TPP 221: The Relationship Between Exercise and Mental Health for Kids with ADHD, Autism, and More
episode
Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
39 min
2 speakers
3 chapters
transcribed 12 hours ago
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the overall mission of the podcast and who is the guest?
I will know that my mission is complete if your child goes off to college and they say, Here's my syllabus, okay, when am I gonna work out? Because they just know that that's what they need to be successful and to be focused, uh and they need to take their medicine.
Welcome to Tilt Parenting, a podcast featuring interviews and conversations aimed at inspiring, informing, and supporting parents raising differently wired kids. I'm Debbie Rieber, and this week I'm talking with coach, counselor, and author Gabriel Villarreal about the intersection of mental health and exercise for differently wired kids. Gabriel is not just a licensed counselor specializing in ADHD and the owner of Lost Boys Strength and Conditioning Gym. He also has ADHD himself and has experienced the convergence of these three topics in a profoundly personal way. Gabrielle is the creator of the ADHD Answers book series, including the books on strength and positioning, don't just survive with ADHD, unlock your superpowers and thrive, on the benefits of music therapy, understanding the benefits of music for the ADHD brain, and his most recent edition on exercise as medicine.
In our conversation, we talk about the concept of exercise as medicine, the differences and considerations of exercise benefits for ADHD and autism spectrum disorder, and Gabriel's advice for parents and coaches who want to help their differently wired kids and athletes thrive mentally and physically. I found this conversation fascinating. I hope you do too. And now here is my conversation with Gabriel. Hello, Gabriel, welcome to the podcast.
Hi Debbie, thanks for having me.
This is a really exciting conversation. Uh you know, with a lot of my guests, I have a personal stake and what you have to say. So that's this one is no different. But before we get into the kind of core theme of our talk today, could you take a few minutes and just tell us a little bit more about yourself? I've read your formal bio, but tell us a little bit about who you are in the world and what you do.
Sure. So I do a little bit of everything. I am a licensed professional counselor in the state of Virginia. I'm also a strength conditioning coach and I own my own gym here in Roanoke, Virginia. And um I do, yeah, a little bit of everything. Um most recently I have been combining the two fields uh in in various ways, I'm sure we'll talk about. But um I think most recently within the last like couple of weeks, I've been trying to educate a lot of other coaches on everything that we're gonna talk about today.
Yeah, so this is something that I think is just so appropriate too for these times that we're in. We're recording this in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic
and
people are home with their kids and you know, they're not getting the same kind of exercise or opportunities that they would typically have. And we're gonna be talking about specifically kids with ADHD, but I know you work with kids with all different types of narrow differences around the area of exercise. So Maybe just tell us even how you got into this. How did you find yourself working and in this intersection between uh exercise and mental health?
Yeah, sure. So I was in um graduate school in two thousand and ten and um the story goes, uh graduate school's kinda hard. And um throughout graduate school, I probably saw most of my cohort um just have like an emotional breakdown um at some point that first year. And uh for whatever reason, um I just was not feeling the stress. Um and in in reflecting on that first semester, you know, after that semester was over. Uh the really the only different thing that I was doing is I was training for a half marathon. Um, and so I had a pretty strict training regime. I was running two or three times a week. And uh combine that with eating okay. Um, but also, you know, in graduate school, every conversation that you have with a professor is like a mini counseling session.
And so uh my thesis essentially was, you know, if I had this pillar of nutrition, exercise, and mental health.
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Chapters
3 chaptersSpeakers
2 identifiedMore from Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
TPP 266a: A Conversation with Poet and Advocate LeDerick Horne
TPP 522: A Whole Child Approach to ADHD with Phil Boucher, M.D.
TPP 091a: A Conversation With Steve Silberman About His Book “Neurotribes”
TPP 521: A Conversation with Dr. Peter Gray About Restoring Childhood
TPP 253a: Advocate and Author Jonathan Mooney on Why Normal Sucks
TPP 520: Dr. Özgür Bolat on Why Rewards Backfire and the Real Science of Motivating Kids