My Body Double Teenage Weightlifters Make It All Possible

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The teens at the gym have no idea what they are to me, and that’s just fine. I don’t need them to know. I just need them to show up at the dungeon-esque Rec Center weight room and do their thing.

I use them for body doubling, a nifty resource to boost motivation, persist toward my goal, and frankly, to keep me company. Body doubling is when you do your thing next to someone who’s doing theirs. They are a bit of a mirror, reflecting what you want to be doing. They are also friendly energy and subliminal teammates.

I used to love to run, so exercising wasn’t difficult for me. Running has many wonderful qualities. It’s outdoors, and depending on where you do it, can be on trails that wind their way through beautiful places. There’s no rigmarole — just open your front door and your workout has started. It can be quite social, mood-enhancing, heart-friendly, and relatively cheap. In a nutshell, it’s happy and easy.

I retired from running due to an accident, and now sometimes exercise isn’t an automatic assumption. Sometimes it takes extra nudging. I understand the common struggle. As Joni Mitchell sang long ago, I see it from both sides now.

Chemical magic

I recently went through a short, intense period of anxiety and depression that hit me from out of nowhere, although the symptoms had been building. I hadn’t been exercising much or at all due to two bouts with common illness, so I didn’t have that good brain chemistry magic flowing upstairs. I felt it in the rest of the house.

I told my husband what the diagnostician told me when she diagnosed me with ADHD recently. She explained that ADHD kids who’d done sports all through high school were likely alleviating some of their ADHD symptoms due to the neurochemical effects of exercise.

It’s common knowledge that exercise makes you feel good. The more interesting thing in what she was saying was this might be a contributing factor to the post-high school period often being more difficult for kids with ADHD. There’s a reduction in external structure, yes, but also in helpful brain chemistry. Many won’t bring that consistent exercise into their college or job life.

As I stood there relaying this to my husband, in the throes of my mental wonkiness, it dawned on me how dire it is for me to exercise.

How to get from A to B

I have plenty of knowledge on what to do once I get to the gym. I have more gear than you can imagine. I know how easy it is to exercise when you love what you’re doing — like I did with running. I also now know how difficult it is to exercise when you aren’t so terribly keen on the activity. That is the rub.

Enter body doubling.

Body doubling is often utilized by the ADHD community to help with focus and motivation. You might know the term from acting, but in this context, it’s an external support structure. ADHD doesn’t own the market on this. People utilize it in many ways, even without realizing they do.

At the rec center, I either swim or trudge up the Stairmaster machine. Swimming laps is mostly fun for me because it’s linked to a sport in my mind. Think goals, competition, and personal victories. When I swim laps, I’m preparing for open water swims, which are fun goals.

Trudging up the Stairmaster machine has no sport on the other side of it, even though there is a race up the Empire State building stairwell. How do I get myself on that godforsaken thing and stay on it long enough?

My unsuspecting team

The lone Stairmaster at my rec center is in the weight room on the bottom floor. It faces a bank of windows that looks onto a small lobby area. Unless the little ones are twirling randomly on their way to the locker room, there’s nothing to watch except for walls. This is where my teenage weightlifters come in.

They’re spread out behind me, but I can see their faint reflection in the glass in front of me. I have wispy evidence they are there, moving, pumping iron, and sticking with their task of exercise. This is all I need.

I’m sure even though they can see my 58-year-old body stepping away on the moving stairs, they aren’t paying one spec of attention. I’m the old lady who comes in, sets up her notepad and pen for capturing thoughts, straps on a music player, and spends 45 minutes ever-so-slightly dancing to Gwen Stefani and Imagine Dragons while ascending in place.

Maybe I’m a momentary curiosity to them or a random distraction. More likely I’m just a part of the room. They do their thing. I do mine.

I like that we co-exist on the same interchangeable team of wanting to tend to the body. They might be supplementing a sport or beefing up. I’m supporting the aging process and beefing up my mood and cognition. They have a special place in my heart because they’re teen boys, much like my kids were not too long ago.

It’s possible they don’t realize we’re on a team, but I know for a fact we are. Or maybe they do realize, and my old-lady Stairmaster stints help them to keep up the good work, too.

Either way, go team!

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/five_surprising_ways_exercise_changes_your_brain