You're rolling?
[laughing] Ok. I guess we gotta do this thing...
Oh man, this is gonna be embarassing. OK. No, I'm doing this. I'm putting this on the Internet.
Every barrier I've ever had around exercise..... ever
[♪ intro music ♪]
Exercise is really important for ADHD brains, which I talk about in
It's also really difficult for ADHD brains to exercise regularly.
I kinda wanna normalize that and talk about
some of the barriers that I personally have faced,
some of the most ridiculous things that have gotten in the way of me working out,
and some common barriers for people with ADHD.
Things that we might not even think about but are actually getting in our way.
One of the ways I'm currently reducing barriers to working out is with CoPilot
which is designed to make personal training more accessible.
It's currently available on iOS and is going to be availbale on Android soon as well.
CoPilot pairs you with a coach that creates workouts tailored to you
based on the equipment you have available.
I met with mine on a video call, we talked about my goals
and she suggested a workout plan to help me meet them.
A realistic workout plan, 'cause the thing I had in mind at first was a little too ambitious.
[We will build based on your goals and based on your experience
depending on how many times a week you work out]
The way it works is the CoPilot smart watch app
tracks your workout data just from the movement of your wrist
so it's like having your trainer there with you wherever you are.
I've been using it for more than two months now and I've noticed a big difference in my strength
as well as my confidence while exercising.
This is the first time I've ever been able to workout regularly
because it's really affordable compared to in-person training
-- and very flexible! Heather mixes up my workout so I don't get bored.
She makes them longer or shorter as needed.
The last road trip I took she created some workouts that were body-weight only
so I didn't neeed to bring any equipment with me.
And there's even a way to work out if you forgot to charge your smart watch.
OK, my watch is dead.
The app has been updated so you don't have to use your watch
in case your watch dies, they got rid of that barrier.
After each workout, I can submit the data for my trainer to analyze and help me adjust my workouts as needed
and any comments I might have about how it went or what I'd like to change up.
CoPilot offers unlimited personalized workouts, nutritinal guidance,
and constant contact to keep you on track while being 100% remote.
[Say you're doing a biceps...
So you're coming up, lowering down, coming up, lowering down.]
My coach is helping me build confidence in my ability to work out
which I talk about a bit more later in this video.
If you'd like to check it out for yourself, go to mycopilot.me/howtoadhd
and you can get a personal trainer for $96 a month forever
-- and a 14 day free trial.
And if you do try it, let me know what you think.
OK, back to the vlog.
So some of the barriers that are common to working out are time, I don't have enough time.
Or I don't have enough energy at the end of the day.
Motivation can be a barrier.
Competing values.
Yeah, I'd love to be in shape but I also want to spend time with my kids,
I also want to get that promotion, I also want to eat a pizza.
And that's, that's true for anybody, but for those with ADHD
there are some that are a little bit more...
specific to us that we tend to face that maybe other people won't
or there are things that we tend to face more often.
And those could be things like sensory barriers.
So something might affect us just a little bit more where
if the weights hurt our hands, we might be a little more sensitive to that.
or the clothes fit too tight.
I have Restless Leg Syndrome, I also have sensory sensitivities and so
if I put on my workout clothes and they fit too tight,
I am not gonna wanna put those on
and I might not even realize that that's what's getting in my way but it legitimately is.
There's also time, anyone can not have time to workout,
but those with ADHD often have to work longer hours to accomplish the same things.
And so, maybe it starts in highschool or it takes longer to do our homework
and so we don't have as much time afterwards to go out and play.
I know that I was struggling in high school and so one of the things that
I had to do was give up soccer and not play anymore
because I wasn't getting my work done for school.
I gave up exercise to spend more time
doing the things I knew I needed to do because it took me longer
to finish my homework 'cause I would get distracted.
Just the mental effort of battling our own brains
every day trying to focus and trying to remember
what we put where and what we did with what, it's exhausting.
And then the impulsivity of like,
I said yes to something that I completely forgot I was going to work out.
So they work together, right?
So I'm exhausted, I impulsively said yes to a social invite
and I forgot that today was the day I was gonna work out.
