Eric’s Exercises

Since 2010, I’ve been taking Eric out once a week to shoot baskets and do some other basic exercises. I created these videos for anyone else who would like to do this with Eric. The videos show the exercises, both shooting baskets and doing basic stretching, with which he is very familiar. The stretches shown in the videos are done on towels laid out on the park lawn. Eric is happy to lay out his own towel, copying my movements.

A few points about these basketball outings:

• As with every Eric John outing, each one starts with coffee. My habit is to take him to the Peet’s Coffee shop on Los Gatos Blvd. and get him a medium non-fat, decaf, no-whip, coffee frappé.

• I sometimes take him to Lone Hill Park, which has very good basketball courts and a large grass area, or further afield, since he likes to ride in the car. These videos were shot at Henry Schmidt Park in Santa Clara.

• He will voice resistance to going out to the park. He’ll say “not playing basketball,” or “too many kids” (because sometimes we have to pass on a park because there are already too many kids on the court). I just ignore this, and every time, as soon as he gets on the court, facing the basket, his face lights up and he’s delighted to be there.

• He’s also voiced resistance to doing his stretching exercises sometimes. Again, I just power through this, and he’s generally pretty compliant, as you’ll see in the videos.

• His usual total of shots made is 50, and he generally shoots about 50%, so he’s taking around 100 shots each outing. I try to get him to agree to making 60, promising him a smoothie if he makes that many, and that usually works. All you have to do is, once he makes that 50th shot, just pass him the ball again, and he’ll typically just keep going.

• After we’re done at the park, I’ll take him to Jamba Juice and buy him a small or medium smoothie. He prefers an “orange one,” which can be any smoothie flavor that is orange in color.