How to Design ADHD-Friendly Strength Training

Getting your muscles worked doesn’t have to feel like a chore

If I had to choose just one style of exercise over all others based entirely on its bang for the buck — its return on time-investment — the easy answer would be strength training.

Within the bounds of a well-designed gym circuit, calisthenics routine, or superset workout, you can get a decent amount of aerobic training at the same time that you increase your strength and increase your overall muscle mass, decreasing fat and increasing all of those delicious brain chemicals that #ADHDers crave at the same time.

Best of all, you can get all of these benefits in workouts as short as 20 minutes a day if you design them correctly.

First let’s look at why strength training benefits people with ADHD in particular, and then move on to how to design workouts for ADHD-friendliness.

Benefits of Strength Training for ADHD

The main condition of all variations of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder entails low levels of catecholamines: epineprhine, dopamine, and norepinephrine. Of particular interest are the latter two, because research shows they perform almost-interchangeable roles in the reward pathways of the brain (Kollinson 2014, Christiansen 2019).

People with ADHD struggle with executive functions, which fall under the psychological rubric of Conscientiousness within the five-factor personality model used to categorize personality traits. Catecholamines in the nervous system serve as reward pathways that enable people to prioritize tasks and finish what’s been started even if it is uninteresting (Gomez 2014).

Treatment for ADHD typically revolves around the application of stimulant medication, which inhibits the reuptake of dopamine and/or norepinephrine (depending on the drug), thus allowing someone with ADHD greater ability to overcome the neurological resistance they usually experience towards executive functioning (Kollinson 2014, Christiansen 2019).

Strength exercise has repeatedly been shown to increase ambient levels of catecholamines both in the acute (immediate) condition — that is, during and immediately after exercise — and in the chronic condition if exercise is performed regularly.

Therefore, strength training can be used as stimulant medication for ADHD.

The Best Way to Design a Strength Workout for ADHD

Here are the principles of an effective strength workout for someone with ADHD, one that keeps us stimulated and therefore mentally engaged, therefore successful and more willing to come back and do it again:

• Continuous Stimulation: the movement itself needs to be at least somewhat intrinsically interesting to you. If it is boring, don’t do it. You need to be able to pay attention to your form, otherwise your workout will not be effective (at best), and at worst you may hurt yourself and never work out again.
• Novelty: see also continuous stimulation — it is totally cool to try the latest weird thing you saw on YouTube as your workout, if it boosts your brain.
• Accommodation: Don’t try to do what you see neurotypicals do. Don’t count reps just because you think you should. Don’t track in a book unless you enjoy doing so. Don’t think you have to stay on the treadmill for a certain length of time if it’s boring. You won’t come back and exercise if you had to use extreme willpower to force yourself to do things.
• Learn to Train By Feel: this is the most important part; I’ll explain how this works deeper in the article.

How Not What to Look Like

In this fun little TikTok video by Courtney Carini, a successful business owner with #ADHD, Courtney demonstrates why you may as well not design your workout around counting reps, especially with a more inattentive subtype.

https://www.tiktok.com/@courtneyadhd/video/7007113008908356870

In Courtney’s video, she starts losing attention on the count around rep 3. She’s not really putting much intention into her form, she doesn’t really have enough resistance (weight) on the movement to create effective muscle growth, and her mind is completely free to wander.

All of these factors add up to rather poor workout outcomes:

• her body isn’t really getting effectively worked;
• her nervous system probably won’t get as much stimulation;
• she won’t be able to tell if she’s making any progress over time.

If you’re like me, you want to get a really effective workout in a fairly short amount of time. This means avoiding screwing around so that you keep the appropriate amount of pressure going on the workout.

People with #ADHD often struggle to stay focused, to track their progress, and thus to see if their workouts are actually working (see also low Conscientiousness). You may initially bring a workout tracker with great enthusiasm to your first 1 or 2 workouts, but the chances are high that you’ll lose interest in tracking, and that will set you up for feelings of guilt at not doing exercise perfectly. And none of us need any more negative self-talk!

So, how can you work out effectively without counting reps?

Learn to Work Out By Feel

The best way to judge whether you’ve worked a body part to completion for any given set is to understand how the set should feel.

First of all, you need to know if you are performing the exercise with excellent form. Find a mirror, pull up a YouTube video for the exercise in question, and copy that movement as best you can. Even better would be to hire a personal trainer (a good one) to train you if you are new.

