ADHD in Sport: Strategies for Success with Dr Josephine Perry
đ My new book, The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit, is available to preorder here đ
If you (or a child) love sport but struggle with pressure, perfectionism, RSD and other ADHD traits, this episode is full of research-led and professional insights and support from Dr Josephine Perry, a Sport Psychologist and author of ADHD in Sport: Strategies for Success. Dr Perry works with high-achieving, often perfectionistic athletes (many of whom are neurodivergent) to manage performance anxiety and thrive in competitive environments.
What Youâll Learn:
- Why ADHD is more common in competitive athletes â and how we can help them thrive
- The double-edged sword of sport for ADHD brains: emotional regulation vs. pressure and burnout
- How ADHD traits show up differently in girls and women in sport â and why theyâre often missed
- The importance of sleep, recovery, and nutrition for ADHD athletes
- How hormonal cycles, RED-s, and appetite suppression from ADHD medication can affect female athletes
- The emotional impact of rejection sensitivity, performance feedback, and team dynamics
- Why communication between coach and athlete is everything â including tips like a âcommunication passportâ
- Practical tools to support hypermobility and sensory needs in sport
- How to approach training with self-compassion, not comparison
Whether youâre a coach, teacher, parent, or athlete, youâll walk away with compassionate, practical tools to help ADHD athletes succeed â and feel understood.
Timestamps:
- 02:41 â ADHD and performance anxiety in sport
- 12:32 â Why we need to talk more about ADHD in athletes
- 25:35 â Strategies to support ADHD athletes on and off the field
- 29:06 â Nutrition and sleep: what makes the biggest difference
- 36:41 â Hypermobility and sensory issues in sport
- 41:32 â Hormones, cycles, and female athletes with ADHD
Connect with Dr Perry via her website, performanceinmind.co.uk or on Instagram, @josephineperry76.
Links and Resources:
- Connect with Dr Josephine Perry via her website performanceinmind.co.uk or Instagram @josephineperry76
- Missed our ADHD Womenâs Summer Series? Get the workshops on demand [here].
- Next ADHD Wellbeing Workshop: âCreating ADHD Routines & Structuresâ â June 10th @1.30pm. Book [here].
- Preorder my book: The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit [here].
- Join the Waitlist for my new ADHD community-first membership launching in September! Get exclusive founding offers [here].
- Find my popular ADHD webinars and resources on her website [here].
- Follow the podcast on Instagram: @adhd_womenswellbeing_pod
- Follow me on Instagram: @kate_moryoussef
Exclusive Offer for Listeners:
This weekâs episode is proudly sponsored by The Naked Pharmacy!
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Transcript
Welcome to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.
Speaker A:I'm Kate Moore Youssef and I'm a wellbeing and lifestyle coach, EFT practitioner, mum to four kids and passionate about helping more women to understand and accept their amazing ADHD brains.
Speaker A:After speaking to many women just like me and probably you, I know there is a need for more health and lifestyle support for women newly diagnosed with adhd.
Speaker A:In these conversations, you'll learn from insightful guests, hear new findings, and discover powerful perspectives and lifestyle tools to enable you to live your most fulfilled, calm and purposeful life wherever you are on your ADHD journey.
Speaker A:Here's today's episode.
Speaker A:Today, I'm talking about something that we haven't sort of touched on specifically on the podcast before, surprisingly, after all these episodes.
Speaker A:But it's something I talk about all the time, and that is movement and sport.
Speaker A:But we're coming at it from a little bit more of a professional angle and understanding the role of ADHD in sport and discussing more strategies for success.
Speaker A:So this is a conversation maybe for more people that work in professional sport.
Speaker A:If you are an athlete or you're a teacher, a coach, whatever that might be.
Speaker A:A psychologist.
Speaker A:I'm really excited to break this down, and on the podcast Today, I have Dr.
Speaker A:Josephine Perry, who has written an incredibly fascinating, fascinating new book called ADHD in Sports, Strategies for Success.
Speaker A:Now, Dr.
Speaker A:Josephine Perry is a chartered sport and exercise psychologist who supports those on stage in sport and in the professions to maximize their success.
Speaker A:She specializes in supporting those with performance anxiety and athletes with adhd.
Speaker A:And she also writes extensively in the media and has published five of the books, including Performing Under Pressure, Strategies for Sporting Success, I Can the Teenage Athlete's Guide to Mental Fitness, and the Ten Pillars of Success.
Speaker A:So we are really speaking to someone who knows her stuff here.
Speaker A:So welcome to the podcast, Dr.
Speaker A:Josephine Perry.
Speaker B:Oh, thank you for having me.
Speaker A:I have your book in front of me.
Speaker A:It's here.
Speaker A:And I was just saying off camera, like, it's really fascinating.
Speaker A:And you've gone into so much depth and detail about the intersection of sport and adhd, how sport helps, some of the drawbacks, the setbacks, the challenges, but also what an amazing thing harnessing sport can be for our ADHD and neurodivergence.
Speaker A:And I'm really excited to break it all down.
Speaker A:I think where I'd love to begin is a little bit about why, after you've written those books, did you decide that writing about, you know, ADHD in sports and those strategies for helping neurodivergent athletes was so important to you?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So after five books, I was definitely not writing another book.
Speaker B:Again, that was totally out of the window.
Speaker B:However, I specialise, as you said, in working with those who have high levels of performance anxiety.
Speaker B:And that won't just be in sport, that could be on the stage.
Speaker B:DJs, actors, singers, in the police, in the military.
Speaker B:Anyone that's trying to perform at a really high level and is finding that they are getting incredibly anxious either beforehand or, or during the performance, that's stopping them getting to the right level.
