As someone who seems to be cursed to regularly get colds and throat infections, I’m curious as to whether or not continuing to lift is counterproductive. What do you guys do? Do you take a spartan approach and just get out there anyway (what I’m doing at the moment), or take the time out to recover? What level of illness does it take to keep you out of the gym? Is there any science to back up either view?
i always take time to recover before i start lifting again, i just find training when sick is just to much for the imune system to take when its trying to rid your body of the virus or infection.
My rule of thumb is if it is throat or above, then go ahead and lift. If it is down in the chest, I take the day off. I have no scientific justification for this (I am neither a MD or biologist) - I guess the most I can say is that if it is counterproductive, its less counterproductive than the psychological consequences of missing a workout (for me, at least).
Something I’ve learned: if you wake up with a sore throat, don’t train or it’ll usually blow up into something worse (because it’s the first sign that you’ve got unwelcome visitors). Whereas if you take a day or two off you’ll probably knock it on the head.
I lift when I have colds, but I don’t lift if I just had a fever or am having one.
I rest. I make sure to eat though, even if I don’t have much of an appetite. I don’t lose much and gain what I do lose back pretty quickly. I also feel it’s disrespectful to spread germs at my public gym.
I recently had a three week head and chest cold. The first week I lifted and struggled and finally decided to take a week off the get better. I did get better and before the end if that second week I tried to lift again. I did heavy chest, legs and back days in a row to catch up and on the 4th day of training the sickness came back in full force. So now I am off again until I am all the way better. In all it has been 3 weeks so far and once again I am finally feeling better. It may just be me but lifting during sickness makes my colds last longer and hit me harder.
[quote]Nevr2Big wrote:
My rule of thumb is if it is throat or above, then go ahead and lift. If it is down in the chest, I take the day off. I have no scientific justification for this (I am neither a MD or biologist) - I guess the most I can say is that if it is counterproductive, its less counterproductive than the psychological consequences of missing a workout (for me, at least).[/quote]
i would agree with this one. if your just headachy or stuffed up i would fight through it. if its more than that then your likely to get injured… and thats not gonna help in the long run.
If I can get out of bed or go to work then I train. I don’t expect as much, but I always feel better after I train than I did when I was just laying around.
I wouldn’t recommend it. Sure getting sick sucks for your training but take the time to FULLY recover. If you don’t treat your little cold it could stay with you, possibly weaken your organs and lead to ALOT worse down the road. Maybe not a cold but a pneumonia for example would definitely do this if you dont take the time to fully recover.
In the future just try not to get sick. Wash your hands frequently, get a flu shot every year, eat well, get enough sleep…
I am also not a doctor or MD but I speak from experience and am just telling you what doctors have told me.
The times I have tried to lift when feeling just a little sick left me feeling horribly sick afterwards. So now if I don’t feel goo, I aint liftin’.
Yea, But i also up food intake by 2 meals or so. It also depends how sick. If its a cold or something, I’d rather get warm and sweat it out in the squat rack than in a bed thinking about sweating it out in the squat rack.
Now if I got cancer , or a heart attack. I might just stay at home and do bodyweight stuff.
Get fully recovered before you lift again. Your immune system is weak when your sick. A few days off will not make or break your training.
^exactly. id rather miss a couple days if i have to and just be done with it than go to the gym and make things worse. plus i cant imagine how productive a workout you can have while sick.
[quote]wsk wrote:
Something I’ve learned: if you wake up with a sore throat, don’t train or it’ll usually blow up into something worse (because it’s the first sign that you’ve got unwelcome visitors). Whereas if you take a day or two off you’ll probably knock it on the head.[/quote]
Exactly my experience. Rebuilding muscles and replenishing nutrients is already a stressful thing on the body, and if it’s not on its game when something hits, the virus will have the perfect opportunity to get really strong before you can muster a defense.
Mine always with a sore throat in the morning too. If I workout that day, then the next day it goes full blown and lasts more than a week. I just came down with one a week ago and I took three days off working out. It didn’t end up hitting very hard at all and I was 100% by the end of the third day.
If you can’t miss a workout I’d say drop the volume and intensity down to 1/3 of normal until the symptoms start to lessen, then go 2/3 until they are gone. That should give you some anabolism to offset any potential loss from being sick.
I just spoke to my doctor and he told me something interesting. He said that while light exercise should be fine, anything strenuous while your blood is carrying a viral load could in rare cases cause the infection to be carried into your heart, causing something distinctly unfun to happen. I may have gotten the wording wrong but that was the gist of it.
I’d imagine that CNS intensive exercises like deadlifts and squats should be avoided while you’re in any way sick.
Eat more than maintainence calories, and stay the fuck home.
Going to the gym when you are sick doesn’t make you hardcore, it makes you an asshole.
my opinion…it’s 95% psychological. if you believe you’re gonna have a good workout even though (or because) you’re sick, you will. if you have a victim mentality, as talked about by the article above, your training will suffer. personally, i’ve never had any sickness serious enough to keep me out of the weight room.
Most of the time you should take the day off. Your body needs to recover from being sick. If you work out it then needs to recover from the workout on top of recovering from being sick.
I would do some light stretching after around 5 minutes on the bike or treadmill. Just to get some blood to the muscles.