Does running up and down the stairs repeatedly because I keep forgetting things upstairs count?
If you do it enough, yes.
For me I can't really exercise for exercise sake. I have to do an activity that happens to involve exercise, like a sport, swimming, or hiking.
Things I have tried and enjoyed:
Extreme social anxiety, covid, money, and no longer being in college with "free" or cheap access to things have ruined most of these for me but my point was to do a THING that happens to need you to move your body. Not just exercise (bleh). This is how you trick your traitorous brain.
This is totally it.
I don't exercise I put the three kids in a truck tyre and drag them to school. (MUSH Daddy!)
I don't exercise I walk to shop for milk, get home, realise I forgot the damn bread, think I can make bread, look up how, get distracted, make healthly wraps for lunch.
I don't exercise, I just lose the thing I just put down, queue marathon of reorganization (it's not cleaning) until I get the point of lifting heavy machinery to look under and give up, hammer on a worn 3/8 socket. Bonus cardio if the 10mm was in your other pocket all along.
As with many things, it didn't stick for me until it did and once I was in the habit, it's actually harder to skip than to just go. Even if I'm not thrilled about the workout, I still end up going because it's wired in now.
That said, I do listen to podcasts almost exclusively at the gym and that can make it kinda exciting if there's a good one coming up.
Most people with ADHD have brains that are diametrically opposed to habit forming. Every single task that I do every day is performed deliberately.
But how did you get to that point? Weeks of grinding out the task? Reminders? Alarms?
When I had kids I decided that I was going to live a healthy lifestyle to serve as a good example for them. Finding ways to exercise with them has been a lot of fun and then it just snowballed into me exercising on a very regular schedule and now I'm in the best shape of my life. Now it feels really weird if I have a day where I'm not doing some kind of exercise activity.
Run directly away from home, when you get bored, you're 50% done. Run home if you want it to be over faster
"You're not going for a run, you're just running away!"
- My wife when I do this.
I’ve found success with HIIT type exercises because you’re switching your motion every minute with rest in between. It’s easy to stay focused because of the variety and how quickly it changes.
VR hands down.
It's the only workout that has ever stuck for me, because it really doesn't even feel like a workout. Games like Beat Saber or Pistol Whip can burn as many calories per hour as playing tennis, and are genuinely super fun.
https://vrhealth.institute/portfolio/beat-saber/ https://vrhealth.institute/portfolio/pistol-whip/
I started playing regularly at the beginning of lockdown and ended up losing around 50lbs. I would play Pistol Whip until I was completely drenched and could barely stand anymore, but I still wanted to keep playing! I got a plugin for the valve index that measures your activity and your calories burned, and I can easily burn 1200 calories during a session... YMMV though.
Oh man, I did the same thing with DDR in the early 00s.
Have you tried rock climbing? I have some friends with ADHD who really took to it.
Agreed, best shape of my life was when I took a rock climbing class... And now I haven't excersised in years.
An actual bicycle. Constant change of scenery and not getting hit by cars really keeps me engaged.
Amphetamines
I feel you. I am like this with so many things.
When I started going to the gym, the only way I could get myself to go was to watch a show on my phone while working out. The catch is, I told myself I was only allowed to watch the show while I was working out. If I want to know what happens next, I had to get on a treadmill.
I fell out of the habit last summer and getting back into it has been a huge struggle.
This works as long as the show dopamine is higher than the difficulty getting to the gym. Very few shows hold my interest THAT much past the first couple seasons.
Bouldering was a breakthrough for me. I didn't like top rope climbing because climbing just felt like an endurance test (admittedly, I was not climbing well) and I found belaying both boring and extremely stressful.
But bouldering feels like solving a puzzle and is something I can do both by myself and socially.
Personally I hated team sports and things like going to the gym, but bouldering is really fun for me. It doesn't feel like it's forced or repetitive and you can choose what you want to do and it feels more live solving puzzles than sport. Am only a 5A+ so far but having fun.
What also helps is the atmosphere is very chill in the boulder gyms near me.
I got really caught up in the "make number bigger" cycle of lifting, and each 5lbs I added to any lift was a huge dopamine spike. Obviously you can't keep increasing weight forever, but I found that the steady and easy dopamine hits from noob gains were enough to establish it as a habit in spite of my attention span
The only long term one I've been able to cope with is biking. About a 40km to 65km bike ride over a day. I was able to keep my speed to either hyped up music or slowed down music to keep my speed and I felt like I was doing something, not just standing in a room and the constant looming feeling of not making progress.
The other one I've tried lately has been badminton. It can be nice and competitive as well as friendly too!