Speaker B:And two traits I have always seen showing up a lot in that group.
Speaker B:One is that they're usually highly intelligent and the other one is they're very perfectionistic.
Speaker B:And when you get high intelligence and perfectionism together, it becomes incredibly difficult to perform at your best.
Speaker B:So I've worked with that group for quite a while, but I suddenly started realizing more and more of those people also had adhd.
Speaker B:And either they were coming to me saying they'd been diagnosed with it, or they had some very high suspicions that they would get a diagnosis if they went for one.
Speaker B:And it made me want to find a book to be able to go, brilliant, go and read this book.
Speaker B:Find those strategies.
Speaker B:This is how sport can help your adhd.
Speaker B:This is how your ADHD might be able to help your sport.
Speaker B:And then I discovered there was no book.
Speaker B:And my way of, well, if there isn't something is, okay, well let's go and make one.
Speaker B:So I actually pitched it to my publisher as It'll be about 40,000 words because there won't be that much to cover.
Speaker B:And bless him.
Speaker B:When it came around to September and I submitted it, I went, oh, by the way, 70,000 words now might be a bit longer than we anticipated.
Speaker B:And actually more and more of the questions I'm getting from people coming in around the world are like, oh, what about concussion?
Speaker B:Or what about specifically for women going through menopause?
Speaker B:And you're like, yeah, they just wasn't, wasn't room to cover everything because it's a much bigger topic than I initially imagined.
Speaker A:Oh, it's huge.
Speaker A:It's absolutely huge.
Speaker A:And you know, you really have put so much detail into this book.
Speaker A:I mean really, I was like reading it and going, oh my goodness.
Speaker A:You know, you've touched on the different co occurring conditions of ADHD which must overlap so much in being, you know, working in sport, being a professional or amateur athlete and just being able to manage all of that, that so the all encompass ways that ADHD can Show up and then we've got like you say, the performance anxiety, probably imposter syndrome, the perfectionism.
Speaker A:It can be, you know, really challenging to navigate all of that and still want to do really well and perform at your best and be ambitious and sport as we know, moving our body is, you know, often the way we self medicate and we don't even know why we're doing, but we know that we have so much restless energy and unfortunately a lot of people channel it through unhelpful addictive behaviors.
Speaker A:And the lucky ones find sport early on in life and realize that if they're not playing football, netball, running, tennis, whatever that might be, then there's something, there's like a very, like they feel very agitated, very irritable, but when they know they can channel this energy and often we don't even have the words to articulate this, we don't really understand why there's a visceral physical need to move our body, then it can be very difficult.
Speaker A:And I'm interested to know, I know, I don't know if there's an actual study here, but from obviously working with so many different athletes and people work, you know, in sport, how many or what kind of percentage do you think that professional athletes who have this urgency to move their body constantly and so driven do you think are adhd?
Speaker B:There are no stats and even the stats looking about ADHD within general population are changing all the time.
Speaker B:Many of the athletes I interviewed for the book were talking about they didn't get their diagnoses till one got theirs at 40, another one in their early 20s, a girl at 15, so much later diagnoses.
Speaker B:And that means we're obviously seeing the numbers much higher now.
Speaker B:Not because there is more adhd.
Speaker B:I just think there's been actual recognition of how it impacts different people differently.
Speaker B:In some sports there's almost estimations that Perhaps up to 50% of athletes might well be eligible for an ADHD diagnosis, particularly sports like basketball.
Speaker B:And I find basketball fascinating because that impulsivity works really well.
Speaker B:That kind of impact of training on and off works really well.
Speaker B:And it's a sport that's very good for dopamine because you're not kicking a ball and trying to get one or two goals over a match.
Speaker B:In basketball, you're constantly shooting, constantly able to score, so you do really well on being able to get dopamine from your actual sport.
Speaker B:In the US they often look at number of therapeutic use exemptions within different sports.
Speaker B:And so if you're taking ADHD meds, you will need a therapeutic use exemption.
Speaker B:And so they know that in some teams you will have very high levels of people taking meds.
Speaker B:And often I've worked with a number of basketball players who've had a diagnosis and don't take medication because they find it stops them being able to play so well.
Speaker B:So we definitely think in some sports it's much higher.
Speaker A:So, okay, so basketball, is there any other ones that you've noticed that has quite high rates?
Speaker B:I think the biggest thing is actually finding the sport that you love more than certain sports.
Speaker B:So some sports, yes, can work well alongside some ADHD traits, particularly sports where there's a lot of pattern making.
Speaker B:And we think an ADHD brain can be very good at being able to spot patterns within games before it's thought about.
Speaker B:It's just to be able to look at what's going on and see what's very likely to be able to happen and engage very well with that.
Speaker B:So team sports can be very good for that.
Speaker B:But other sports, particularly where some of the ADHD traits are more internalized and there's a lot of anxiety that's showing up, individual sports can feel safer places for that.
Speaker B:It can give people their safe space to work through things.
Speaker B:So actually I think the best sport for somebody is a sport that gives them a safe place and that they just feel at home and comfortable in.
Speaker B:And in the book, the first chapter is actually about the neuropsychology of the brain when it comes to high performance.
Speaker B:Because I think it's helpful for any of us to understand what's going on in our brain.
Speaker B:But specifically with adhd, I think it's really helpful to understand your threat system and what's likely to trigger it.
Speaker B:And if you are trying to behave in a world or a sport that is designed with a neurotypical brain in mind, simply being there is going to be quite stressful, it's going to be more fatiguing because people are placing expectations upon you that might not work for you.
Speaker B:And so your threat system is likely to trigger more.