So all of our ADHD symptoms kinda work together
to make it really difficult for us to work out.
This has been such a struggle for me that I've actually spent a lot of money,
even when I couldn't afford to, on expensive classes or a personal trainer
and the problem with that was it wasn't sustainable
because then I would run out of money and I would stop working out
because I didn't have that same level of support.
I'd get discouraged because it felt like I kept having to start over.
And that's true for all these things, right? Like,
if things get in my way and I don't work out
and I don't realize like, it's been a couple of weeks,
I would feel like I was finally making progress but then it wouldn't be sustainable.
Those with ADHD also have to deal with emotional dysregulation and getting frustrated easily and impatient
realizing that like...
we've been working out for like a week or two and we're not in shape still.
Even trouble with delayed gratification, we have shorter time horizons.
There's just so many reasons why
sticking to a regular workout program can be extra hard for those of us with ADHD.
One of the things I learned to do is to
get rid of as many barriers as I can because there are just SO. MANY.
So for a while I was using like one of those thin yoga-mats as like an exercise thing.
I got a thick one because it feels better to me just from a sensory perspective.
I got weights that are colorful and pretty that I like looking at.
Another thing I found personally helpful is having accountability.
If nobody is good to know if I workout I'm probably not gonna workout.
There are a lot of mornings where I've done "yoga"
which is just me laying on a yoga mat and stretching essentially.
And not that that's bad, but if I intended to work out
and there's no accountability, there's no support,
it's a lot harder to get up the motivation,
especially when I'm exhausted which is a lot of the time.
There's something really ironic about the fact that those of us with ADHD
have a greater need to work out to help us focus, to help us sleep
but at the same time that difficulty sleeping and that difficulty focusing makes it harder to work out.
Those of us with ADHD often develop really early
a sense that we're not good at stuff.
And one of those things can be sports, can be like coordination.
A lot of ADHD-ers don't really do well in team sports
because we develop differently, our brains develop differently
so we're a little bit clumsy and awkward and not as graceful as our peers.
I talked to my trainer at CoPilot and
one of the things that she asked was where does this belief come from
that you're not as good as the people around you?
And I said from childhood, actually. Like, every time I auditioned for anything,
I auditioned for the cheerleading team in 7th grade and my partner got on the squad and I didn't.
I went to try out for volleyball and I didn't get into that.
Even when I found something I was good at
I was really fast on the swim team, I was really good at certain events,
but doing the butterfly?
I was so uncoordinated, I kept getting us disqualified.
I came up to the coach with tears in my eyes and begged her to stop putting me on these events
because I was letting down the team.
And so I just developed this belief about myself
because I wasn't coordinated and because I wasn't good at sports, that like...
There's just something really sad about the fact that
I was born with a brain that tells me to move.
I am hyperactive.
And..... I'm BAD at moving.
And I wanted to fix that and so I signed up for this thing and...
and decided that I was gonna try and change that mindset
and move often enough and
practice enough that I got to the point where I felt competent.
And I felt like I could do this.
So this is something that's really deeply meaningful to me.
Not because I want to fit into a certain size of clothing but because I just wanna believe in myself.
And I wanna feel confident in my body and my movements.
And feel like this is something that I can succeed at.
But there are so many barriers and it is such a struggle and I just want to be honest about that
because it's easy for...
for content creators to look like
oh yeah like, this is all easy for us and it's not.
uhm...
I don't think working out regularly is easy for anybody and it's certainly not easy for those of us with ADHD
And for us to have even a little bit of success at it, we need a lot of support.
We need somebody to help us, we need accountability, we need novelty,
we need to, like, honestly have enough resources that we can get rid of a lot of the barriers.
I just wanna completely dispense with the shame around it because it is hard!
And there were times when I was working two jobs AND trying to pursue a career
and there was no way I had the time or energy to work out.
And there were other times I was too broke.
Because like, if I worked out like, I would burn too much energy and not be able to like, successfully feed myself that day.
It is something that is beneficial enough to my brain
and to how I feel about myself that it is a priority for me
at this point in my life and...
