Fitlight Trainer Used in Special ADHD and Autism Pedagogical Program

The Fitlight Trainer is used in a special program designed for children and people with autism, ADHD and cognitive impairments.

The Fitlight Trainer is used in a special program called “Focus in Action – Special Pedagogy with Light Training,” which aims to address the most common challenges associated with autism, ADHD and cognitive disorders. These include problems with concentration, motivation, impulse management, social interaction, anxiety and executive functions.

Designed for children and people with special educational needs, the program uses the trainer to improve the children's social interaction, coordination and motor skills, while stimulating their senses with interactive lights and challenging them to think independently and strategize while deactivating different coloured lights.

The idea behind training with the interactive lights was to offer children a visual stimulation as a starting point to develop and improve their motivation, social skills and performance. The dynamic nature of the training sessions engages children in social and functional learning while simultaneously reducing factors like lack of preparedness and anxious withdrawal, encouraging kids to be assertive and expand their mental capacity, including concentration, cognition and perception.

The Fitlight Trainer is a unique training tool that offers a variety of options and can be adapted for a versatile range of training regimes. The wireless reaction trainer is comprised of 8 RGB LED lights that are used as targets that users must deactivate. These lights can be arranged in different ways to offer dynamic training sessions that improve the user’s accuracy, visual tracking, sensory processing, speed, coordination, agility, fluidity of movement and reaction time.

The special pedagogy training program was developed by Danish psychologist Dr. Jakob Freil in collaboration with Fitlight Sports. The main goal of the program is to improve the children's executive functions, including impulse control, overview, arousal, prioritization of information and focused, selective, split, shifting and sustained attention.

The program was designed to address specific problems associated with the social and functional limitations that come with individual learning disabilities. With autism, for instance, the main challenges include social interaction, impulse control, attention switching and coordination, while ADHD is associated with difficulties with concentration, attention, planning and organizing.

The exercise areas that are part of the program include sensory training and integration, which focuses on motor training and reducing involuntary joint movements, and physical education, which emphasizes motion, coordination, endurance, body senses and tactile and social tolerance. The social interaction training program focuses on competition, turn-taking and teamwork skills, while the focus areas of the overall management and control training program are primarily the executive functions, including arousal, attention, focus, impulse control and working memory.

To hear more about the program from Dr. Freil himself and see how the children respond to different exercises with the Fitlight Trainer, watch the video below.