Speaker B:And so if you can find a safe place where you feel comfortable, you get unwell for people that your body is suited to that kind of sport, it helps to reduce some of the threat that's going on.
Speaker B:And so you can perform better and help your self esteem because you're doing something really well.
Speaker A:Yeah, and that's interesting what you say about the self esteem, because if we find that self esteem doing the sport that we love, that can trickle out into other areas of our life as well.
Speaker A:And we, we've seen, you know, with children that they may have had very poor self esteem due to academia, maybe there's teachers have spoken to them, you know, down to dyslexia, just so many different things with regards to academia and ADHD that they have taken a knocking and people haven't believed in them or haven't helped them and then it goes into sport and that then is able to be kind of turned around and hopefully they gain that self esteem and, and I think that's really, really powerful when kids have got ADHD and they have that person.
Speaker A:I mean, I, I'll happily share a personal story that my daughter moved schools and wasn't sporty at all when she was five or six, but always has been very restless, very hyperactive, wants to be outside, busy, busy, busy.
Speaker A:And the netball coach spotted in her that she was a fast runner and very athletic.
Speaker A:This is literally at the age of six or seven and I was like, brilliant, okay.
Speaker A:And she's now playing for one of the best teams in Manchester, netball.
Speaker A:And it's absolutely her life, her passion.
Speaker A:She's obsessed.
Speaker A:She trains once a week, plays once a week, sometimes does double matches, plays for school as well.
Speaker A:So she could be playing netball three times a week.
Speaker A:And it is her happy place.
Speaker A:It's where she's found her tribe, it's where she, her self esteem has grown and she is never bored of it.
Speaker A:You know, if I say to go outside and do your training, do this, do you want to play another game?
Speaker A:It's just so profound how this netball has helped her.
Speaker A:And you know, she's recently diagnosed with ADHD and I just know for her, if she doesn't have that sport, she's very agitated, you know.
Speaker A:Yeah, very, very agitated.
Speaker A:And so I'm so grateful for that one person, that coach who spotted in her that potential.
Speaker A:And that's all it takes, isn't it?
Speaker A:That one person to see.
Speaker B:And that's why we think there are so many people with ADHD at high levels in sport, because it becomes a place where you can get your self esteem.
Speaker B:There was one statistic I've heard over and over again, but I haven't been able to find the references for it.
Speaker B:But it says by the age of 10, a child with ADHD will have had 20,000 more corrections from teachers than a neurotypical child.
Speaker B:So if you're going to school and you're getting told off constantly for wriggling in your chair or not listening or not behaving in the way they want, but that teacher recognises, or a PE teacher recognises that sport might be good for you.
Speaker B:You go there, you use your hyper focus, you get incredibly good at it, you got passion in there.
Speaker B:You can use that energy in a way that other people aren't.
Speaker B:It's going to become your safe place.
Speaker B:You're going to absolutely thrive.
Speaker B:However, I will give a word of warning.
Speaker B:In the book, I interview eight athletes, a coach and a parent.
Speaker B:And the parent in the book was actually a parent of a netballer who plays internationally now, but was saying what was the frustration was that they were phenomenally good at netball in teams and at school, but when it came to selection processes and going to trials days, the way that their daughter behaved wasn't a way that coaches thought somebody should be listening.
Speaker B:And so if a coach is looking at all the girls and one of them is jiggling around or moving, the coaches would instantly dismiss that person as not interested enough.
Speaker B:And then when it came to doing the matches, they'd only get 10 minutes on and 10 minutes off.
Speaker B:And that wasn't enough time for the girls with ADHD to really settle into the match and be able to play at their best.
Speaker B:And so they weren't getting through selection even though they were way better than many other people that were.
Speaker B:So it is really important that coaches the whole way through the level know what to look out for so they can actually give the right opportunities to the right people and they get the best players coming through.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think that's a very, very good point.
Speaker A:And I think we spoke just before about who did you write this book book for?
Speaker A:And I was glad to hear that you've written mostly this book for coaches and PE teachers and people that are working within sport, trying to get the best out of the athletes.
Speaker A:I mean, yes, it's very helpful for an athlete to probably read this book.
Speaker A:Anyone that's interested in sports, a parent for sure, if you're that parent that's doing probably what I'm doing and doing a lot of the running around for their kids and sport and realizing it's a good channel, but really understanding the intricacies.
Speaker A:And is there a frustration from your part that not enough people in the sporting industry understand ADHD and how it shows up for these athletes.
Speaker B:Yeah, I don't think it is anyone's fault.
Speaker B:Certainly I only did my sports psychology training 12 years ago.
Speaker B:Neurodiversity was not mentioned once in any of my year long training at all.
Speaker B:There was nothing on it, so.
Speaker B:And I'VE checked and there's still nothing on it.
Speaker B:So if sports psychologists are coming in to the sporting world with no knowledge of neurodiversity, knowing that at least 20%, probably a lot more of the people they are going to be working with have a difference in the way their brain works, it's a lot to ask coaches and PE teachers and anybody else too as well.
Speaker B:And a lot of the feedback I've had since launching the book has been, ah, we, the teachers in a school, know who's got adhd, and they might well have seen a plan on how we make sure that the child is able to learn.
Speaker B:But no one's ever passed that onto the PE department, no one's ever passed that onto the coaches.
Speaker B:And so often the coaches don't even know who's got a diagnosis and they've never had time to think about it.
Speaker B:So what's really lovely is I've been asked to go and do lots of conferences, lots of some of the top sports schools in the country have invited me in to go and do workshops with their teachers.
Speaker B:So it feels like there's a real appetite to learn more and to really understand.
Speaker B:And a lot of the pushback I was expecting with, like, I know you've got three or four kids in a class of 30, why should the coach have to adapt everything to those three or four?
