Have you just tried going to the gym?
For most of my life, I would say I didn’t exercise. I didn’t run, didn’t lift weights, didn’t play sports. But looking back, I think I did, but not in the way people mean when they say “go to the gym.” I lived on adrenaline. I was permanently in motion, running on caffeine, nicotine, and the low-grade panic that if I stopped, everything would fall apart. My body was always moving. It just wasn’t going anywhere.
After diagnosis, once I start to be able to sort out my life, I decided to try the gym properly. I wanted to see what all the fuss about exercise was. I’d read that aerobic exercise was a very good thing for ADHDers. I hired a personal trainer to create some accountability. Paying for it helped make me go, but more than that, I knew someone was waiting for me. That mattered. Having another person expecting me to show up gave me the motivation I couldn’t always find alone.
It went well. I made progress, and I felt better after every session. I was clearer, calmer, more grounded. The structure worked. But the gym itself didn’t. The lighting was a problem. I started getting tunnel vision and dizziness mid-session when I was not at 100%. The lights made me nauseous. Sometimes I had to leave halfway through, giving up on a session. I gave it a good go for over a year, but the sensory overload eventually stopped me. It wasn’t the exercise I couldn’t handle. It was the environment. Being honest with myself, I think I also got bored of the repetition. Going to the same place at the same time, doing similar exercises with just more reps or higher weights got boring.
When the gym stopped working, I stopped moving. I went back to my old sedentary life for months. After a while I noticed I wasn’t feeling as good as I had when doing the gym thing. As I talked about in my last article, I eventually fell into walking and it stuck. I walk at least twelve thousand steps a day now, woven into my daily routine. I walk part of my commute, I do at least one walking one-to-one meeting each day. It has transformed my weekdays from being all about work, to having opportunities to see the trees and feel the breeze on my face, and sometimes the rain. Its all good, and my work is always better after getting out for a while.
My walks to work have become boundary markers. They give me fresh air and get my blood moving before a day of sitting at a desk, and they help me decompress after nine or ten hours of back-to-back meetings with barely a toilet break. The walk after work lets the chaos and noise of the day drain away before I get home to the family, helping me to transition between work and my evening.
The weekend walks are different. On the beach, my doggo Cookie runs free off the lead, chasing seagulls with wild but hopeless determination. The moment I even say the word beach, she explodes with joy, spinning in circles until her harness is on, then leaping into the boot of the car as fast as she can drag me there. Her enthusiasm is great motivation for me too. Knowing how much she loves our weekend walks makes me not even consider whether I should go or not. Sometimes it’s just about being outside, breathing, and sharing that sense of freedom with another creature. When I am walking beside the sea, or through the park, or anywhere really, it doesn’t feel like exercise at all.
This appreciation of physical exercise isn’t new. My mum grew up on a croft on the most northerly inhabited island in the UK - Unst, in the Shetland Islands. As kids, we were put to work building dry stane dykes, the old stone walls that still stand there now. We ran wild along the beaches, barefoot in and out of the freezing sea, blue with the cold and not caring at all. There was no gym, no structure, no tracking. Just energy, space, and weather. It was movement as life, not as therapy. I feel like I have returned to this unstructured outdoor freedom through walking.
Thinking about it, I’ve always found calm in physical work that has purpose. I’ve spent weekends in the garden uprooting trees and bushes, clearing tonnes of rock and pebbles, laying soil and turf, and building fences. I’ve carried sleepers and levelled ground until my shoulders ached, and my hands blistered, and I loved it. There’s something about the combination of effort and outcome that feels deeply satisfying. You can see progress, feel it, and stand back at the end of the day knowing what you’ve achieved. It’s a world away from ticking boxes in a gym app.
I’ve realised that for me, movement has to mean something, it has to have a goal beyond the exercise itself. It’s not about fitness or discipline, it’s about creating or achieving something tangible. When I’m building a fence, laying turf, or even walking to clear my head before a meeting, there’s a point to it. There’s a task, a finish line, something visible to show for the effort. That’s what makes it stick. Exercise for its own sake has never motivated me, but purposeful movement does. Maybe that’s the difference between forcing motion and finding flow.