Doing the movement correctly will not only protect you from hurting yourself, thus enabling the longevity of your exercise adherence. It will also give your brain another form of much-needed stimulation to keep the exercise interesting.

Once you’ve got the movement really dialed in, you need to key in to how your body feels doing the movement when you apply resistance, because the amount of resistance you use will dictate how your body responds and fatigues.

Decide first whether you want to train for hypertrophy (muscle growth) or more for strength. I recommend training for strength if you don’t have a goal in mind, because you will always get some muscle growth with strength — and you will be able to use fewer reps in a set.

Training for strength means using a heavier weight for fewer reps in a row. For example, doing 5 sets of 5 reps each on bench press, deadlift, or squats is a popular way to increase strength over time. The key is to choose a weight that you can lift safely and with good form around 5 times in a row before stopping to rest. At the end of this set, it should feel when you start to lift the weight that you could not safely move this weight throughout the entire movement with good form. That is the moment to stop!

If you’re training for hypertrophy (muscle growth), you should try to choose a weight that affords you roughly 20 seconds’ worth of movement. This generally means about 10–12 reps. Weight chosen for hypertrophy generally falls around 50% of what you might choose for training for strength. To know when you should stop, notice when the muscles under load start to become fatigued to the point where you probably couldn’t complete more than 2–3 more. You should stop before you reach total failure!

Training by feel means choosing the correct weight based on your goal, doing the movement with good form by putting mental energy into moving well, and knowing when to stop based on how fatigued the muscle is.

When you put down the weight after a set of reps performed with good form, you should rest that muscle for at least 30 to 60 seconds for hypertrophy, or at least 120 seconds for strength.

Whether you are training more for strength or for growth, you should always be sensing the weight and whether you ought to reduce or increase the resistance you’re using based on your goals and your level of fatigue.

For more on how best to train for these two different goals, check out sci-fit.net’s incredibly useful page on Scientific Recommendations for Strength and Hypertrophy Training from 150+ Studies.

Staying Safe and Knowing When to Stop

A lot of people with ADHD have a difficult time with the introspective part of working out instinctively, and sometimes don’t know when to stop.

Some discomfort when working out is normal, but any sharp pains in muscles or joints should be considered a clear sign that the movement should not be continued.

When training for strength in particular, you need to put much more intention into the movement since the resistance has to be so much higher to be effective at lower repetition ranges. This makes training for strength highly stimulating for people with ADHD and thus potentially a very successful way for ADHDers to train — but it comes with it higher risk of injury should the attention wander.

One question I have heard many times is whether it’s OK for muscles to shake while lifting weights. The answer is yes: shaking is actually a sign that the nervous system will be learning to grow into the muscle tissue after your workout. Shaking, as long as there is no pain, is not inherently bad. If shaking muscles cause too much deformation of the movement, however, it’s probably better to back off and choose a lower weight.

Conclusion

The best way to get someone with ADHD to reap the benefits of exercise is to work with their neurology, not try to fight against it. Neurotypical expectations such as following consistent routines and too-specific directives will almost always fall flat in the face of drifting attention and lack of stimulation.

If you have ADHD, the most important way to get exercise into your life is to find something that interests you, and if you can take even a little interest in lifting some weights or doing some calisthenics like push-ups and pull-ups, this article will guide you in the direction of sculpting your workout for maximum benefits and longevity.

The more you work out, the smoother your brain will operate. The better your brain operates, the easier it will be to workout.

I hope you find this article useful and motivating! Please leave a comment if you do.

Sources:

Archer, T., & Kostrzewa, R. M. (2012). Physical exercise alleviates ADHD symptoms: regional deficits and development trajectory. Neurotoxicity research, 21(2), 195–209. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12640-011-9260-0

Christiansen, L., Beck, M. M., Bilenberg, N., Wienecke, J., Astrup, A., & Lundbye-Jensen, J. (2019). Effects of Exercise on Cognitive Performance in Children and Adolescents with ADHD: Potential Mechanisms and Evidence-based Recommendations. Journal of clinical medicine, 8(6), 841. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm8060841

Gomez, R., & Corr, P. J. (2014). ADHD and personality: a meta-analytic review. Clinical psychology review, 34(5), 376–388. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2014.05.002

Kollins, S. H., & Adcock, R. A. (2014). ADHD, altered dopamine neurotransmission, and disrupted reinforcement processes: implications for smoking and nicotine dependence. Progress in neuro-psychopharmacology & biological psychiatry, 52, 70–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pnpbp.2014.02.002