Training when ill
Summary:
Our general rule-of-thumb is that if it’s an illness from the neck-down – don’t train until you’re feeling recovered.
If you feel completely run down then your intuition should be telling you anyway that you need to skip the gym or any sort of training in favour of rest. Your body will be using all of its resources to fight the virus / illness so you don’t want to do anything to disrupt that. If you try to push through, more often than not you hamper recovery and end up being unwell for longer – which results in longer spent not training effectively, if at all.
‘How do you know when you’re well enough to train again?’
If you’re unsure whether you’re ready to train again post-illness the best thing to do is go into the gym, warm up and do your first working set. If it feels okay then carry on. If it feels unusually difficult then call it a day and perhaps utilise that time to do some stretching or foam rolling, knowing that you’re not quite ready yet to get back to training. Give it another day or so and try again.
