew fast. I got certified. I talked with Mary Hodge, who was the athletic performance coach for para powerlifting at Team USA. So she did my certification with me. And so I felt like I talked to the right people, got a lot of different people in my court to kind of teach me how to safely approach this. And so we just…
We didn’t even have the equipment. We were still using the wheelchair at the end of the bench preparing for this competition. And then we ended up all qualifying for nationals, set a couple of national records. We still don’t have the proper equipment. Only a Laco makes the special parapiloting bench that’s like regulation. We still don’t have one. It’s just…
Connor Agnew :
which
knowing their other equipment I’m sure is ridiculously expensive.
Abbey Phillipson :
ridiculously expensive.
also not housed in athletics. And so like, we are looking forward to a future where maybe we are led by athletics right now where we’re led by Student Accessibility and Accommodation Services at the University of Michigan. So we’re kind of like within the disability realm. Not, we haven’t really crossed over into being governed by athletics yet. ⁓ So, you know, it’s a slightly harder to convince like the disability division, hey, we need this $7,000.
bench press machine and they’re like, what? No, you don’t. So I think if we were in athletics, they’d probably be like, oh yeah, yeah, we do need it. You know what, paint it blue, put a block M on it. But yeah, we still don’t have this equipment. So I have never built something in my life. I actually ended up going to Home Depot and I built my version out of wood of the para power lifting bench that Eleko makes, it’s specs of the Eleko bench and I made one.
Connor Agnew :
No.
Yeah.
Abbey Phillipson :
for us out of wood. So we’ve been venturing on that now, but we got a couple of national champions. We’ve like been on the news and stuff. ⁓ But I think to think that parapower lifting is this big story of triumph is accurate, but also I think very much draws the attention to the fact that even as big as an institution is the University of Michigan with.
Connor Agnew :
That’s awesome.
Abbey Phillipson :
a lot of donors, a lot of funding, a lot of means to make it happen. And this is not to hate on the University of They’ve opened every door that we’ve had open for us. It’s been opened by the university and namely Lou as well. But this is all to say, an adaptive sports period, not just at U of M, is not being invested in in the way that it should be. And so you see money go into so many different places within athletics that may not need to go there when, you know,
7,000 for this parapower lifting bench opens the door for athletes to participate, right? ⁓ And so it really does kind of just draw an eye onto the fact that even at this level ⁓ that we are achieving and at this level that we are advocating, we still have a long way to go within para sport. And not just at U of that’s just with para sport period. think Michigan’s doing it right. We’re the first program have a strength and conditioning center where we are using the varsity weight room.
alongside the other varsity athletes. So there’s a lot of things that we are pioneering. We are the leaders in adaptive sport and what adaptive sport should look like in other colleges. But I think para powerlifting, my experience with that, has shown that there’s still so much inequity in adaptive sports, no matter how much money we raise and how much we pioneer after advocating for our athletes. We’re still very far behind.
Connor Agnew :
Yeah, it’s the first steps that are being taken, but there’s a long journey still to go. Yeah. I mean, I was curious too, like my next question would be like, what is the availability of a pair of powerlifting meets like compared to ⁓ a standard powerlifting meet? it less? it… Go ahead.
Abbey Phillipson :
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. Fantastic question.
So we compete in parapower lifting specific events. There’s a couple different like governing bodies for that. WPPO World Parapowerlifting Organization is what is kind of a pipeline to be a Paralympian for a pair of power lifting. And so there’s a couple like federations that are under WPPO, Move United is one of them, that hosts competitions throughout the year, three or four of them that are national qualifiers. And then we
hopefully qualify for nationals and do the United Nationals. So same thing with you know, club soccer, for example, that are club, there are clubs that will specifically kind of get you into the pipeline of doing it at a collegiate or professional level. ⁓ So similar in that way, they’re definitely less available. You can’t just like wake up and, you know, I’m going to Google when the next parapiloting event is. ⁓ There’s like four or five, there’s a handful around the country. So big traveling needs usually to find parapiloting events. But something that
I introduced ⁓ this year with zero pushback. Everyone was so supportive of this. The mission of adaptive sports is that it’s for people with and without disabilities and to blur the line between para-sport and I entered us in a traditionally able-bodied only powerlifting heat, the Michigan State Championships through USA Powerlifting ⁓ that’s going to be held in East Lansing in November. And I registered all of our athletes to compete in bench only in open against able-bodied bench pressers. ⁓
And so we’re going to go and we are actually probably going to be quite competitive. ⁓ And so I think where there’s not access to para-sports specific, fine, we’ll go infiltrate the system and we’ll get it done some way somehow and be quite good at it while we’re at it. So catch us at a USA powerlifting meet, a standard powerlifting meet in two months.
