There are many different treatments for the condition such as counselling and medication.
For many it is just a label applied by an education system lacking the insight to avoid taking the easy path of getting a doctor to tick the box and put them on one of the many behaviour modifying medications available. However for a minority of sufferers such as myself it will be a life long battle.
From a young age I was made to know by my teachers and to a degree my peers I was different and or behaviourally challenged and for the most part looking back they were right. This continued through my adolescence through to early adulthood.
For years I spent a lot of my time in different offices whether it be the office of the Headmaster, an unempathetic school psychologist or the pill dispensing doctor. I spent more time in the different offices than I did actually doing homework. All the time with a common theme what’s wrong with you? Why can’t you just grow up and behave yourself James?
I have always been an active person playing rugby and water polo and even dabbling in long distance swimming and running. However it was when I did dabble in cross country running that the first piece of an emerging picture presented itself.
Exercise.
Under the coaching of Mr Donney I discovered that just because something sucks doesn’t mean it was bad for you. Our training resembled that of CrossFit Endurance training with plenty of interval and stamina work that would culminate with a Saturday morning 5 or 8 kilometer race, in which I usually came at the tail end. But despite this I would always improve my times, which filled me with confidence and the fact that this was measurable allowed me to watch as I improved. The flow on effect was that my self-esteem sky rocketed and I finally started to show some improvement in my behaviour and school work which saw me well in my final two years of school.
Fast forward to my discovery of CrossFit through my rugby club’s pre-season program that involved an onslaught of volume and intensity three times a week. I was hooked. The season started and I returned to the usual Globo Gym training with a trainer more interested in his mirror than his clients. After a disagreement with him I found a new trainer. She was Ex-army and knew how to punish multiple 1 minute AMRAPs of burpees were not uncommon. However after a few months she left for a PT job on the mines.
I was re-acquainted with CrossFit when I finally emailed the owner of SF Gym Tracy Cooper and booked in for a fundamentals program. For the next 12 months I toiled hard in the gym and got pretty fit and finally the penny started to drop. The effects on me that had been seen back in my folly into cross country reappeared! Just like cross country running the results were measurable and the PBs soon started to stack up. With this came an improvement in confidence which flowed on into my social life and saw a renewed focus that flowed on to areas other than Crossfit such as my studies and part time career in the Army.
Has it been a complete fix? No. Has it helped in my battle? Yes.
I now find myself at Range of Motion taking responsibility for my own training under the guidance of Bryn Williams and the rest of the team. This ownership of my own training will continue to develop as I continue to unpack the idea of a program such as CrossFit in the aid of ADHD will become to be a corner stone.
This post is the first in a multiple part series. In the second part of we will dive into the ten physical skills and how they improve a person as a whole. In the third part of this series we will examine the research and what the boffins say.
I leave you with one guiding question.
How do you think a system like CrossFit can improve each of us outside the training track and can aid in a personal battle?
James Christensen
Range of Motion
