San Diego adaptive motor coaching
Intentional motor coaching for teenagers and adults with apraxia, autism, and disabilities, built around access, athletic patience, and purposeful movements.
Apraxia can interrupt the connection between intention and movement. Our athletes may understand the task at hand and have every desire to participate, but still need the movement broken down into accessible motor steps. That's where Get Scrawny comes in.
Each session is one-on-one and appointment-only. Appointments are scheduled as one-hour blocks with approximately 45-50 minutes of active coaching, leaving room for transition, regulation, communication, feedback, and individual pacing.
Regulation always comes first.
This is coaching-based support, not occupational therapy, though we welcome collaboration with your OT and support team.
Our work may support motor initiation, sequencing, coordination, balance, strength, endurance, regulation, participation, and greater independence.
Tailored to your needs
Clear setup, modeling, rhythm, repetition, and body-based language can make the next action easier to access.
We are always working toward decreasing support while adapting movement to each athlete's strengths. The goal isn't simply to complete the exercise—it’s to build greater access to the movement itself.
Our athletes can move!
Coaching supports purposeful movement patterns for coordination, balance, strength, endurance, and everyday participation. Moving is one thing. Moving with intention is the next step.
Practice is built around patience, access, autonomy, and movement skills that can support greater independence.
We will never force someone to perform a movement. We will provide the time, adaptations, encouragement, and support they need to keep trying—and we’ll be their biggest cheerleaders along the way.
Get Scrawny supports autistic people, nonspeaking and unreliably speaking people, people with apraxia or dyspraxia, developmental disabilities, and acquired disabilities.
Our philosophy centers around:
Hi, I’m Johnny, though most people know me as Scrawny Johnny.
I’ve been moving for as long as I can remember. I grew up on the soccer field before transitioning into competitive swimming and water polo through high school and junior college. When that chapter came to an end, my relationship with movement didn’t. I developed a deeper and more intentional interest in strength, conditioning, fitness, and overall health—both inside and outside of the gym.
During college, I worked at a supplement shop inside a gym, where training, nutrition, and community became part of my everyday environment. That experience helped shape the way I approach health today: not simply as an idea, but as something we practice through the way we live and move.
Academically, I studied Kinesiology at Mt. San Antonio College and Speech-Language Pathology at Cal State San Marcos. Those two areas reflected interests that would eventually become closely connected in my work: how our bodies move and how people access communication and connection.
In 2020, I came under the mentorship of Dawnmarie Gaivin, founder of the Speller’s Method. I spent nearly five years as a spelling provider at Spellers Center San Diego, supporting nonspeaking individuals in accessing reliable communication.
While I am not currently offering spelling services, that experience continues to shape the way I coach. I support spellers, families, and spelling providers through motor coaching that respects communication access, autonomy, and the presumption of competence. Today, I bring those worlds together through Get Scrawny.
My work focuses on intentional movement, motor planning, physical coaching, and building stronger movement patterns around each athlete’s individual goals. Whether we’re working on initiating a movement, building strength, coordinating multiple steps, or simply finding a more accessible way to participate, the goal is the same: Give the athlete greater access to their own body, movement, and independence.
Contact
Share a little about the person, their movement goals, and what greater motor access could support in daily life.
