Why I Study Adapted Physical Education in Rehabilitation
Rehabilitation research tends to split into two camps: people who study why movement breaks down — the neurophysiology, the biomechanics, the mathematics of a recruitment curve or a gait cycle — and people who study what to do about it — the programs, the adaptations, the teaching. I’ve spent my career trying not to let those two camps stay separate.
My training sits at that intersection. A BS in Physical Education and Sport Science from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, with a concentration in Adapted Physical Education completed through an Erasmus exchange at KU Leuven, gave me the applied, pedagogical side early. A PhD in Kinesiology from the University of Extremadura, followed by postdoctoral research at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and the City University of New York, gave me the mechanistic side — nonlinear dynamics of human movement variability, and the neurophysiology of noninvasive spinal cord stimulation.
What ties these together isn’t a single technique, it’s a question: how do we take a measurable, mechanistic understanding of movement and turn it into something that actually improves someone’s ability to move, safely and independently?
That question shows up differently depending on the population. In children, it means characterizing motor competence — where a child’s fundamental movement skills stand, and how classroom and developmental context shape that — so physical education can be adapted to where a child actually is, not where a curriculum assumes they are. In adults recovering from spinal cord injury, it means using transspinal stimulation to modulate spinal excitability, and combining it with locomotor training in a way that’s grounded in how the injured spinal cord actually responds. In older adults, it means identifying which specific feature of an unsteady gait — like step width variability — predicts fall risk, and building a training intervention that targets exactly that.
None of this is possible from either camp alone. A mechanistic finding that never reaches a training program stays a curiosity. A program that isn’t built on a real understanding of the underlying physiology is a guess. My work — and this site — tries to keep both halves honest to each other.
If you’re a researcher, clinician, or fellow adapted physical education scientist, I’d genuinely like to hear from you — reach out through the contact links on my profile.
