Sports have always been a huge part of my life. And after my accident, I embraced adaptive sports. Tennis, hockey, water skiing, snow skiing, skydiving … I’ve done it all! Take a look at the equipment I use to stay active and engaged in recreational and competitive sports.

Captioned video:

Video transcript:

ANDREW HOUGHTON: Adaptive sports is a huge part of my life and it always has been. After my accident, I didn’t know I could do any kind of sports, let alone water ski, snow ski, jet ski. You name it, I’ve done it all.

So, today I wanted to be able to show you a little bit of the equipment that I use and have used in order for me to be able to be active and engage in competitive sports or recreational sports.

This is my tennis chair. I haven’t played tennis in a while. I’m actually dealing with a torn rotator cuff after all of the years of sports and getting my wheelchair in and out of my car.

You see, this is – it has three wheels. It pretty much turns on its own axis. And also, when you make quick turns, it doesn’t tip over. You’ve got a lot of stability.

What else I want to show you is my hand cycle. This is what I use most often. In fact, I’m dying to get back on. As soon as I’m done with my shoulder surgery, I want to get back in and do the Miami Marathon and the Fort Lauderdale Marathon.

This is very simple. You sit down on it, put your feet straight forward, you crank it with your arms. It’s got twenty-seven gears. You can shift using your hand on the handle right here. You can also shift the upper gears with this little lever.

Now, the same thing goes here. You’ve got some camber on your wheels and the reason you have camber is to give you that stability.

This is my water ski. And one of the first sports, in addition to snow skiing, that I ever tried was water skiing. So, with this thing, you sit in it. You put your butt in here. You put your legs over the front. And then you put your feet in this little boot. And when you’re getting up in the water, you just sit down, feet up, one hand on the rope, one to keep you balanced, and you say hit it. Zoom. And there you go.

One of the other things I use to stay in shape when I’m healthy is – this is called the VitaGlide. You just go right up, you grab the handles, and it’s like a rower. I usually do twenty or twenty-five minutes to try to stay in shape which obviously I need a little bit of work in that area these days.

I appreciate the opportunity to share with you some of the sports equipment that I was using. I’ll catch you next time.