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Our annual ADHD health and wellness planning workshop
happens next week, May 12th and May 19th.
So this workshop is designed to support you
in optimizing your health routine.
There are things that we know we should be doing,
but we're not because it's difficult.
Life is happening, things are going really fast,
and it's hard for us to slow down
and take time to build our exercise routine,
dial in our nutrition plan,
do what we need to do to get better sleep,
so we build in our wind down routines
at the end of the day.
There are so many aspects of building a wellness routine
that it can get very overwhelming.
So I've designed this workshop over many years
of observing my life coaching clients
to give you exactly what you need
to build that support system into your life.
So as with all of our other online workshops,
we have a community around the world
that gets together, supports each other,
connects in both via the live events
and through a discussion group.
In between the live sessions,
we will have a topic that all of us
will be focusing on each day
so that we can incrementally support our wellness plan.
All sessions will be recorded,
so if you can't attend the live sessions,
you can follow along via the discussion group
and our emails that go out once a day.
So I hope you can join us.
If you'd like to learn more,
go to drummerinthegreatmountain.com/workshop.
It's starting to fill up,
so I would encourage you,
if you're interested to sign up as soon as you can,
we'll probably close registration on Sunday the 10th.
So I hope that's helpful and I hope you can join us.
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- Welcome everyone, thanks for tuning in.
I'm your host, Michael Joseph Ferguson.
I hope you're all doing well.
In today's episode,
we'll cover how to simplify your exercise routine.
So keeping with an exercise routine
is notoriously difficult for us.
I know this as a coach
'cause I work with so many of you,
but a regular exercise routine,
as I can attest to myself, can be life changing.
But it's important to understand what actually works.
How do we keep with the routine?
What types of exercise work better than others
in terms of increased mental clarity
and focus and reduced anxiety?
And how do we schedule our exercise routine
in a way that we can stay consistent with it?
So we're gonna cover the neuroscience.
I'm gonna reference some specific studies,
including the type of exercise
that can increase your memory by up to 16%.
So I'm happy to report the new book is done.
It will be released very shortly.
We were hoping to do a release on Earth Day,
but I needed to secure the rights to a couple photos
and we just got those about a week ago.
So it's a very visual book.
It's gonna be,
a lot of what you've all been asking for for many years,
which is the "Drummer in the Great Mountain"
is a large book.
I know a number of you have reached out and said,
I got the book, I haven't read it all the way through.
This is the book for you.
It's highly visual, it's in color, it's hardcover.
I think you're gonna really enjoy it.
So if you wanna be notified
when we do the release party online
and when it becomes available,
please join the email list.
Go to drummerinthegreatmountain.com and subscribe.
And we will keep posted.
Okay, how to simplify your ADHD exercise routine,
what actually works?
So the challenge is it's very difficult for us
to keep with our exercise routine.
We often get into a streak for a couple of days
or maybe a week, then we fall off again.
And then we're often reluctant to start up again
because we're concerned we'll just fail.
And it's the same pattern that then gets more
and more ingrained and that's what keeps us stuck.
So the solution is to simplify your exercise routine.
Most of you as a coach and working with a lot of you
over complicated and set too high a bar.
You wanna optimize for what actually increases your focus,
reduces your anxiety and overwhelm
and brings you the self-esteem
because you're doing it regularly.
And it doesn't have to be complicated.
It doesn't have to be hard.
It just has to be consistent.
So first off, we need to know why we should exercise.
Why is cardio exercise?
Why is exercise in general helpful for us
when we have ADHD tendencies,
when we have challenges with focus,
mood, procrastination, motivation.
So we need to look at what does the neuroscience say?
So I'm gonna go through each of these topics.
Gonna give each point and then each one of these corresponds
to a medical study that I will leave in a link
in the description of this episode.
So the first topic is improved executive functioning,
mood and attention.
And what do the studies say?
The studies say 10 to 15 minutes
of moderate intensity cardio exercise,
that's brisk walking to light jogging,
is sufficient to trigger immediate improvements
in executive functioning, mood and attention.
So if you've been listening to this podcast
for a long time, you know, I've been stating this constantly,
but let's keep going 'cause there's other pieces here.
So what about reduced cortisol and perceived stress?
When we're stressed, we tend to procrastinate,
we tend to get overwhelmed,
we tend to get distracted by other things.
That is sort of the mechanism at play.
So what do we find in terms of reduced cortisol
and perceived stress?
Consistency is more critical than intensity.
So low to moderate intensity aerobic exercise,
that could be jogging, brisk walking, swimming, cycling,
for as little as 15 minutes per day
has shown to greatly reduce cortisol and perceived stress.
There's another study that just discusses that piece,
but let's keep going.
So what time of day is best?
The studies show morning, they call it the morning spike.
Exercise in the morning provides
the most significant cognitive protection
and symptom relief for the remainder of the day.
So morning exercise is typically better.
Now I wanna highlight that for many of you,
if you can't do morning,
I can tell you from personal experience
that that is just one factor.
You can exercise, especially in the afternoon
when you're dipping,
and it can still have a great improvement
to your mood and focus.
Not only for that day,
the potentially the day after,
which is always what I'm aiming at.
So to distill all those points down,
we're looking at 10 to 15 minutes a day
of moderate intensity cardio workout,
ideally in the morning,
but not necessarily,
and that will have noticeable improvements
in terms of executive functioning,
mood and attention,
reduced stress and reduced cortisol.
Okay, but let's go a little deeper.
Is it better to exercise indoors or outdoors?
And the resounding response from the studies is,
outdoors is better.
So first off, reduction in rumination,
walking in nature or exercising in nature
specifically decreases neuroactivity
in the subgenial prefrontal cortex,
a region associated with morbid rumination
and self-focused negative talk.
