Health

16 HEALTH • Summer 2017 How a Lancaster gym owner is helping people of all abilities get fit \\ By Emily Micucci W hile many of his peers are enjoying raucous weekends and sleeping late, 24-year-old Brendan Aylward is busy working out. But he's not your typical fitness junkie, always reaching for a new personal best. Instead, Aylward feels best as an athlete when he's working with others, and often, his fellow athletes are disabled. What started as an extracurricular activity in high school, working out alongside disabled students in a program run by the Special Olympics Massachusetts chapter called Unified Sports, became a vocation for Aylward. He opened a gym, Unified Health and Performance, on Mill Street in Lancaster last summer, with a focus on adaptive programs that are suitable for people of all ages and abilities. Aylward recalled how breaking his wrist led him to join the Unified Sports basketball team when he was a student a Nashoba Regional High School. He became good friends with the disabled student he was paired up with. "I was really drawn to how the athletes respond- ed," said Aylward, an avid runner. "It seemed to be a more important form of athletics than what I was used to." Aylward stayed active as a volunteer with the Special Olympics, and joined Team Hoyt, the run- ning chair racing and cycling team started by father- and-son team Dick and Rick Hoyt, who became famous for their participation in the Boston Marathon and other races across the United States. A self-described numbers guy, Aylward mean- while pursued a degree in special education and mathematics from Lesley University in Cambridge. He was working in classroom settings with special education students but said he didn't like all the paperwork involved with teaching, so he began scheming to open his own fitness business that would bring disabled, or "adaptive" athletes, and typical athletes together under one roof. Aylward opted to take some biology and anato- my classes as he neared graduation, and became a certified strength and conditioning instructor. He also immersed himself in market research, play- ing around with a business plan that would be a "hybrid" of a nonprofit and a for profit. Ultimately, however, he was confident that his gym could be a successful for-profit business, given the contacts he'd made through the Special Olympics and Team Hoyt and his knowledge of what athletes needed to succeed. UNIFYING ATHLETES Brendan Aylward, 24, opened a gym last summer to provide strength and conditioning training to a diverse group of athletes. P H O T O S / N A T H A N F I S K E

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