Coaching & ADHD in CrossFit: Why Curiosity Beats Certainty
You know that moment in class: an athlete seems distracted, struggles with a movement you’ve already explained, or loses steam halfway through the WOD. You try a few coaching strategies, offer encouragement, even scale the movement. But something still doesn’t click.
What if the issue isn’t physical, but neurological - about different wiring?
We talk a lot about scaling for physical capacity. But what if we also learned to scale for how people think, learn, and regulate emotion?
ADHD is one of the most common, and often under-recognised, neurodevelopmental conditions, likely affecting 6–10% of adults (Song et al., 2021). Many individuals may be navigating ADHD unknowingly, interpreting their challenges as laziness, inconsistency, or low motivation.
This article is not about diagnosing your athletes or putting them into boxes. It’s about noticing patterns, understanding challenges, and coaching with more flexibility, clarity, and curiosity.
I’ve seen too many well-meaning coaches fail to help athletes, not because they lacked knowledge or tools, but because they didn’t take time to understand what the real problem was.
You see someone frozen at the edge of a box. You assume it’s fear of falling or shin-splitting. But when you take the time to dig deeper, you might uncover something else entirely: lingering instability from an old knee injury, uncertainty about body positioning during takeoff, or a flood of competing internal cues that overload the system. The fix wasn’t lowering the height of the box. It was understanding the individual’s needs and changing the approach altogether.
When it comes to neurodiversity this is especially true - and the real coaching superpower here isn’t certainty. It’s curiosity.
ADHD in Training: What Coaches Need to Know
ADHD isn’t just about attention. It’s a complex condition that affects how the brain processes focus, movement, emotion, and feedback. It can impact everything from learning new lifts to tolerating noise in a busy class.
Let’s break down what this looks like in a CrossFit context.
1. Executive Function: The Brain’s “Coach” Struggles
Think of executive functions as the internal coaching system of the brain, responsible for planning, sequencing, task switching, and working memory (Barkley, 2012).
People with ADHD may struggle to:
Follow multi-step instructions
Remember cues while moving
Transition quickly between exercises
This isn’t defiance. It’s overload.
🧠 Coach’s Move: Give one cue at a time. Write steps on the whiteboard. Use short words or hand signals. Support working memory, don’t swamp it.
2. Motor Coordination: More Reps, Slower Pace
Many people with ADHD have subtle delays in motor coordination or sensorimotor integration (Kaiser et al., 2015). They may feel awkward with unfamiliar patterns, struggle with timing, or need more reps to make a movement “stick.”
This doesn’t mean they’re unathletic. Often, it just means they need:
Slower progressions
Consistent coaching language across sessions and coaches
More feedback loops to build mind-body connection
👣 Coach’s Move: Use identical breakdowns each time you teach a movement. Build safety through repetition. Give specific cues like “heels down,” “drive back,” or “eyes forward.”
3. Emotional and Sensory Regulation: When Chaos Feels Like Threat
The ADHD brain typically has lower baseline dopamine, the neurotransmitter linked to focus, reward, and motivation (Volkow et al., 2009). This impacts emotional regulation and sensory processing, especially under pressure.
Your athlete might:
Get overstimulated in a loud, fast-paced class
Shut down if a movement feels confusing
Swing from high motivation to burnout in the same week
📣 Coach’s Move: Create micro-moments to reset. A quick self check-in pause, walking outside between EMOM blocks, or offering quiet zones can radically improve regulation and performance.
4. Medication Effects: A Double-Edged Sword
If your athlete is taking stimulant medication (like Ritalin or Adderall), know that it can sharpen focus—but also:
Suppress hunger and thirst
Mask fatigue, pain, or overtraining
Occasionally impair fine motor control or reaction time
💊 Coach’s Move: Don’t assume they “feel fine” just because they’re focused. Check in before and after class. Encourage hydration, pacing, and gentle movement on low-energy days.
5. Reward and Motivation: Brains That Need Novelty
The ADHD brain isn’t lazy, it’s wired for novelty, urgency, and stimulation (Dodson, 2020). Long, repetitive workouts can feel punishing. But when the structure is fast, fun, and varied? That’s where flow happens.
🚀 Coach’s Move: Use formats like EMOMs, short AMRAPs, or gamified drills. Let athletes choose between two options to boost autonomy. Give fast, tangible feedback (“That hinge looked smoother than last round”).
Real Coaching Is Adaptive Coaching
You don’t need to be an expert in ADHD to coach neurodivergent athletes well. But you do need to pay attention to patterns, stay curious, and be open to changing how you coach.
Here are 8 evidence-informed, field-tested strategies to support ADHD athletes:
Keep structure predictable. Outline the session format at the start and write it clearly on the board. Anxiety drops when the brain knows what’s coming.
Give one cue at a time. Avoid multi-step instructions. Layer feedback slowly. Use consistent cues across coaches to build familiarity.
Use short, focused intervals. ADHD brains thrive on time-based efforts (like EMOMs) rather than long-duration tasks with unclear endpoints.
Anchor attention externally. Use visual cues, timers, music beats, or even pair athletes non-competitively to reduce internal distractions.
Offer choices. “Would you rather row 15 cals or ski 12?” Options increase autonomy and engagement.
Include mind-body reset moments. A brief check-in before and after class helps athletes reflect and regulate, especially if they’re on meds.
Track small wins. Progress journaling, whiteboard notes, or quick verbal praise builds self-awareness and confidence.
Normalise, don’t pathologise. ADHD isn’t a flaw, it’s a different operating system. Respect it.
Final Thought: Curiosity Over Certainty
At the heart of coaching is relationship. And relationships thrive on communication, not assumption.
If something is not working, pause. Ask questions. Be curious. Maybe your athlete isn’t lazy, distracted, or stubborn. Maybe they’re doing the best they can with a brain that works differently.
High-level coaching isn’t about having immediately the perfect fix. It’s about noticing deeply, listening well, and keep learning what your athlete really needs.
Remember: the strategies in this article are not a checklist or a rigid formula, they’re starting points. Every athlete brings their own nervous system, history, personality, and learning style. No two brains are the same, and no two solutions should be either.
So ask. Adapt. Build the answer with them, not for them.
That’s what real coaching looks like.
References
Barkley, R. A. (2012). Executive functions: What they are, how they work, and why they evolved. Guilford Press.
Dodson, W. (2020). Motivation and ADHD: Understanding interest-based nervous systems. ADDitude Magazine. https://www.additudemag.com/motivation-adhd-interest-based-nervous-system/
Kaiser, M. L., Schoemaker, M. M., Albaret, J. M., & Geuze, R. H. (2015). Motor-based interventions for developmental coordination disorder. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 57(2), 143–148.
Song, P., Zha, M., Yang, Q., Zhang, Y., Li, X., Rudan, I., & Theodoratou, E. (2021). The prevalence of adult attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: A global systematic review and meta-analysis. Translational Psychiatry, 11(1), 408.
Volkow, N. D., Wang, G. J., Kollins, S. H., Wigal, T. L., Newcorn, J. H., Telang, F., ... & Swanson, J. M. (2009). Evaluating dopamine reward pathway in ADHD: Clinical implications. JAMA, 302(10), 1084–1091.
Young, S., Adamo, N., Ásgeirsdóttir, B. B., Branney, P., Beckett, M., Colley, W., & Gudjonsson, G. H. (2020). Females with ADHD: An expert consensus statement taking a lifespan approach providing guidance for the identification and treatment of ADHD in girls and women. BMC Psychiatry, 20(1), 404.