At Morgantown’s Renzo Gracie Jiu Jitsu Studio, West Virginia University kinesiologist and health psychologist Jeanette Garcia is overseeing a jujitsu class. She is joined by the director of SteppingStones, a recreation center for individuals with disabilities, and a small army of WVU students.

They’re not practicing throws or chokes, or even studying how others learn and perform those moves.

They’re supporting the participants — children with autism spectrum disorder and, soon, their parents or caregivers – and learning how both kids and parents can benefit from practicing the martial arts together, as a family.

What’s already clear, Garcia said, is that families who train together make gains together — gains in confidence, rest and relaxation, and pure fun.

Now an associate professor in the School of Sport Sciences at the WVU College of Applied Human Sciences, Garcia found her purpose promoting physical activity in youth and families affected by autism while a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s School of Public Health.

“I was working with kids with disabilities, doing a cycling activity where they were riding a bike and playing a video game,” she said. “I noticed the kids with autism were really into it. They loved getting trophies and the friendly competition. I saw a lot of benefits beyond increasing physical activity.”

When Garcia left Harvard for the University of Central Florida and was approached by Orlando schools and community centers looking to enhance physical activity in youth with autism, she considered activities incorporating qualities that kids had enjoyed in the cycling game, like structure and repetition, as well as gradual, intermittent social interaction.

Combat sports like judo and jujitsu, which focus on self-defense, mind-body connection and grappling over striking, fit the bill. In 2017, Garcia launched her inaugural judo class for kids with autism.

“And it was a mess,” she said. “I do community-based research” — in which participants, partners and researchers collaborate as equals — “and that’s always messy. But we got better, and we’ve done at least one round a year since. I’m proud of how far it’s come and that we’re continuing the work through WVU.”

The classes have come to include youth with Down syndrome and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Critically, they will now also include peer and family support.

“A while back, I did a project comparing engagement in judo classes kids attended by themselves versus classes kids attended with parents,” she said. “I was nervous parents wouldn’t want to do judo and no one would sign up for the family group. I was completely wrong. Everyone wanted the family group and attendance was significantly better there. In the individual group, when a kid missed class, parents often reported that a family engagement took precedence. In the family class, that class was the family engagement, and they would not miss it.”

Parental involvement drove engagement so dramatically that Garcia decided to design an entire study around the benefits parents derived from the sessions.

The study responded to the fact that autism contributes to adverse health outcomes not only for those with the disorder but for caregivers, too. While children with autism tend to have poor nutrition, problems sleeping and low physical activity, their parents report higher stress, which can drive unhealthy behaviors. And because an estimated 80% of youth with autism have sleep issues, many caregivers also have trouble sleeping.

Taking a “self-care day” isn’t easy for a parent of a child with autism. Parents who make time to de-stress frequently end up feeling extra anxiety about what’s happening in their absence. However, when parents joined kids for judo classes, they told Garcia they slept better and were much less stressed.

“Parents reported this was a good way to bond with their kids, that they really enjoyed it and felt the kids were happier and more interactive,” Garcia said.

Kids themselves reported leaps in self confidence, and Garcia even found some children with sensory issues were more open to touch when wearing the judo gi.

“I don’t know if the gi offers them a protective layer, but we see kids who don’t want to touch anything start to become more comfortable in the gi, and by the end they’re high fiving. I want to do a study on that alone.”

Garcia loves involving students in her research projects because she never got a chance to do undergraduate research.

“I didn’t even know you could do research when I was a student. And I thought it always happened in a lab. So when I started teaching at WVU in August of 2023, I said to one of my classes, ‘If anyone’s interested in learning about research, I’m trying to get this jujitsu program going.’ There weren’t too many responses. I had maybe two or three undergraduates who eventually said they’d do it,” Garcia recalled.

“But once they started, they loved it. They hadn’t known research could be like this.  They started talking to other students, and we went from having two or three volunteers, to nine, and then we got graduate students involved, which took us to 12 or 13. All told, we now have 20 volunteers: that’s a one-to-one volunteer-to-participant ratio. The momentum just kept building, and it’s so cool when our volunteers get to witness how much the families enjoy the program,” she said.

“At the end of the day, when we’re watching the parents smiling, the kids hugging — that’s why we’re doing it.”