Speaker B:That's been a lot less than I was expecting.
Speaker B:And there's a lot of understanding that actually if we adapted things to those three or four, we'd be a much better coach for all 30.
Speaker B:So there does feel like there is a real want for more knowledge.
Speaker B:It's just they didn't know where to get it beforehand.
Speaker A:Oh, my God.
Speaker A:I'm so glad to hear that.
Speaker A:I was listening to a podcast the other day with Dr.
Speaker A:Daniel Amen, who's a brain health specialist based in the US and his niche is like, he's done something like 20,000 brain scans and he really understands ADHD and he really understands from an evidence perspective of brain scans, like, what.
Speaker A:What works.
Speaker A:And he says that the best sport for brain health is anything racket sports.
Speaker A:And because it activates the cerebellum.
Speaker A:And I've spoken to a few different experts about the cerebellum and how anything to do with balance and eye movement isn't it, and things like that are really helpful for neurodivergence.
Speaker A:And I see this.
Speaker B:But I think mentally or psychologically, racquet sports are also the hardest sport because you're face to face with your opponent, you've got a huge number of or a lot of energy focused on results and scores and rankings.
Speaker B:So physically, absolutely brilliant for you.
Speaker B:But mentally they're probably, they're certainly where I get the most referrals.
Speaker B:Not Padel yet.
Speaker B:Padel everyone still seems to be totally in love with and utterly fascinated by and still in it for fun.
Speaker B:Tennis, however, is where I get all the nine year olds that are lobbing their rackets across the court and really struggling to emotionally regulate themselves.
Speaker B:And so it's a hard one because yes, we would absolutely say if you've got adhd, racket sports could be amazing for you, but if you're struggling with emotional dysregulation, they're also going to be very, very hard for you.
Speaker A:Well, interestingly so what you say, I think the reason why paddle is become so successful and so popular is that because it's for people, that pressure is taken off you a little bit and it is sociable and you are.
Speaker A:You do feel like you've got someone's got your back and you've got someone's back.
Speaker A:And that's what I've noticed because I agree with you.
Speaker A:I think tennis puts a huge amount of pressure.
Speaker A:You're very exposed.
Speaker A:I mean, we've seen it with the professional tenn like Nick Kyriagos and obviously John McEnroe, who with a classic who know Nick Kyogos is Kyrios Kyriagas is definitely adhd.
Speaker A:I think he's even said that he hears because he suffers with addiction and impulsivity and emotional dysregulation.
Speaker A:And looking back, John McEnroe back in the days, you know, he clearly had no control emotionally.
Speaker A:It was like watching an adult having a tantrum on the tennis court.
Speaker A:So it is interesting that you say that, but I think that's why paddle has become so popular, because you've still got that competitive feistiness, but it's softened a little bit.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:What I tend to find is that we can get a mono identity.
Speaker B:We connect way too closely to our sport.
Speaker B:It's like almost our sport is who we are.
Speaker B:And if you are then playing your sport and there's a chance you could do badly or you could lose or you could embarrass yourself or your ranking could go down.
Speaker B:It doesn't just feel like it's a one off, it feels like it's a whole mark against your entire personality, who you are.
Speaker B:So that can be very risky.
Speaker B:Whereas paddle, when there's a couple of you, when it hasn't got to the same levels of competitiveness individually.
Speaker B:In that same way, when you haven't yet built an identity of I am a paddle player and that's all I am, then it feels a bit safer to play and you can get all of the benefits without some of those frustrations.
Speaker A:Yeah, and I'm just sort of thinking about.
Speaker A:I can talk about men and boys in sports, you know, in football and we've seen, you know, we've seen depression.
Speaker A:We have thankfully more footballers or, you know, professional male athletes are speaking about their mental health and speaking about the impact of the, of the losing or the impact of that moment where they think they've let everyone down and how crushing and debilitating it is and how long it's taken them to get over something like that.
Speaker A:And we're only just.
Speaker A:Sadly, you know, this female professional sport is only really just coming to the forefront.
Speaker A:If you think about women's football, you know, it's been going for so long, but only just recently people are starting to take it seriously.
Speaker A:Do you notice how ADHD manifests differently in female and male professional athletes?
Speaker B:I see more.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:Well, it's very generalized because obviously I only see 20 athletes a week, so it's very hard to make those comparisons.
Speaker B:I guess what I tend to see is probably more of those external tantrums in some, particularly the younger teenage boys.
Speaker B:And as we age, male and female, the tensions tend to go internal.
Speaker B:So it feels like it shows up much more as anxiety as you age.
Speaker B:The other elements I see that we probably don't think about so much.
Speaker B:One of the athletes in the book called them her snipers.
Speaker B:That you can think you're doing okay and then suddenly one of your snipers will show up.
Speaker B:And I think that's quite individualized and not gender based at all, but.
Speaker B:So some of her snipers will be.
Speaker B:Loud music at the start of a race just suddenly feels too much and you just don't want to be there or someone trying to talk to you before you do it.
Speaker B:One of the other athletes in the book was playing in the FA cup final and they weren't used to playing at great big stadiums that were full.
Speaker B:And then suddenly they're playing FA cup final at Wembley and like, and there's fireworks going off and the kit is new kit, but it's really uncomfortable.
Speaker B:It's male kit that's not really designed for women.
Speaker B:And you've got the advertising border, things around the edge of the pitch that are constantly changing and you're Supposed to go and play football and focus on a ball.
Speaker B:When you've got all these advertising hoardings just flipping through because they're digital hoardings and you're supposed to then be focused on your match.
