Light Exercise After Sickness

A cold or flu or a simple virus can throw away the exercise routine to the winds. The exhaustion and the pain from the sickness can limit your workout. At such times you have to be very careful on how to get back to exercising to get that good sweat which you have been craving for. But how do you assess the setback and get back to exercising. It is said, that if you have been out of the exercising circuit for about a week with lying flat on your back, then as an estimate you might have lost 30 % of your fitness. And a 2 – 3 weeks of training, which is rightly planned can help your physical fitness bounce back.

Before you get back at the weight trainer, it is important to ensure that you have been fever free for a minimum of 48 hours and ensure that there is no body ache or joint pain by taking optimum bed rest.

It is recommended that an exerciser should refrain from exercising, in case he/she is running fever so that the body is able to retain the energy needed by the immune system to fight the bacterial infections. Comprising with health at this point can be bad, as it means that the symptoms are lingering on and lead to intense health issues. Once you are sure that you are out of the disease then only it is advisable to slowly ease back to the regular exercise routine. It has to be slow as a sudden heavy workout will only worsen the already overwhelmed body.

You can start with light cardio rather than resistance training. The important thing to ensure is that the body’s oxygen delivery system is intact. Thus, the body shall have easy access to oxygen, especially muscles when you do resistance training. The case may be different foe people who do yoga. Yogis can instantly get back to the yoga as it is done in medium pace and does not impact the body with sudden heavy moves.

The final word is that it would be naïve to think that one can get back to 100 percent exercising immediately after a sickness. You can start with 70 percent of the original workout. The trick is to reduce 30 percent of weights and cardio for upto 2 weeks and then build slowly from thereon.