When people hear that I have done a daily workout for over 12 years, that I do CrossFit, lift weights, teach yoga, do flying trapeze, trampoline, and enjoy other sports, they often get a picture in their head of someone who is strong, athletic, flexible and well-coordinated.
They are often surprised when they meet me in person and see how I move.
When I was growing up, nobody called me “athletic.” I had two left feet, couldn’t dance to the beat, and was often covered in bruises from bumping into things.
I can be klutzy and clumsy, and often struggle with coordination, especially when learning new movements. I run awkwardly. I struggle to learn movement patterns.
I lived with my ADHD diagnosis for almost 20 years before I learned that all of these physical issues were signs of ADHD.
The Unknown Physical Side of ADHD
Most conversations about ADHD focus on the way ADHD brains are wired differently from neurotypical brains.
For this reason, ADHD is primarily associated with cognitive and executive function challenges, such as attention, focus, decisions, planning, prioritizing, and working memory.
But for people with ADHD, it’s not just the brain that is wired differently; it’s the entire nervous system. The impact of ADHD extends beyond the mind.
By impacting the functions of proprioception, interoception, and neuromuscular coordination, ADHD impacts how we literally move through the world and interact with our surroundings.
3 Ways ADHD Impacts the Physical Body
Proprioception is your sense of how your body occupies and moves through physical space. Issues here look like bumping into tables and door frames, or thinking you’re squatting to depth when you’re not even close.
Interoception is your awareness of internal signals, like hunger, arousal, or thirst. In people with ADHD, these signals are often delayed, which leads to issues like not feeling hungry until you’re famished and have a headache, overdoing activity because you didn’t register fatigue, or overeating because you didn’t register feeling full.
Neuromuscular coordination is how your nervous system initiates, sequences, organizes, and coordinates movement and breathing. It can show up in everything from fine motor control required for handwriting to compound movements like deadlifts or squats.
When Movement Isn’t About Mindset
From the outside, issues related to proprioception, interoception, and neuromuscular coordination can look like mindset or behavior issues.
The uninitiated observer might mistake these as clumsiness, carelessness, or inattentiveness. They tell you to just “try harder,” be more “mindful,” or have more awareness of your surroundings. They might criticize us for how we hold a fork, cut our food, or run a race.
But these issues are not mindset issues or inattentiveness; they are sensory-motor issues.
Movement is Medicine
While I had long seen the impact of exercise and training on my cognitive performance, it turns out that my extensive and diverse training regimen is also a solution to addressing the physical challenges of ADHD.
Improving proprioception, interoception, and neuromuscular coordination requires intentional physical training across a range of modalities and using various techniques to re-wire the faulty connections.
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