ADHD · fitness · walking

Christine’s Experiment – reframed

Christine Hennebury

I was going to start this post by saying that I picked a poor week for an experiment but I don’t think that’s entirely true.

I think I got ahead of myself with my experiment and started at the wrong question. And my hectic week made that very obvious, very quickly.

A photo of two people’s hands holding lab glassware with green liquid in it.
My experiment had nothing to do with test tubes and beakers (flasks?) of green liquid but this image just struck me funny. Image description: a photo of two people’s hands holding lab glassware that has green liquid in it. They are both wearing white tyvec suits. One person’s hand is holding a beaker (flask?) aloft and they are gesturing to it with their other hand as if to say ‘See what I mean?’ And the other person’s hand is holding a test tube with the same liquid in it near the base of the beaker.

To recap, last week I planned to do a 5 minute warm-up before I took the dog for a walk, just to see if getting my heart rate up before I left would help me work a bit harder on my walk.

I thought it was a good-sized experiment, reasonable and not overly ambitious, so I thought it would be easy.

Then last week looked at my plans and laughed.

My days got incredibly jumbled making it both hard to remember that I was going to warm up first AND making it hard to find the extra five minutes before our walk. (Usually on hectic days I take a walk on the spur of the moment but the warmup plan complicated that.)

Khalee somehow immediately connected my warmup with our walk and either tightly circled around me or jumped on me for the whole time I tried to get moving.

A photo of a dog sitting on a bed
Khalee doesn’t get why I’m making a big deal of all of this. Can’t I just amble along sniffing the ground like a normal person? (Evidence suggests that Khalee thinks she’s people, so she would obviously consider herself a normal person.) image description: a slightly, side-on view of Khalee stretched out on my bed with her head raised (sort of a Sphinx kind of pose) She is looking over to the right rather than directly into the camera.

I was sick for three days and while I could manage a walk on two of those three days, I just couldn’t make myself do a warmup too.

So, yeah, it wasn’t a great week and I didn’t get the information I needed.

Except, I kind of did.

For starters, an experiment that fails is still useful because I know what doesn’t work.

But, also, it showed me that my initial question was wrong – I had started in the wrong spot.

Before I can test if a warmup helps me increase my heart rate during a walk, I need to ask myself “How can I make it easy to do a 5 minute warmup before walking Khalee?”

So, that’s the question I’m testing this week and I think the first thing I’ll try is to pick a specific walk time each day and include a 5 minute window for a warmup.

Tune in next week for another exciting update in the ongoing saga of ‘Christine and the 5 minute warmup.’

*****

By the way, while I tend to default to reframing anyway, this particular reframing was inspired in part by this great post on Instagram from Divergent Coach Kelly who was reminding those of us with ADHD that aiming for consistency might be a source of frustration so we can pick other things to aim for – like getting really good at starting over.

Published by Christine Hennebury

I'm a writer/storyteller/director/creativity & lifestory coach with a black belt in ITF Taekwon-do. I read voraciously and I write like my fingers are on fire. I'm the founder and Chair of the Association for the Arts in Mount Pearl and I'm a former president of the St. John's Storytelling Festival. I bake a mean chocolate chip cookie.

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