“How Long Will It Take for Sheila to Get Stronger?”
It’s one of the most common questions coaches and trainers hear from parents and caregivers. And it’s a fair one — everyone wants to see progress.
But the real answer isn’t a number of weeks or months. It’s a phase.
What Do You Mean, “Phase”?
Exercise science has long used a structured, phase-based model to describe how someone moves toward mastering a movement. It’s a framework strength coaches rely on (or should, anyhow) every day.
What’s often missing is applying that same structure intentionally to autism and neurodivergent athletes — layered with the adaptive/behavioral and cognitive (communication, motor control, and processing information) considerations that shape how each individual learns and grows.
Knowing where an athlete sits within the four phases of exercise mastery isn’t just an academic exercise. It’s the foundation for how we coach.
Why the Phase Matters
Once you know which phase an athlete is in for a given exercise, you have real, actionable information about:
- How to prioritize exercise selection — which movements to focus on right now
- Modification and prompt/cue needs — how much support the exercise requires
- Volume — the sets and reps to target for where they actually are
- When to progress — the right moment to increase the challenge level
Without this framework, it’s easy to either push an athlete before they’re ready or hold them back longer than necessary — both of which can stall progress and motivation.
A Familiar Concept, Rarely Applied Here
This mirrors linear periodization — the well-established strength training principle of gradually increasing demand as strength and stamina improve. Every serious strength coach plans around it.
Yet for autism and neurodivergent athletes, this kind of structured, phase-based planning is seldom addressed. Progress conversations tend to focus on time (“how many weeks until…”) instead of readiness (“what phase are they in, and what does that tell us?”).
So What are the 4 Phase?
The four phases of exercise mastery include introduction, accumulation, intensification, and mastery. Rather than generalizing an athlete’s capabilities, it works best to take an exercise-by-exercise approach to assessing where an athlete is at with respect to phase. An athlete may move quickly from the introductory to the accumulation phase, or it may take weeks and months to get there.
Phase 1: Introduction – The onboarding/learning step. Our autism and neurodivergent athletes are often seeing and practicing the exercise for the first time.
Phase 2: Accumulation- Adding more volume (sets/reps) with appropriate modifications and supports to build necessary motor skills, strength, and stability
Phase 3: Intensification- Fading back prompts and increasing weight/resistance, or range of motion to coincide with independent performance
Phase 4: Mastery- The athlete can consistently and reliably perform the exercise with safe, effective technique, resistance/weight that builds meaningful, measurable strength, and skills generalize to activities of daily living.
Let’s Explore
This week’s Tuesday Training digs into the four stages of exercise mastery — what they are, how to recognize them in your athletes, and how to coach toward independent mastery at each one.
If you coach neurodivergent athletes and have ever struggled to answer “how long will this take,” this framework will change how you think about — and talk about — progress.
