• Welcome to Autism Forums, a friendly forum to discuss Aspergers Syndrome, Autism, High Functioning Autism and related conditions.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Private Member only forums for more serious discussions that you may wish to not have guests or search engines access to.
    • Your very own blog. Write about anything you like on your own individual blog.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon! Please also check us out @ https://www.twitter.com/aspiescentral

Unusual autism traits? High coordination and athleticism but low situational awareness, fear of

J

Jumpback

Well-Known Member
i fit into to high functioning autism almost because I don’t fit anywhere else. Like I have very severe issues with executive functioning, stress of locating things to leave the apartment in a presentable manner or not losing things I need on the way out of apartment are incredibly difficult for me. Or even standing still or focusing on anything I am not incredibly interested in. Even just taking a shower involves all levels of anxiety involving shaving and finding clothes and I become overwhelmed. Having a clean organized apartment and planning my day and so on and remembering to send birthday cards and cooking all seem impossible because things must be located and steps must completed in order and this is very hard for me. I also have extreme sensitivity to uncomfortable clothes and so on

But I also not only do not lack coordination or athleticism, which seems to be a typical issue, but I actually excel at such things. But issues like discomfort from other people, confusion about situational awareness and just not knowing what to do have always blocked me from these abilities

I will try to explain:

When I was in grade school, my school put on a “bicycle rodeo” which involved bicycle control including things like being able to ride around obstacles, or riding very very slowly. I won this very easily, I think even against older students

When my school had wrestling try outs in about 5th grade, I easily defeated anyone around my weight, but then freaked out and had my first panic attacks and ran to parents and never wanted to participate again in this

I used to have motorcycles and when I was about 13 my dad entered me in a motorcross race. I was way ahead of my entire age group but freaked out and had panic attacks and stopped

Same thing with like basketball. I mastered spinning basketball on various fingers when I was really young and could bounce basketball off my fist and go back to spinning basketball on my pinky finger. I mastered all kinds of between legs dribbling and behind back dribbling. Despite my standing reach only being about 7’ I could take one step and grab a basketball rim that is 10’ high, plus I was much quicker than most others. But all the basketball players on the court was like too much information and kind of overwhelmed me, so I would make horrendously dumb mistakes like passing to the wrong team. So I could ever play organized basketball, even though I actually excelled at athletic and coordination requirements. It was like the situational awareness that defeated me.

One time I tried to play tackle football with neighborhood kids (and these were just neighborhood kids, not those who later went on to play organized football). I was so much better than them it was ridiculous. Like if they could actually catch me, it would take three of them grabbing my legs and so on to tackle me. But I was scared to death of social interaction and I don’t like winning and losing aspects

——

I mean it’s just very strange in relation to things I have seen here and other places

It’s not like I could not have been a high school wrestling star and probably received a division 1 scholarship to a university, it’s that I was scared to be involved in all these confusing and stressful things related to other people. Plus I just do not like the entire winning/losing thing about competition

I doubt anyone can relate, but just thought I might mention.

Whatever is weird about my head didn’t lead to overall lack of coordination, it led to better than average full body coordination (though I don’t excel at video games so much), but then I am also just very athletic naturally.

There was a teenage body building contest in my home city that I probably would have won if I entered, but the being on stage in front of a bunch of people gave me anxiety attacks, plus I just found the whole thing to be incredibly strange and so on....like I have to shave my body and get a tan and oil up and wear a tiny swimsuit thing and whatever...I just could not do it and wasn’t even close to see myself be up there on stage doing this
 
Last edited:
I realize it sounds like I must be bragging or something, but trust me, no one would want to be me

All the athleticism with inability to deal with people and especially women, just seemed to result in me being a bigger target for bullies, because even nerdy men could increase their status among women by tormenting guy who might be desirable to women but who could only react by pacing and being a nervous wreck

Then accepting ideas about all these people were just idiot rednecks and becoming highly devoted liberal and moving to the big city, just seemed to make me being an object of affection for deranged gay men misunderstanding my understanding as being open to gay sex if only they tried harder and sexual assaults resulting in being assigned gay advocates who also misunderstood everything and thought real issues were repressed homosexuality and hatred against gays and endless disorders and dangers I might present
 
There's a saying I like : "If you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism." Forget all the stereotypical traits because everyone is different. Unfortunately that's not how psychiatrists work though.
 
Being autistic doesn't prohibit athleticism or cordination. You can be a good athlete if you practice enough on your cordination anyway. I can relate to your executive functinoing issues tho mine aren't nearly as bad.
 
Pieplup said:
Being autistic doesn't prohibit athleticism or cordination. You can be a good athlete if you practice enough on your cordination anyway. I can relate to your executive functinoing issues tho mine aren't nearly as bad.
Click to expand...
My son is extremely athletic, but he can barely use buttons or zippers.
 