Other than medication, the only thing that works for me is going consistently with someone else. Playing games like tennis or racket ball also keeps my brain from giving up. Indoor bouldering where I can make progress on smaller routes can keep me from losing motivation or getting bored, too
Someone else mentioned VR games, if you can afford the gear I second that recommendation. Some games can be quite the workout, and it doesn't feel like I'm convincing myself to exercise because I'm just playing video games.
An exercise bike has been great for me. I can pedal while I read, solve a word puzzle, or watch something on YouTube. I often will do my email that way with a computer - I bought a bike with a build-in desktop. (I think it's called "exer-work" or something like that.)
I also lift weights regularly. I manage to do that by promising myself that I only need to do one set of whatever I feel like lifting. Most of the time I want to do more once I get started, but sometimes I don't. Setting the bar really low (no pun intended) is how I have managed to form & keep the habit.
Whenever I fall out of my exercise routine, I rebuild it in small chunks. At my peak, I was waking up at 4a, walking to the gym, doing 60+ minutes of weight lifting, 30+ minutes of cardio, then walking back home.
So, when I'm starting from zero again, my first goal is just to walk to the gym and back each day. I don't even go in, I just force myself to get up (probably not quite as early), and go through the motions of walking there and back.
Once I have that down, I start trying to get myself up a little earlier so that I can go in the gym and actually do something. That something should initially still be something easy, so it might just be walking on the treadmill for 15 minutes before heading back home. Every day/week, I try to increase the duration/intensity until I get back to my ideal routine.
Some days I have a serious case of the "I don't wanna"s, and on those days, I tell myself that I just need to walk there, and if once I'm there I still want nothing to do with it, I can leave, but I usually end up staying for most to all of my typical routine.
I find that setting myself small, incremental goals is way more effective than setting one big goal, because with one big goal, if I can't do the whole thing, then I failed, so why do anything at all?
Once I get into the routine, I find that it really helps me in so many ways, and definitely helps my ADHD. I really like morning workouts, but my friend does much better with evening workouts. Try different times of day to see what works best for you.
When I was in college (a few decades ago), I was quite athletic, but once, I participated in a little marathon. 20 minutes in, I realized this was dumb & just walked back to the starting point. I still remember my thoughts - like why am I chugging along, rattling my entire being, & for what purpose, it's just boring & pointless. I think with ADHD, we're always calculating effort applied & reward received, & exercise is hard to justify. I haven't run for fun ever.
Yeah, every time I try to use any exercise equipment I get ANGRY. I feel WORSE than I did beforehand. No sense of accomplishment, no endorphines, just irritation
If I go for a walk where I can explore for miles, I'm happy. Dancing also makes my brain tingle. I get more joy out of vacuuming and other housework than a tredmil or elliptical machine.
F THAT! Feels pointless and I can't seem to convince myself otherwise. Same for running. It's meh unless I'm trying to get somewhere fast (and I already speed walk as it is)
Yeah, this is why it's important to try and break down large goals into smaller goals. (I'm not saying it's easy though)
Look at building muscle for example. What you need to do is focus on the little improvements, one extra rep each week, one extra pound each week. Make that your goal every single workout, instead of beating yourself up over the fact that you don't look like 5x Mr Olympia Chris Bumstead yet.
(Which you won't anyway, but that's another story)
We want short-term success, instant gratification, but excercising for improving our health is a long-term project, whichever way you do it.
So you need to train in a way that gives you these smaller achievements sprinkled throughout the weeks, months and years.
How though, that's highly individual and depends on the person.
Threadmill with steam remote play. The games occupy my brain, the time passes.
I haven't been able to exercise successfully since I moved from home.
Where my parents live there was a great 5km run which included hills, scenery and if you did it backwards it was more strenous. They sadly exploited the fuck out of it and built a railway across it.
Where I live now it's boring, hard to get to or too slopey.
Go outside and walk/jog in an area that has interesting scenery. If you are stuck indoors or everything is dead like it is now, use music or video to entertain yourself. I use songs to "time" how long I exercise because theyre bite sized and it is easier to motivate myself to exercise 1 song at a time than it is to exercise for say... 30 minute blocks of time. AND remind yourself that you can spread that activity throughout the day and that you can get some exercise just by speeding up how fast you already walk or take the stairs instead of the elevator etc. Anything is better than nothing.
Not quite related but when I have no motivation to clean I set a timer for 5 minutes per room. It becomes a race for me to see if I can get it done in time. I might do something similar for exercise.
Side note, I have a notification for daily tasks that notifies me every hour until I do it. It annoys me enough that I do it.
Not everything works for everyone though.
I do the timer thing, sort of! But I'll do it in the form of multitasking. Say if I have a kettle on or coffee/tea brewing, I'll see how much of the dishwasher I can unload in that time.
