Apr

29

Training While Sick

Filed Under Training | 

Should you weight train while you are sick? Well that depends upon how sick you are and what it is.

Generally the answer is no, you should not train while you are sick, but then I almost always train when I am sick, but then I am stubborn, though I do modify my workout.

To illustrate it is probably easiest if I use an old example rarely seen these days - Polio.

Back when Polio was a threat people had much more limited knowledge of disease and a common way to beat a cold or the Flu was to rug up and then go for a run - sweat it out was the common remedy. This worked… except for Polio as doing this left people crippled….

… you see by running they were taking extra nutrients and oxygen to the legs, the Polio virus went with the blood flow and lodged there, multiplying rapidly in the ideal conditions. In the morning when the runner woke up the Polio would have infected his legs, he would have difficulty or be unable to walk at all.

Exercise feeds the viruses and illness within your body.Therfore if you are sick and have muscle aches and generally feel bad all over I would suggest staying home and eating nutritious foods to recover - you probably need a few days off the gym anyway.

However if you are only a little sick, have a dry cough, sore throat, or diahorrea (quite common in Asia), or something similar then I personally do continue training, but I modify my workouts to be lower intensity. I will drop my poundages and do light weights with higher reps, just to get some blood in and get the endorphins to kick in, often on light training sessions because I concentrate more on the muscle and less on moving the weights I can find a new little trick for my training that day.

Better yet since I decide to train light on a day when I know I am going to be weak I do not frustrate myself by trying to push heavy weights and get disappointed with the results.

As to sweating it out, and the whole running thing, I have a friend who is a lot older and he always recommends putting on a sweat suit and a lot of blankets with the heater on and going to bed, he says that he does this everytime he gets sick and next morning he wakes up feeling better. There is also science in this as elevated temperatures do help your body combat viruses, ever noticed that you have a fever when sick?

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