I was diagnosed at three then again in 4th grade as high functioning autism. In the 7th grade I was diagnosed with ADD then again as an adult. I am fairly extreme in both asd and add.

I am absolutely lost socially but I rarely think about it. My unusual feature is that I am really good with women and women like me.

I never lacked for s*x until I married an asexual woman which is fine by me.
 
Major Tom said:
My son is extremely athletic, but he can barely use buttons or zippers.
Click to expand...

There is supposed to be things like major muscle group and minor muscle group coordination or something. Or maybe my issue is anxiety or adhd, since I have tremendous issues with anxiety. But despite that I am very athletic and my ex-girlfriend is not, when we were dealing in antiques and there were delicate things to deal with, she was so much better than me that I trusted her to deal with all the tiny delicate things, but was scared that I would break them, because I actually would manage to damage them. She would sometimes fix my mistakes like if I broke something and it needed to be glued back together.
 
Pieplup said:
Being autistic doesn't prohibit athleticism or cordination. You can be a good athlete if you practice enough on your cordination anyway. I can relate to your executive functinoing issues tho mine aren't nearly as bad.
Click to expand...

Things like athleticism and coordination and visual-spatial awareness are actually complicated subjects. Like, in basketball, there are players like Steph Curry or Trae Young who can’t jump that high and aren’t that fast, yet once they cross the half court line they are a threat to hit a three pointer. But then there are athletic freaks who just can’t do much besides dunk the basketball who never make it to the NBA
 
Jumpback said:
Things like athleticism and coordination and visual-spatial awareness are actually complicated subjects. Like, in basketball, there are players like Steph Curry or Trae Young who can’t jump that high and aren’t that fast, yet once they cross the half court line they are a threat to hit a three pointer. But then there are athletic freaks who just can’t do much besides dunk the basketball who never make it to the NBA
Click to expand...
How would you define athleticism. I think there are a couple autistic sports players out there. Not all people with autism have motor problems.
 
Pieplup said:
How would you define athleticism. I think there are a couple autistic sports players out there. Not all people with autism have motor problems.
Click to expand...

Like when I was young in shape playing basketball, I had really good lateral quickness, first step quickness, really good jumping ability, ball handling ability and so on. My issue was making incredibly dumb mistakes on 5 on 5 basketball and not being a very good shooter. But at 5’10” I could do a few moves, run around the guy guarding me and the only reason I counldn’t dunk was having shorter arms and small hands (since I couldn’t come remotely close to palming the basketball, even though I could hit my wrist on the rim, I could never dunk).
 
Last edited:
Jumpback said:
Like when I was young in shape playing basketball, I had really good lateral quickness, first step quickness, really good jumping ability, ball handling ability and so on. My issue was making incredibly dumb mistakes on 5 on 5 basketball and not being a very good shooter. But at 5’10” I could do a few moves, run around the guy guarding me and the only reason I counldn’t dunk was having shorter arms and small hands (since I couldn’t come remotely close to palming the basketball, even though I could hit my wrist on the rim, I could never dunk).
Click to expand...
exactly
 
After reading bonkers of posts here, l have come to the conclusion that we excell in contradictions. We are tackling hard sports but may have a fear of getting on a escalator. We may speak in conventions but shy away from talking about our feelings to a close friend. Stuff happens.
 
Aspychata said:
After reading bonkers of posts here, l have come to the conclusion that we excell in contradictions. We are tackling hard sports but may have a fear of getting on a escalator. We may speak in conventions but shy away from talking about our feelings to a close friend. Stuff happens.
Click to expand...
or In my case can't learn motor skills but are the best player in the world at game based entirely on fine motor skills
 
Pieplup said:
or In my case can't learn motor skills but are the best player in the world at game based entirely on fine motor skills
Click to expand...

Think this is why we have a hard time getting diagnosed. We present with so many contradictions that MD's can't quite wrap us up neatly in a clearly defined box.
 
@Jumpback , I was in my high school cross-country team & have been an avid bicyclist. Dis-coordination is not a requirement for an ASD1 dx. It is more common in ASD2s & 3s, however.

(I never really connected to team sports, though.)
 
Last edited:
Yeah, John Howard is a good example of that and I think I mentioned him before on this forum. Jason McElwain is another example if anyone wants to look that up.

I don't think having or not having athletic ability is tied to the spectrum in any way. It's a skill that you develop and hone over time with practice and (barring any limitations) I don't see a reason why anyone on the spectrum can't be good at it. I suck at it, but that's mostly due to not practicing those things more than anything else.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

New Threads

Top Bottom