I have found money to be the best tool. I work as a delivery driver right this moment but I have been a removalist and a baker before, all three of which are very physically demanding roles. I have also worked in physically undemanding roles and just couldn't make myself do any intentional exercise consistently.
I am planning a switch into nursing over the next couple of years and my plan is to work full time in nursing with one or two shifts a week doing delivery or rubbish collection for the workout.
Also, rock climbing looks like fun, I am planning to try the local university gym for rock climbing, maybe a class or a social aspect will help.
Heavy lifting is the only thing that's stuck for the way my brain works. I used a program called 5x5:
Downside: So hungry, all the time.
It's been a few years since I've been active. I used to live in an apartment directly above a gym. Now I live in the boonies and need to convert my carport into a garage before I can buy a weight set.
get a mountain bike and a hyper dog... at least that's what i did and i lost several pants sizes this last year...
(i have an australian cattle dog and they're the best... but also very difficult if you're not fully prepared... also the only breed that's part dingo)
My method for hacking my brain is wakeup exercise. Finding a short exercise which I can do faster than I can talk myself out of it. I started with 5 pushups. That's all. A tiny number, 10 sec exercise which I do as I get out of bed in the morning.
The important part is not to "push the envelope" or whatever. The amount of exercise should be small enough that it doesn't bother you. And only do the exercise today. Don't think about yesterday, don't think about tomorrow. You only have to exercise once. Today. Easy. 10sec, 30sec, whatever. Then move onto whatever weird and cool shit you wanna do with the rest of your day knowing that you have exercised.
I feel like I'm cheating, cos it's so simple yet so effective. I now do a lot more than 5 pushups, but the concept hasn't changed.
Oh and as mentioned below, rock climbing/bouldering is fucking great. Go hang out at a gamified problem solving gym and you will exercise til you wish you could make yourself stop.
Find a job that requires physical labor and you won't need to work out. That's what I did and I dropped 15 lbs by my second* week on the warehouse floor.
I have a Garmin watch that you can load with exercise programs in conjunction with it's phone app. The couch to 5k running program works well.
Other than that I listen to audio books on my run.
I did swimming for a few years when I was living close to a big swim hall and passed right by it on my way home from work. It does require a bit of motivation to start, but for me when I first got into the water it felt natural to just keep moving. Swam for 30~40 min and then going to sauna for 15 min and a nice hot shower afterwards was such a reward for my brain it always felt worth it. Now I moved and is sad I don't live close to one. Also as got super tired afterwards but in a nice way. Felt good. I wasn't medicated back then let alone knowing anything about ADHD so in hindsight, with medication I might have better odds of feeling even better after a good swim.
Find an exercise that works for you, I tend to like cycling or spinning so that’s what I’ve stuck to, and schedule recurring time to do it (ideally on a calendar that beeps at you, i.e., your phone). Until I scheduled time to exercise regularly I never remembered to do it. I’m also extremely calendar driven, so if something isn’t in my calendar it may as well not exist in my world.
I’ve also heard of people having success with setting an arbitrary personal rule — like not showering at home and only showering at the gym. Then once you’re there, just do something small like walk on treadmill for a few minutes, and maybe you’ll catch a groove and decide to continue.
If you decide you want to lift at a gym, I found it super helpful to have some sessions with a personal trainer to put together some workout sets that you can cycle through. If you don’t have the money or don’t want to get a trainer, there are tons of forums out there and well used and liked workout programs that you can follow. Google is your friend here.
Consistency is key! Find something that motivates you and take advantage of it!
Before it got super expensive, I LOVED pilates. The machines were fun to use, the classes were upbeat, and the movements changed every two to five minutes. It kept my brain and body active for the whole session. I wasn't getting distracted during classes, and the different classes offered were similar but also changed up to keep me engaged.
It was also easier on my joints (I have rheumatoid arthritis) than running and cycling, and I have a hard time swimming so that wasn't an option.
Once I get back to a point where I can afford it again, I will definitely be going back.
Pump it Up, Dance Dance Revolution. Any kind of gamified exercise is great.
I have to do something more fun, i cant do cardio or weights no matter what i watch or listen to. Dance and martial arts are super engaging.
I usually have to pair things up, like I rarely ride my bike just for the sake of it. Most of the time it's to get groceries, go shopping, etc. and sometimes the stores I go to are ~10km away. I'm really lucky that my city has actual factual cycling infrastructure though, so I pray your area has at least acceptable infrastructure.
This doesn't always work, sometimes I don't need anything. So another way I can get my butt on my bike is to simply put on sunscreen. Doing that makes it a lot easier for me to get out there so as not to waste the sunscreen. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I never go to the gym though. Way too complicated for me.
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