Sunday, February 3, 2013

How To Train From Illnesses

By Tyron Thompson


The flu can keep you away from your exercise program for weeks. You are likely eager to get back into it, but there are some good reasons why you shouldn't jump into your routine full-force as fast as you are feeling better. While exercising is typically good for the immune mechanism, intense work-outs really suppress it. Your post-sickness body is fighting to regain strength and immunological regularity , pushing yourself hard right away can essentially lengthen your recovery.

It is sensible to attend 3 or 4 days after you are feeling better to start to work out again , anything beyond a walk might be too much to handle during this time. Waiting 1 or 2 days will give your immunological system time to rest and recover.

Now you're feeling better and a few buffer days have gone by. Whether you are returning to the gym or resuming a home fitness regimen, weight lifting or cardiovascular coaching, it's important not to forget that you have been out of the game for a while. Even a week off from exercising may cause muscle loss and aerobic fitness decline. A paper entitled "The Management of Low Back Pain : A Thorough Rehabilitation Program," by Joel Press, MD, and Susan and Brad Sorosky, MDs, reports that muscle strength decreases by 1-3% each day of bed rest and that aerobic fitness level declines by 25% over a 3-week period of bed rest. This paper can be found in PDF format on the internet.

Your zeal to get back to where you were pre-sickness should be tempered by the awareness that this goal will take longer to achieve if you push yourself too hard at first. You risk injury or dreadful delayed onset muscle tenderness if you overtax your weakened muscles the 1st day back, each of which would put you off your routine for days or possibly, in the event of injury, weeks to come. Pushing to hard could also weaken your freshly-reconstituted immunological response and increase the probability of becoming sick again ( remember, there are countless hundreds of different viruses that cause colds and flues ).

How much is too much? A good rule is to split your normal routine in each way for the first week or two. Exercise half as often, half as intensely and half as long as common. You're reintroducing your body to the difficulties of exercise, and this is best done slowly. Increase the length, frequency and intensity of exercise programs continuously. Take the following scenario as an example. Your usual routine involves 4 to five days a week of half-hour sessions.

You normally do 15 minutes of moderate- to high-intensity cardio ( such as running or jogging ) and fifteen minutes of strength building ( weight reps, core exercises for example. ). After being sick, try 2 15-minute sessions the first week back, doing 7.5 minutes of low- to moderate-intensity cardio ( like brisk walking ) and 7.5 minutes of strength drilling with half your usual number of reps per exercise. If at any point you feel very exhausted, short of wind or dizzy, stop and rest one or two more days.

You will get back to where you were before getting sick if you approach your return to exercise cautiously. Give your body the rest it needs before exerting yourself after having the flu and reintroduce your body to exercise slowly.




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