Speaker B:And then because it's the biggest game of your life, you've got the coach standing on the side doing what we call PlayStation coaching, almost kind of trying to yell at what you need to do.
Speaker B:And often ADHD athletes will tell me, I need everyone just to leave me alone when I'm playing.
Speaker B:I've got all the skills, I know what I need to do.
Speaker B:I can see the patterns in my head way before anybody else can.
Speaker B:That's my power here.
Speaker B:And then I've got a coach yelling in the background.
Speaker B:That's just really confusing.
Speaker B:And the coach I interviewed in a book is a rugby coach.
Speaker B:She is amazing.
Speaker B:I almost wanted to play rugby league because I just love to go and train with Jess.
Speaker B:This coach, she was so cool and she was like, if I ever have to yell at any of my players what to do, I failed because I should have made sure on our Wednesday night session that they knew what they were doing and that they've worked it through.
Speaker B:I shouldn't be yelling at them on a Sunday.
Speaker B:That's my problem.
Speaker B:That's one of the reasons I think it's so helpful to think for coaches, what's going to get the best out of your athlete.
Speaker B:Doesn't matter what gender they are, doesn't matter kind of their age or often their sport.
Speaker B:But it's like what snipers might show up for my athlete on a really important day and how can I help minimize those?
Speaker B:And certainly, how am I not going to be the person that's irritating them?
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean, you've just painted that picture of the sensory overwhelm that like you say, it's just once you've felt something like an itchy kit or you've the flashing advert, it's really hard to then pull that out of you because with adhd we just, we just have it, it's just there and, you know, then you've got to focus, you've got to focus on doing that job and all that pressure that that's put on you to perform in that short period of time.
Speaker A:It can feel all consuming.
Speaker A:And I wondered, you help athletes off the pitch then.
Speaker A:So we know.
Speaker A:So only so much of, you know, being an athlete is being doing that performance.
Speaker A:So much of it is the nutrition, the sleep, the all the other lifestyle holistic stuff that you Know, the stretching, the meditation, the relaxation, all of that.
Speaker A:And that can be really hard, especially with our executive functioning organization.
Speaker A:How does that impact, you know, ADHD athletes when so much prep is involved?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So the book has three kind of practical chapters in it.
Speaker B:One of them is on competition strategies, but one of them is on training strategies and one of them is on wellbeing strategies.
Speaker B:Because two big areas show up a lot for me.
Speaker B:One is around sleep, and we know that sleep can be much more troublesome with adhd and so we know certain sports.
Speaker B:A lot of the athletes I've interviewed have said, yeah, we started in sports like swimming.
Speaker B:However, there's two issues with swimming if you've got adhd.
Speaker B:One is that it's really boring, like you are doing painful.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:You're doing the same thing over and over and over again to get 0.001% faster.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So a lot said they started in it and they're very good at it, but actually it was just too boring to want to do when you're doing 10 sessions a week that don't feel particularly exciting.
Speaker B:And the other element with swimming is that usually you have to be up at 5:30 and morning to get pool time, and you can't do that if you didn't get sleep till 1 o' clock in the morning, because you just end up a total zombie.
Speaker B:So sleep is a really important one, I think, for athletes with ADHD to really understand their own sleep, to understand their circadian rhythm, to have great sleep hygiene practices in place so that you can maximise the sleep that you are able to get.
Speaker B:Because in sport, we often talk about sleep being the.
Speaker B:The most important recovery tool that we have.
Speaker B:I've often chatted to coaches who are like, if there's one piece of equipment I would tell an athlete to get, it's a brilliant mattress because your sleep is so vital to your performance and your improvement.
Speaker B:And if you struggle with sleep, that makes things a lot, lot harder.
Speaker A:So can I just ask on that?
Speaker A:So then you've got the sensory side of adhd.
Speaker A:So if you are then moving to different hotels and you're traveling, I, I'm gonna.
Speaker A:I'm not an athlete, but I need my pillow and I like my specific type of mattress and smells and this.
Speaker A:And so when I travel, it is.
Speaker A:It's, for me, it's quite discombobulating.
Speaker A:Like, I, I don't love it and it takes me about four days to get into some form of, like, comfortable sleep kind of pattern.
Speaker A:If you're an athlete and you struggle with sleep anyway and then you are, you have there's that pressure that sleep is so important to your performance.
Speaker A:That must be so anxiety inducing.
Speaker B:It is.
Speaker B:And to be honest, most athletes have to share rooms.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So that's the biggest one that people get really nervous about.
Speaker B:It's like I have to go away and I have to share a room and if I can't sleep I'm worried I'll be keeping somebody else up or I'm worried some of my habits might be annoying to somebody.
Speaker B:I'm worried I'm going to be judged.
Speaker B:Whole thing is just incredibly anxiety driven.
Speaker B:So we will do a lot of workarounds building up sleep in the build up to it so that it doesn't feel so important once you're there.
Speaker B:But we'll also look at sleep hygiene strategies to really help you deal better with that.
Speaker A:I guess it's the consistency of good sleep but also knowing that if you have one bad night's sleep, it doesn't matter, it's not a big deal.
Speaker B:Yeah, no.
Speaker B:And research suggests actually that one bad night's sleep for performance doesn't make that much difference.
Speaker B:But we tend to, we'd lie there like wide awake, really panicking about it.
Speaker B:The rest in your legs is good enough, you don't need to worry about it.
Speaker B:But we have to spend a lot of time kind of really helping athletes understand that.
Speaker B:The other big well being area is nutrition.
Speaker B:So obviously if you're trying to perform at a high level, you need to make sure you are fueling the exercise you are doing effectively and fueling the recovery.
Speaker B:We know obviously in ADHD eating disorders are more common.
