Friday, June 16, 2006

exercise & the ADD person

so exercise can be a pain the rump for someone with ADD. now, i'm no where near as bad as my sweetie, i love him, don't get me wrong, but he is even more easily distracted than i am, which says a lot! anyway. i was working out this morning in the gym here at work & i realized after about, oh, a minute & a half on the elliptical, that i was bored silly.

now it's not like i'm a freak & i don't have an mp3 or other conveyance of music, because i do have an ipod. & since i'm almost always alone in my work gym i have the tv on. today i was watching gilmore girls, which i love. it was even an episode that i've never seen in its entirety which is a double bonus. but even with gilmore girls on i was bored senseless.

how come i can sit at home on the couch barely moving except for my remote hand & i'm completely fine? but put me on an elliptical in front of a tv & suddenly i'm bored & restless, even though i'm technically moving? it's an interesting phenomenon. it's like my body & mind know that exercise is good for me, but they're resisting it with every fiber of their being.

this is making it sound like i absolutely loathe the act of exercising, which i really don't at all. i'm not going to claim that i was little miss athletic back in school because i wasn't. i hated gym with a white hot burning seething passion. but that's also because schools tend to make gym a miserable place for bookish kids who don't excel at sports. that being said, at this point in my life i really do enjoy working out.

i love that feel of my muscles being sore from pushing myself harder than i did the last time. the endorphin rush of a good work out. feeling exhausted & refreshed at the same time. i'll admit, i don't really dig the whole covered in sweat deal, but a shower after a good work out feels fabulous, so that part evens out just fine.

so it's been established that i love working out, yet i get incredibly bored when i'm at the gym. occasionally i get bored at home doing my workout videos, but usually with those there's so much switching between activities & segments that i really don't have time to be bored at all. i'm not really sure what the answer to this is at all. because i do feel torn on the issue. (yup, there goes that whole freakin' gemini-two-minds thing again). today i really loved the feeling when i got off the elliptical after an hour & my legs were burning & i felt like i had really done my absolute best to push myself as hard as possible. & it was really great counting the reps aloud on the weight machines & mentally telling myself that just one more & i'd be done.

anyone have a cure for the workout boredom? i don't always do the exact same thing when i go to the gym, but i still sometimes feel like i could be doing something else with my time. eventhough i know all i would do is sit on my ass & watch tv or plop myself in front of my computer & mindlessly net surf.

yeah, i know, just quit your whining. that energy can be better used else where. but i can't be the only ADD exerciser out there. i know that somewhere someone is bored to tears after a few seconds on their treadmill/bike/elliptical/etc. & we need to find a way to get over the restless nature that makes us want to wander far far away from the gym & do something else, just about anything else.

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