About
The work found me before it was ever a business.
I'm Jake. I've spent more than a decade alongside the special needs community as a trainer, a caregiver, and a friend, and the mission is the same as it was on day one. The people most places underestimate are capable of so much more, with a push in the right direction.
The story
One thing led to another.
It started as a parapro job, taken out of convenience. The title was paraprofessional. The real work was crisis intervention, and some of the first kids I worked with couldn't feed or help themselves. Blending food, helping with daily needs, finding ways to keep those kids happy. That showed me a side of humanity I fell in love with, and it made one thing clear. This was the work I was supposed to do.
From there it built. A summer program for the youngest kids, where a young man who's still in my life would only train if we called it superhero training. He's a big part of why I ended up coaching at all, and that introduction led to my first real shot. I owe that shot to the Turner Brothers. They brought me on at GUTS in Ferndale and gave me my first opportunity to train in the special needs community. Before them, I didn't know this could be a job at all. Without that door opening, I never would have found my calling. It's where I became one of the first personal trainers in the area to specialize in this work. In 2018 I started my own thing out of a small functional-fitness gym, training people I saw as everyday superheroes. Today the work runs out of Pinnacle Performance in Troy, one-on-one and small group through the week, plus a weekly community class.
Thirteen years of caregiving runs underneath all of it. That isn't a service I sell. It's the reason the business exists. Years spent caring for people who couldn't always advocate for themselves taught me to read tone, body language, and the things people say without words. Those are the skills I use every day with the people I work with who communicate in ways that aren't verbal.
The foundations
Three disciplines, woven together instead of bolted on.
My work sits where behavioral understanding, real strength training, and lived caregiving meet. The word for how they fit is intertwine, not stack.
Behavioral fluency
Years inside the field, fluent in how behavior plans are written and run. It's a working language I use to read a person, keep a plan consistent across a whole team, and hold a hard moment well.
Time on the floor
One of the first trainers in the area to specialize in this work, going back to 2015. The proof isn't a certificate on a wall. It's years of sessions, the families who keep coming back, and the people who got stronger because someone believed they could.
Lived caregiving
Thirteen years of caregiving, plus the early parapro work with kids who couldn't feed or help themselves. The experience that informs every decision about how a person should be treated.
Who taught me
Credit where it's owed.
I arrived at most of how I work through years of direct practice. These are the people and traditions I draw from and credit out loud, because a mentor and an influence aren't the same thing, and pretending otherwise would be untrue to how the work got built.
My mentor
Jen Dunbar, owner of the now-closed Real Detroit Muscle, taught me functional fitness in person and is one of the biggest reasons my programming looks the way it does today.
The teachers I studied
Dr. Joel Seedman on neuromuscular activation and joint integrity, and Mike Mentzer's Heavy Duty work on the case that brief, intense, well-recovered effort beats long and frequent. Studied from their books and teaching, adapted for the people I work with.
And then there's Dianna
Some of the most important people in your life never ask to be seen. Dianna Lutz is the clearest example I have. So much of what AdaptAbility Co is, the ideas, the heart behind the day program, the belief that this could actually become something, traces back to her. She has shown up for this work, and for me, in ways I could never fully list and she would never want listed. If Batman has his Alfred, I have Dianna.
She won't love seeing her name here. That is exactly why it belongs. Thank you, Dianna. None of this is here without you.
The educational lineage
Three early-childhood and adaptive-education traditions line up with how I work, and I name them directly whenever the roots come up.
- Montessori. Built in 1900 with children who'd been institutionally written off. Capability-forward assumption, a prepared environment, practical-life skills as the actual curriculum, observation before intervention.
- Reggio Emilia. The child as a competent protagonist of their own learning, the hundred languages people use beyond speech, and the framing of special rights instead of special needs.
- HighScope. Developed an hour from Ferndale in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The plan-do-review cycle, observable developmental indicators, encouragement over praise.
And everyone who got me here
A list like this is always too short. There are more people behind this than I could ever fit on one page. Every person who gave me a chance before I'd earned one. Every family who trusted me with the person they love most. Every client who has taught me more than I ever taught them. Every coworker, mentor, and friend who pointed me somewhere better than where I was headed.
So if our paths have ever crossed, I want you to hear this plainly. You are part of this. I would not be where I am today without you, and I have never once forgotten it. Thank you.
What I stand on
The lines I don't cross.
I've been burned enough times to know what matters, and these aren't ideology. They're the rules everything else gets built on top of.
If a partnership, a price, or a project asks me to give one of these up, the answer is no.
The non-negotiables
- Affordable access for the people who need it. A constraint, not an aspiration.
- Dignity for the people I work with. No pity, no inspiration framing, ever.
- Credit stays attached to the people who did the work.
- I never lend my name to anyone whose character doesn't earn it.
- No one-size-fits-all, in product, pricing, or tone.
Come see it for yourself