Speaker B:In athletes obviously eating disorders are more common and we're particularly seeing lots of eating disorders like red S which is relative energy deficiency in sport which is where you are stepping up the amount of exercise you're doing and under fueling it at the same time.
Speaker B:So for girls in particular, we see that they stop getting their periods and they're much more likely to get bone fractures, stress fractures showing up.
Speaker B:And the big issue with that is that because if they go on to ADHD meds, they're an appetite suppressant, they will then get 8 hours a day where they're not thinking about fueling.
Speaker B:And in some sports particularly I work a lot in ultra running, ultra cycling, if you're running for four or five hours and you're not fueling that, you are very, very quickly going to be getting stress fractures.
Speaker A:Well also the, the protein perspective on our brain as well, like if we're not having, like you say, if we're not eating enough protein and good fats, the impact of that on our brain health.
Speaker A:And we know that, you know, ADHD is neurobiological.
Speaker A:We need the nutrition, like, it's so important, you know, the hydration as well.
Speaker A:Yeah, so much of that.
Speaker A:Like, people underestimate the impact of, of, of this on us.
Speaker A:Like, we can buy all the organization hacks and apps and notebooks and journals, but if we aren't fueling ourselves, our brain just won't be up to scratch.
Speaker A:And we are already working.
Speaker A:And sadly, and I don't like the word deficit, but you know, our brain is different and it, and it needs to, we need more fuel and more energy to operate in this neurotypical world right now to help ourselves.
Speaker A:And it's so important that we have this awareness and I can only assume being an athlete, that pressures even more, like nutrition is so important.
Speaker A:Do you, do you find that, I guess, you know, you talked about eating disorders, but there's also the sensory perspective of food and there's certain food that people just won't touch and colors and textures.
Speaker A:How does that work for you?
Speaker B:So that can be really tricky.
Speaker B:If you are, say, a long distance runner, a lot of your fuel will be energy gels, which most of us don't particularly like, but if we can tolerate it, it's a very good way of getting carbohydrates into your body in a very easy way so that you can run further.
Speaker B:If you can't tolerate that, you've got to find some other way to fuel it.
Speaker B:And so that can be really hard.
Speaker B:And a lot of it is experimenting of like what works for me, what strategies do I have in place, how as a mum or a partner to someone with adhd, how do I put that scaffolding in place so that I am fueling them really effectively?
Speaker B:One of the things we know with your threat system and your amygdala is that when your blood sugar levels drop, you are much more likely to trigger your threat system.
Speaker B:That's when you're going to be having either an internal or an external tantrum.
Speaker B:That's when you might be dropping out of your sport or kicking off or kicking the bench or shouting at the referee.
Speaker B:So it's really, really important that we keep our brain fueled.
Speaker B:Nutritionists would say it needs to be with the right things.
Speaker B:And ideally, yes, but most importantly, it's just giving it fuel.
Speaker B:And our brains, all our brains love sugar to keep that blood Sugar level free and to.
Speaker B:One of the things I often remind athletes is your brain's about 3% of your body weight, but it takes 20% of the fuel that you put into your body.
Speaker B:So as soon as we stop fueling because we've been jumping up and down for hours and our stomach feels bad, or because we just haven't even thought about food, because we've taken our meds that day, we're not going to be fueling our brain.
Speaker B:And when our brain is unfueled, we make emotional, catastrophic black and white decisions that don't help us achieve our goals or our ambitions.
Speaker A:Yeah, especially I mean, what you said then, shouting at the ref, having a tantrum and you see this extreme reaction.
Speaker A:And there's another part which I'm wondering about is rejection sensitive dysphoria, which I can only assume must be huge.
Speaker A:Especially, you know, as you mentioned, being selected for teams, being dropped and that RSD can be so painful and pervasive.
Speaker A:Is that something that you work with as well?
Speaker B:Massively.
Speaker B:That's something that's bad enough when you've actually been rejected, but often what I will see is people putting that RSD filter on what are actually fairly neutral comments, but they might be quite not thought through comments because you're in a sporting environment and everything's happening very fast.
Speaker B:So I've had athletes, when we look back at situations where they felt very under threat, were able to logically go, oh, they might not have intended it that way at all, to the point where somebody might, a coach might say, oh, I think you played really well today.
Speaker B:Coach means that really positively the athletes translated that as you played really badly yesterday and a few days later the athlete can laugh at themselves and go, oh, yeah, that was me going a bit far.
Speaker B:But in the moment, the coach has got no idea why the athlete's upset with them.
Speaker B:Because they thought they were saying something really nice and the athlete hasn't taken the nice element of it at all.
Speaker B:They've seen it through a rejection sensitivity filter.
Speaker B:I think that's why it's so important that coaches and athletes communicate well.
Speaker B:So one of the strategies in the book is a communications passport of how you like to communicate and be communicated with.
Speaker B:Because I remember an example a while ago of a rower who.
Speaker B:Rowing tends to be Wednesday afternoons.
Speaker B:Everyone does erg tests on the indoor rower to get their times and the best times get put in the top boat for Saturday or Sunday's race.
Speaker B:So it's very hierarchical.
Speaker B:And I remember somebody who'd done A great time.
Speaker B:And they weren't put in the top boat.
Speaker B:And instantly that was, the coach hates me.
Speaker B:I don't want to be in this team anymore.
Speaker B:I don't want to row for them.
Speaker B:They hate me.
Speaker B:It's not fair, all of these thoughts.
Speaker B:And it was only when we went to the coach and said, what's going on?
Speaker B:The coach is able to say, no, the river's just really high at the moment.
Speaker B:I cannot risk putting a second boat out there unless I've got some really strong rowers in it.
