I’ll have a supertotal neet tomorrow (WL + PL). Aaand I ended up in a classic situation. When I started my taper, and the stress came down, I got sick. Not super sick, I don’t have fever or anything, but I’m really tired and I’m coughing my lungs out. It hurts to be out of breath.
It’s not a high stakes meet, just a local competition. But of course I’m pissed, training went well and I was expecting to hit several PRs in the meet. Now I’m not sure if it’s worth the risk.
I’m actually asking for support. I’m balling between canceling the meet, or sucking it up.
I’m pretty aware of ups and downs for both decisions. I will made up my mind tomorrow morning, depending how I feel. Maybe I just going to do the WL part, since I’m novice with O-lifts and it’s very light for me. Doing heavy ass squats and deads might be out of the question.
But I’m interested about your experiences: have you competed while sick/ill? How did it go?
I competed in strongman with what turned out to be covid and it went fine. Good hydration and a lot of caffeine (I even had to water cut for the comp). Adrenaline made me not notice much in each event and to be honest, I don’t think it hurt my performance that much.
I never got sick just before a competition, though most of my competitions were bodybuilding contests. I did about 8 or 9 powerlifting meets.
But I had gotten sick one or two times per year, just about every year, usually while training for a contest.
If I felt a illness coming on, if it was a gym day, I would go to the gym. What I found was that if I had a fever, I was much weaker and usually meant that I had the flu. I just focused on getting well and stayed home in bed. If I didn’t have a fever, which was most of those illness times, I felt no loss of strength. Plus, I had many head colds and a lot of mucus to deal with. Exercise seemed a strong antihistaminic agent and was a welcome temporary relief from my runny nose.
Sometimes you’re just a victim of bad timing, and you get sick for real before a competition.
Sometimes you don’t plan training correctly and you peak too soon, and you’re strong and powerful 10 days before the competition. But then you fall apart and get run and down and sick.
Other times, you get the peak Perfect. The last week of training is all you can handle and your body super compensates by pumping out all kinds of awesome hormones and chemicals. As a result you feel “upper respiratory symptoms” like sore throat and coughing. But underneath that your brain is thinking fast, and you’re constantly on the edge of an adrenaline rush. If that’s the case, you can just rest for a day or 2 then have a kick-ass meet.
I’ve been overdosing myself with all the supplements I have (mainly fish oil, zinc, vitamin D, magnesium). I’ve also drank a lot electrolyte drinks.
I doubt this was ”normal” supercompensation effect, since I had a massive migraine for one day and got sick after that.
I feel better now, not 100%, but better. I’ve been reading stuff where people have fared alright in the meets despite being slightly ill. I’ll put my trust on that.
Luckily the (light) WL is first, so I can observe how I perform and do a call how I’ll approach the heavier weights.
Other good thing is that I’m only doing singles. I basically don’t have the ability to speak normally now, so getting out of breath in some strongman event would be completely out of the map for me.