A lot of it is about seeing short-term progress. The ADHD brain runs on evidence, not promises. Small, visible wins create the sense of reward that keeps you going. It’s the same principle we use in coaching by breaking big goals into small, achievable steps. Each step taken keeps the dopamine flowing and makes you want to keep going. That’s what gym exercise lacks for me. It hides the reward behind a wall of repetition and delayed results. My brain needs feedback now, not six months from now.
Looking back, it’s strange how many of the things I’ve done for movement were actually about other people’s expectations. The gym to prove I could stick at something. I rode horses for 8 years, to please someone else. Yoga to try to find calm. None of it worked, because none of them were a fit for my body or my brain.
I tried yoga once, but it didn’t go well. Everyone else seemed to fold easily into the poses while I fought against my own body. I was stiff, unbalanced, and painfully aware of how bad I looked. The harder I tried, the more disconnected I felt. I left that class certain that yoga wasn’t for me, and I never went back. Looking back now, I think part of it was sensory, part of it was perfectionism, and part of it was hypermobility. My joints bend easily in the wrong directions but never where I actually want them to go. I’ve since learned that’s common in neurodivergent people too. It made me realise that not every form of mindfulness works for every body, especially when your body doesn’t behave the way others expect it to.
I’ve been thinking about trying Tai Chi. I haven’t yet, but the idea appeals to me in a way that other forms of exercise never have. Slow, deliberate, rhythmic, structured movement that looks more like mindfulness than workout culture. I’ve never been flexible. My joints click and my balance is unpredictable. Many of us experience our bodies as slightly out of sync, too loose in some places, too tense in others. That constant adjustment burns energy in ways other people don’t see. Maybe that’s why Tai Chi feels like it might work. The calm pace, the focus on balance and proprioception, the feedback between body and brain. Even just reading about it feels grounding. Maybe that’s a sign I should give it a go.
People love to say, “Just go to the gym.” But when you look closely, every step of that advice is a test of executive function.
Getting started means creating activation out of thin air. The ADHD brain isn’t lazy; it’s waiting for enough interest, urgency, or novelty to light the spark. Shortening the distance between the thought and the action helps. Stacking movement onto something you already do, or making the first step rewarding in itself.
Planning takes energy too. Packing a bag, timing the trip, remembering your gear is a chain of mini-tasks that can fall apart at any link. Removing friction helps: leave shoes visible, keep a packed bag by the door, or strip the routine back to the kind of movement that needs no prep at all.
Time blindness means “I’ll go later” often becomes “not at all.” Anchoring movement to a fixed cue — the end of a meeting, the walk home, or even the dog’s dinner time — makes it real. It’s the same principle I talked about in a previous article with habit stacking (you can read it here). When you connect a new habit to something you already do, you remove the need for motivation altogether. Movement becomes part of the rhythm of your day, not an extra task that competes with it.
And then there’s emotional regulation. One missed day can trigger the familiar spiral of shame and self-criticism. The reframe that finally stuck for me was this: movement isn’t about performance; it’s about regulation. The goal isn’t perfection, it’s relief.
Once you see exercise through this lens, “just go to the gym” stops being advice and becomes a misunderstanding. Motivation isn’t a moral issue. It’s a design issue. The work is to build a system that fits the brain you have.
If I were coaching someone on this, I’d ask: What kind of movement actually gives you something back? What feels grounding, rewarding, or joyful? Start there. Hack your executive function challenges. Take the pressure of performing off, or put just enough on to help you start. What works for others isn’t the expectation; it’s just data.
Movement doesn’t need to look like discipline. It can look like rhythm, curiosity, or joy. It can be something you do on your own, or with others for motivation. Do whatever helps you feel most alive.
I’d love to hear what sorts of exercise works for you. Please share your experiences so they might help others.
I’m off for a walk with the dog.
Kou, R., Liang, W., Hu, H., Chen, H., & Xu, W. (2024). Comparative effectiveness of different exercise types on autism spectrum disorder symptoms: A systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Psychology, 12(1), 110. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-024-02210-w
Peng, J., Zhang, T., Zhao, X., Lin, Y., & Liu, H. (2024). Mind–body exercise (yoga and Tai Chi) for ADHD: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 15,1490708. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1490708
Yang, Y., Chen, J., Wang, C., Zhao, L., & Li, Z. (2025). Physical activity and inhibitory control in adults with ADHD: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Global Health, 15, 05021. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40084538/
Shifted Minds Article - Finding My Tribe. https://shiftedminds.substack.com/p/finding-my-tribe