Speaker B:So I'm putting you in the second boat because that means the boat's going to be safe.
Speaker B:So it was a compliment.
Speaker B:You're one of our best rowers.
Speaker B:You need to be able to keep the boat safe.
Speaker B:But they hadn't communicated that.
Speaker B:And so with the rejection sensitive filter on, it was just like, they hate me.
Speaker B:I don't want to be here anymore.
Speaker B:They don't respect me.
Speaker B:And it wasn't, it was a compliment.
Speaker B:But there was no communication to be able to say, you did so well on Wednesday, would you mind if I put you in boat too?
Speaker B:Because I need it to be safe.
Speaker A:I think that's really good for coaches to know that, because understanding rsd, I mean, it's very specific.
Speaker A:And there's not, you know, unless you really do work in the field of ADHD and really understand it or you've got it yourself, that is just not, it's not, you know, a consideration.
Speaker A:People just don't think like that.
Speaker A:And I think, you know, what you just said then is a very good example of being able to have that communication breakdown.
Speaker A:And I wanted to ask you about hypermobility.
Speaker A:Pain.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:How that works when you have someone who is so passionate about what they do and put all their effort and then unfortunately, then suffer with the effects of training and so extremely with their hypermobility.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:So I.
Speaker B:Nowhere near enough research has been done in this area yet to know.
Speaker B:I haven't been able to find the levels of those with hypermobility that also have adhd.
Speaker B:But something that really struck me when I was researching this area is something that came up with hypermobility, we can have a bigger threat system.
Speaker B:So the amygdala within our limbic region of our brain is actually bigger, so it triggers more easily.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So you are a little girl, you're hyperactive, you've probably got adhd, you get put into gymnastics, you might get put into dance, but dance is too restricting.
Speaker B:So you end up in gymnastics, you get really good at Gymnastics because it's fun and you get to do cool cartwheels and backflips and everything all of the time.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So you hyper focus on it, you get good at it.
Speaker B:If you are good on it at about six or seven, you get put in a performance squat like these girls are put in really, really young and they are expected to do.
Speaker B:I've had 10 year olds doing 20 hours of gymnastics training a week.
Speaker B:They go big on it.
Speaker B:So they are constantly training.
Speaker B:They get good very quickly, but they are more likely to get injured because they're hypermobile.
Speaker B:They're also more likely to be very good because they're hypermobile.
Speaker B:They can do the splits without thinking about it, but they are more likely to get injured and they're doing a lot of training, more than they probably should be doing for their years.
Speaker B:And then they get injured or they see someone else get injured or, or they're trying to do things backwards.
Speaker B:And backwards seems to be the biggest trigger, particularly for mental blocks.
Speaker B:And so their threat system triggers much more easily and suddenly they've got a mental block, suddenly they can't do it.
Speaker B:Everything is feeling very, very scary for them and that's a really tricky group because they're only 12 or 13 and suddenly it feels like their thing that they've always wanted to do.
Speaker B:And that's the been their thing.
Speaker B:It's been their safe place goes for them very quickly.
Speaker B:It's no longer a safe place to be.
Speaker B:So I think it's really essential that those working with gymnasts, trampolinists, really understand hypermobility and rather than just going, this is amazing, they're ultra flexible, is actually able to go, oh.
Speaker B:And this also means their threat system might trigger a lot easier.
Speaker B:I need to be very careful with the way that I coach them and the way that we probably don't push them too far and we actually hold them back from trying to overdo things because they are going to get injured very easily and very young and suddenly they're going to feel like their route and their safe place is gone.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:And an amazing person who knows so much about this is Dr.
Speaker A:Jessica Eccles.
Speaker A:I don't know if you've come across her, but she is a reader at Sussex Brighton University and she has done a lot of research on hyperlink hypermobility and chronic pain Ehlers Danlos syndrome.
Speaker A:And she definitely understands this whole.
Speaker A:What she, you know, this is, what her field is, is neurodivergence and hypermobility.
Speaker A:So I'm sure she'd Be very interested to have a conversation with you because she, she sees it all the time and there's just not enough people don't know about it.
Speaker A:And yeah, it's, it's so hard, this, this whole crossover of it.
Speaker B:And coaches love the athletes that can't be held back.
Speaker B:The ones that want to do more are always up for it.
Speaker B:But actually that's when the coaches need to be holding them back of like, particularly when they're children.
Speaker B:Of like, what is safe for your age?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:My last question is about the impact of hormones on girls.
Speaker A:And what we know now is we have harder cycles, we have more tendency for pmdd.
Speaker A:I know that you mentioned perimenopause, but I'm imagining, you know, teenagers, women in their 20s, 30s, who are still athletes, but they navigate very difficult hormonal cycles with more propensity to have, unfortunately, pmdd.
Speaker A:How do you navigate someone who is expected to be on their A game for every week, every day of their month, when as a woman with ADHD and these tricky menstrual cycles, they feel low mood, low energy, fatigue?
Speaker A:How does an athlete navigate that when every day feels different for them?
Speaker B:A lot of it is about self awareness and then self acceptance.
Speaker B:So of knowing what to look out for, of being able to almost tick off your symptoms that day and knowing what feels possible for you with those symptoms going on and ideally to be able to communicate that with their coach.
Speaker B:And there are more and more coaches now that start to get it.
Speaker B:I remember when I started working, say 12 years ago, I would ask a male coach, how do you navigate periods with your female athletes?
Speaker B:And they just look at me in utter horror of like, I am never mentioning that.
Speaker B:Don't you dare talk to me about it.
Speaker B:Whereas actually I now get male coaches coming to me going, how do you think I can best navigate this with athletes?