Connor Agnew :
That’s awesome. And I love that because I think it goes back to your earlier point of like, would this be impressive? Or would you be cheering somebody on if they were standing up? Like it’s the exact same thing. Like, no, these people were just really strong. It’s not like this inspirational story just because they’re in a wheelchair and they’re able to bench press this way. It’s actually just a really impressive accomplishment that in, and they’re competing with, you know, people who wouldn’t typically they would see as non-inspirational or whatever. It’s just a normal thing. Yeah.
Abbey Phillipson :
Absolutely.
Exactly,
10 to 20 percent of your bench press max strength is usually due to leg drive that we see from research up to 20 percent. And so, you know, if we don’t beat you, just know that we can do 20 percent better if our legs were not on the table.
Connor Agnew :
There you go. And so we
should we should calculate that at least at the very least so Well, okay my final question for you, and I’m just very curious about this. What was your original major?
Abbey Phillipson :
My original major, did cognitive science and linguistics. My goal was to be a speech pathologist. And so I’ve always been kind of invested in disability specifically. And through the adaptive gymnastics program, I met a lot of kids with intellectual disabilities or speech disability or disabilities that affected their speech. So I was like, you know what, that’s an avenue that I could do this for the of my life. I had no idea that I could be a para-strength and conditioning coach. And if you would have told me that,
Connor Agnew :
wow, okay.
Abbey Phillipson :
I would have never been in classes talking about phonemes and the muscles of the tongue. I don’t care anymore. But if you had told me that I’d end up here, I’m happy that I did it this way because here I am. But I would have not gone this route. I would have not taught myself a four-year kinesiology degree to get my CSDS in six weeks. So.
Connor Agnew :
Yeah, just a brutal
process. can’t imagine that. That’d be gnarly. ⁓ But I mean, always I have my masters in sports psych, which is still very related to strength and conditioning, but everybody always kind of is like, why didn’t you do ex-phys? And there’s certain things that you learn that you can apply with a different major or different masters. But I do think muscles of the tongue was probably not super relevant a lot of the time.
Abbey Phillipson :
⁓
Not really, unless you’re doing some crazy kind of curl, I don’t know. If you got real creative, could maybe find a way to make that apply to swing conditioning. ⁓
Connor Agnew :
Hehehehehe ⁓
Possibly. We’ll continue to research and see what we can do.
Well, Abby, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate your time and it’s been really fun to speak with you. If anybody wants to follow you or just kind of catch up with your work, what would be the best way to do that?
Abbey Phillipson :
Yeah, so Instagram, I’ve got a budding platform right now to showcase adaptive sports, showcase some athletes, but also how to better yourself as a coach for anybody, people with and without disabilities. And so to do that, it’s at Abby Phillipson. Mom didn’t know how to spell Abby, so it’s A-B-B-E-U-Y. Never got a mug, never got a pencil, never got a key chain, I’m aware. A-B-B-E-U-Y, Phillipson on Instagram. And then also, UMich Adaptive Sports is our organization page on Instagram.
I’d say that’s the best way to connect with me, but if you find me on LinkedIn, my email is linked in my bio if you’d to connect professionally as well.
Connor Agnew :
Awesome. Well, it will certainly drive people to follow on Instagram. And again, great videos and great content. Very funny. They crack me up.
Abbey Phillipson :
Thank you so much, I appreciate that.
Connor Agnew :
Yeah, well, thank you, Abby. I really appreciate you coming on.
Abbey Phillipson :
Thanks so much for having me.