[sighs] Yeah....
I don't even know what else to say.
There's also the additional barrier of
feeling the pressure for your body to be a certain way and if your body isn't that way you're not valid...
as a human.
I am working really hard to get rid of that for myself personally and I hope that I'm not creating it for anybody else.
I was put under a tremendous amount of pressure
when I was an actress in Hollywood, to be a certain size, to be a certain body-type
I worked really hard to get to the point where
I would be able to focus on what my body could do and how my body served me
and how I felt in my body as opposed to what my body was for others.
My body is for me.
And your body is for you.
And I think that's really important to remember.
Now, when I work out, I work out for me.
I work out for my own personal well-being, for my own sense of self-confidence,
for my own feeling-good from a sensory perspective when I put my clothes on.
But that took time.
And we live in a society where there's a lot of messaging that your body is for others.
One of the things that the trainer told me in my first workout was to focus JUST on the muscle I was working.
Which helped a lot, because I didn't have to worry about the coordination of my entire body
which is often what I'm trying to consider when I'm working out.
It was just like, OK. I just have to worry about this one muscle and its specific action this one muscle is doing.
[What I want you to do is pick up a new thought, OK?
So in the past I have felt uncoordinated.
But today I'm moving on.
Today, I'm taking a new step.
Can you try and do that for me as we try to move through?]
Yeah... Yeah.
I wanna be able to do this without you, I wanna feel like I'm good at this.
I feel like I have put so much time and energy into trying to
learn how to do this and I still don't feel good at it.
And I want to feel good at it.
But honestly, doing this program has helped me build up my confidence
because I started out really clumsy and scattered
and not knowing where all my equipment was and what I was supposed to be doing.
But slowly over time I was able to be consistent enough with it,
worked with the same trainer long enough that I started to understand
what I was supposed to be doing with my body during the exercises and I started to feel more confident and competent over time.
And that's not something that I've really experienced before and it was really cool, actually.
Because it helped me challenge that belief
and let go of that belief that I was just always gonna be clumsy
and I'm never going to be really that good at this, I'm never really gonna know what I'm doing.
I'm starting to feel more confident
in how I use my body and how I'm able to move my body and I think that's the big thing.
It's not about how I look it's about how I feel while I'm working out.
My trainer also helped me set expectations that were more reasonable.
I was like, oh I can probably squeeze it in like every day, like Monday through Friday like I have half an hour.
And she was like, well, I think it's still important if that's something you like
you can still do that and just maybe two days a week you do this workout.
And I was like OK. And I was like, well I could also do weekends, she was like,
how about we make that like a bonus, like if you FEEL like it, but start with two days a week.
And I'm really glad that I started out
with something that was more manageable because
I think a lot of times we, we go into some sort of workout program
going like, OK I'm gonna workout, I'm gonna diet and I'm gonna go to the gym like five times a week
and it's so unreasonable and so unrealistic to go from zero to sixty like that,
that we immediately fail and we feel like failures
and then it confirms that belief that like, we can't do this
when really maybe we just set the bar too high.
It's OK to set the bar
because then you can maybe reach it and then you can...
...from
So I'm trying to be more realistic this time.
I think it... [laughs] ...I think it helps.
Whether you try out CoPilot or
get a friend to go work out with you or
whatever it is that you decide to do,
I hope that you set the bar somewhere where you can reach.
It is so common to face barriers when it comes to trying to work out.
Especially if you have ADHD!
Practice some self-forgiveness around that and some self-acceptance
and like, seriously, get some support!
As much as I want my story to be "I accomplished THIS by myself,"
I think it's enough just to say "I accomplished
Thank you to my Brain Advocates and all my Patreon Brains
for allowing me to only work with sponsors that I really do love their products
and believe in and think will be helpful for our community.
Let me know in the comments below what your experience is with working out
and especially if you have other barriers
that I haven't covered in this video and how you work around those
because I think it's a struggle that we all face and it's
something really important to talk about.
I'll see you next video.
Bye Brains!
[♪ Outro music ♪]