Speaker B:And I've even heard of some recently who refuse to let their athletes train if they've missed two periods in a row because they don't want them ever to think that on the eating disorder side, it is acceptable to let your body weight get to a place where it's unhealthy for you.
Speaker B:So it's definitely changing on that side.
Speaker B:But I think the biggest thing is for the individual athlete to know themselves and to have some self acceptance.
Speaker B:That we will have days where we will not be able to get the best out of ourselves doesn't mean your effort levels change.
Speaker B:We can always have.
Speaker B:We call it unfailable training.
Speaker B:So on those days you're not trying to run at a certain speed or you're not trying to hit a certain amount of balls into a net, but you are trying to put up whatever effort you needed to put in that day and you start to measure yourself on the metrics that you can measure and that genuinely matter to you.
Speaker B:And not just metrics that are easy to measure to the outside world, like pace or scores.
Speaker B:And I think we should all do that, to be honest.
Speaker B:The more we spend time focused on those external metrics, the more pressure and threat we tend to put ourselves under, the more we can go, how do I want to be be in my sport?
Speaker B:How do I measure how I am being in my sport?
Speaker B:How do I do the tasks that I need to do?
Speaker B:That takes away a load of the threat and it allows us to perform at the best that we can, depending on what else is going on in our lives or within our body at that moment.
Speaker A:Yeah, because we're always going to have that, aren't we?
Speaker A:We're going to have those external stresses, we're going to have stuff going on in our body.
Speaker A:And I know that, you know, professional sport, there's this expectation that we should just be consistent, but we know with adhd, not very much is consistent for us and we're navigating a lot.
Speaker A:There's a lot of emotional weight that we're navigating and I think.
Speaker A:I feel like I've probably missed loads of questions, actually.
Speaker A:My one last one is, do you notice a propensity maybe in male footballers?
Speaker A:I'm going to be quite specific with addictive tendencies in adhd.
Speaker A:Maybe when they.
Speaker A:They're bored, they're restless, they've done their training and they're waiting to play a match.
Speaker A:Is that a thing where we're noticing more addiction in male footballers?
Speaker B:I don't think I work with enough to know to be able to get that full data to say that.
Speaker B:However we know I've taught lots of courses in the past on addiction within sports, particularly exercise addiction.
Speaker B:To be honest, if we find we get a lot of dopamine through our exercise, we're going to do way, way more of it.
Speaker B:But actually, the most common addiction in athletes is gambling.
Speaker B:And a lot of the sports I work with, we don't have the money to gamble, so it's quite a safe sport to be in because they're paid so badly.
Speaker B:Football is the one sport where those at the top have enough money to gamble.
Speaker B:And I think if they're only playing once a week or maybe even once Every fortnight in actual matches, they don't have very much opportunity for getting their dopamine.
Speaker B:However, I've had athletes talk to me about kind of, we will bet on how quick the kettle will boil in the clubhouse.
Speaker B:We will bet on every golf day that we do, because that is a way of feeling like we have got some type of competition and we could win something and that's where we get our dopamine.
Speaker B:So for those athletes, it's really focused on where else can you get dopamine in a place that is safe for you and isn't going to wipe out your funds for that week because the kettle boiled too slowly?
Speaker A:Do you think that responsibility is on the club, the coaches, or should it be self responsibility and getting that help yourself?
Speaker B:Well, I think if somebody's got a diagnosis, and obviously lots of people don't want one, if somebody has recognised enough of those traits, gets a diagnosis, it is very helpful that whoever is talking to them about that can see the issues that might show up in the environment that they are in.
Speaker B:And so that's why it is very helpful to talk to someone like a sports psych who will be aware of all the different issues that can show up in each individual sporting environment.
Speaker B:Environment and going.
Speaker B:This is where you need to be really careful or even, yeah, ideally, someone within the club that knows certain coaches might push you harder to work on certain things that might not be good for you or certain other athletes are not going to be the people that are best for you to hang out with because they're going to push you in the wrong directions.
Speaker B:So you ideally want everybody in somebody's support team to understand what traits might show up within their adhd, so.
Speaker B:So that you can assess how to manage them best.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's been absolutely fascinating, but I feel like this, this is a conversation that I feel we've only just scratched the surface and I think if anyone that's listening should get the book, it's called ADHD in Sport Strategies for Success by Dr.
Speaker A:Josephine Perry.
Speaker A:I would love to see this book in schools, in grassroots, you know, clubs, but also across into professional sports, because I really believe that this knowledge is so needed and it's prob.
Speaker A:Like it should, you know, be out there, you know, decades ago.
Speaker A:So thank you for, for the work that you're doing.
Speaker A:If, if anyone's listening right now, like, and they'd like to work with you privately or do you have any courses?
Speaker A:How.
Speaker A:How else do you work?
Speaker B:So I do lots of workshops, but most of my work is one to one with athletes or their coaches and sometimes parents.
Speaker B:Actually if parents are struggling and the athlete themselves is unlikely to engage, we can teach the skills to the parents so that they can work on them with their athlete.
Speaker B:And you can find my diary and everything on my website which is performanceinmind.co.uk.
Speaker A:Amazing.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for your time today and look forward to speaking to you soon.
Speaker B:Brilliant.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker A:If today's episode episode has been helpful for you and you're looking for even further support, my brand new book, the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit is now available to order from anywhere you get your books from.
Speaker A:I really hope this book is going to be the ultimate resource for anyone who loves this podcast and wants a deeper dive into all these kinds of conversations.
Speaker A:If you head to my website adhdwomenswellbeing.co.uk you'll find all the information on the book there which is going to be out on the 2nd 17th of July.
Speaker A:Thank you so much.