Urban exercise that includes indoor gym exercise
does not show the same neural down regulation.
Let's keep going though.
So what about efficacy for clinical anxiety and depression?
A 2026 meta analysis found that green exercise
has significantly a larger effect
on mental health outcomes than indoor exercises,
effectively ranking it as a primary intervention
for reducing clinical psychological distress.
Okay, so now is it better to exercise with shoes on
or barefoot?
And there are multiple studies that show
that barefoot exercise is actually better.
And there's quite a few of them.
The first study shows that direct electrical contact
with the earth significantly improves vagal tone.
Research shows that grounding the body
reduces skin potential
and shifts the autonomic nervous system
towards a parasympathetic state almost immediately.
So if you are in a sympathetic nervous system response,
you are in fight or flight.
When you're in parasympathetic nervous system response,
you are in rest and digest.
So basically calming your nervous system down.
In terms of neuromodulation of brain waves,
we spoke about, if you haven't listened to the episode
in a while, about a year and a half ago,
I did an episode on brain waves and ADHD.
Barefoot contact with natural services alters
the bioelectrical environment of the body
leading to immediate changes in your EEG.
So it typically increases alpha wave activity,
which is associated with relaxed alertness
while decreasing high beta waves
associated with high stress.
So once again, stress reduction.
But here's the kicker.
This is the one that I did not know
until I started doing research for this episode.
Barefoot exercise is shown to improve memory.
Running or walking barefoot on uneven natural terrain
requires proprioceptive demands.
And this tactile load forces the brain
to recruit working memory resources,
resulting in a 16% improvement in memory tasks
compared to exercising in shoes.
So if you wanna go the optimal route,
10 to 15 minutes a day, exercise barefoot in nature,
there's a lot of studies that show
that that is probably your best bet
to maximize your daily exercise routine.
And we gotta remember when we were kids, we knew this, right?
We'd go out, we'd run all the time.
We were always moving, we were barefoot.
We sometimes get splinters on our feet,
but that is, we naturally knew
that that was the best way to go.
And as we get to adults and we start to stiffen up
and we gotta force ourselves to be an adult
and act a certain way, we lose sight
of this intuitive nature inside us
that says this is the way we should be exercising.
So okay, so let's go through
and start to integrate some of these tips.
So tip one is keep it to 10 to 15 minutes a day.
Aim for shorter exercise routines.
I just hear from so many people saying like,
if I don't hit 30 or hit 40 minutes, it's not worth it.
And that's what's keeping you from keeping,
getting a routine going that you can keep with every day.
You're making it too hard.
Reduce it down.
The science shows unequivocally
that you only need 10 to 15 minutes a day
for the cognitive benefits of it.
I'm not talking about losing weight,
but if you're exercising daily,
you're most likely gonna lose weight as a result as well.
Make it a non-negotiable.
So in terms of whether you take ADHD
or don't take ADHD meds,
from working with lots of different people
from my experience, I can say that either way,
it's going to help.
Either way, you're going to see
most likely significant improvement
in mental functioning if you exercise every day.
There's just, I haven't seen anyone that came through
that said, I'm exercising every day,
I'm getting no benefit from it.
I've never had that happen.
To get the streak started, get the pattern going
so you're doing it three days in a row.
So just tell yourself,
I'm don't have to think about doing this forever.
I'm just gonna do a three day challenge.
I'm gonna exercise 10 to 15 minutes a day for three days.
As we stated, if you can do it in the morning,
that's great, but what I would say is just tell yourself,
I need to exercise 10 to 15 minutes sometime during the day.
So if you can do it in the morning, great,
but if it's the afternoon, that's also a great time.
If it's before dinner, that's fine too.
As you get towards evening time around six or seven o'clock,
you can have some challenges with exercising,
over energizing yourself,
and then having a hard time sleeping.
So you should probably have a cut off around 7.30 p.m.,
depending on what time you go to sleep.
If you can afford it, hire a trainer for one month,
that I've just watched so many clients really benefit
from just having another person support them
in a training session once a day.
If you're not doing it once a day,
then maybe two or three sessions a week
that are a little more high intensity.
Pick exercise that you enjoy,
biking, running, swimming, sports, dance,
rebounder, that's trampoline, stationary bike, sports,
I mean, like I mentioned, sports.
Go through and find something that you enjoy doing
so that you're more motivated to do it.
Pick a spot that you'd like to go to.
Ideally, if you can exercise outside,
that's gonna be helpful.
So find a nature location near you that you really like,
that's going to help.
And having a support group is really important.
So that's why we're doing this workshop,
but also just in general, either with your spouse,
with someone you know, having an exercise buddy,
joining a running group can be really helpful,
joining a sports group can be really helpful.
I know a lot of people are into pickleball.
As we get older, that's a sport
that a lot of people take on.
And that's great.
If that gives you the community motivation to do it,
then that's a really great way
to kickstart your exercise routine.
Okay, so there you have it.
That is, how do you optimize your exercise routine?
Those are some very key examples backed by neuroscience.
I will leave those links in the description
so you can take a look at those yourself.
And if you would like to join us
in our upcoming wellness workshop,
we only do it once a year.
So if you can join us, it's gonna be fun.
We always have a good time.
And then also people tend to stay connected
via the discussion group well after the workshop.
So if you'd like to join us,
go to drummerinthegreatmountain.com/workshop.
And I hope that was helpful.
So I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your week,
wherever you are in the world.
And until next time, be well.
- Thanks for joining us.
If you'd like to learn more about the book,
"The Drummer and the Great Mountain,"
visit drummerinthegreatmountain.com.
To join us on social media,
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Please send us an email at info@drummerinthegreatmountain.com.
(gentle music)
, thank you. (gentle music)
(gentle music)
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