How to Handle Training When You Get Sick

If it hasn’t happened to you already, sooner or later you will get sick.  How do you best handle getting sick when you’re training?

Read the Written Version:

https://www.fullcircleendurance.com/blog/how-to-handle-training-when-you-get-sick

Ready to start training? Check out our Coaching and Training Plan options:

• Training Plans
• Customized Training Plans
• Personalized Coaching Services

Learn more about Full Circle Endurance: https://FullCircleEndurance.com/

Submit questions to be answered on the show: https://FullCircleEndurance.com/podcast/

Reach out to Coach Laura Henry: Hello@FullCircleEndurance.com

Disclaimer: The information shared in this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or health goals. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you heard on this podcast. Reliance on any information provided is solely at your own risk.

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening
• 0:16 You Are Human
• 0:43 Acknowledge & Accept That You’re Sick
• 1:38 Prioritize Healing, Not Workouts
• 3:45 What if I’m Not “That” Sick?
• 4:45 When to Seek Out Guidance from a Medical Professional
• 5:16 How Athletes Should Handle Fevers, Stomach Bugs, and Respiratory Illnesses
• 5:26 How to Handle Fevers
• 7:06 How to Handle Symptoms in Your Chest
• 7:39 How to Handle Stomach Bugs
• 8:07 The Impact of Illness on Training
• 11:55 The Impact of Illness on Race Day Performance
• 14:13 The Bottom Line
• 14:39 Closing

Transcript

(0:04 - 3:29)
Hello, and welcome to the Full Circle Podcast, your source for insights into the science and art of endurance sports training and racing. I'm your host, Coach Laura Henry. If it hasn't already, sooner or later, it will happen to you. 

You will get sick, and it will impact your training. Every human on the planet is susceptible to illness, and every human on the planet will get sick at some point in their lives. For athletes, getting sick is a frustrating experience, to say the least. 

But what exactly are the impacts of illness on training, and how should endurance athletes handle things when they do, inevitably, get sick? The most important thing that athletes need to do when they are sick is to accept that they are, in fact, sick. Yes, it is true that sometimes allergy symptoms can mimic illness. Unless you have severe allergies and it's actively a season where the things you are allergic to are active, if symptoms linger, get worse, or spread over the course of a couple of days, you probably are actually sick with an illness. 

Over the years, I have worked with so many athletes who have denied that they were sick when they were actually sick, and it cost them, both in the short and in the long term. It is really important to acknowledge and accept when you are sick. Don't be stubborn and think that you are the only human on the planet who is not susceptible to contracting a bacterial infection or a virus. 

It simply isn't true. If you aren't feeling well, you're not feeling well. If you're sick, you're sick, and this is very okay. 

Perhaps also very frustrating, but also very okay. Once you acknowledge and accept that you are, in fact, human, and that you are, in fact, not the only human in history not to be immune to all contagions, prioritize healing and getting well. Acknowledging that you are sick also means that you need to acknowledge that your body needs all available resources to fight off the illness in question. 

This means temporarily prioritizing your workouts less than you may be used to. As I have said so many times before, the body knows when it is under stress, but it is absolutely terrible at distinguishing the source of that stress. So whether stress is imposed on the body due to lack of sleep, a hard day at work, a fight with your spouse, the antics of a hormonal teenager, a workout, or illness, all the body knows is that it is under stress. 

Being sick is very stressful on the body, as being sick pulls the body out of homeostasis. Homeostasis is the state of steady internal and chemical conditions maintained by living systems. In other words, homeostasis is the state of balance among all of the body systems needed for the body to survive and function correctly. 

Illness puts the body out of balance, and it takes a lot of resources for the body to bring itself back into balance. When the body is out of homeostasis, such as when you are sick, any additional stress imposed on it will be counterproductive and will slow healing times. This means that completing workouts at the same duration, intensity, and effort levels that you are used to is counterproductive. 

Working out while sick also means that sickness is unnecessarily prolonged, as the body needs to divert the resources it would have used for healing to power the heart, the lungs, the muscles, and the other body systems to complete the workout. In most cases, working out while being sick is going to feel terrible. At the very least, it won't feel great, and most importantly, you probably will not derive any positive training benefit from it.

(3:29 - 5:32)
So when you're sick, prioritize healing by hydrating, getting extra sleep, and eating nutritious food as much as possible. Your body needs all of these things more than it needs workouts when you are sick. All of these things will help support your body and give it what it to fight off whatever illness it is that you're facing. 

But what if you're not that sick? It's true. Not all illnesses are created equal. While all illnesses do have at least some impact on the body, not all illnesses have the same amount of impact on the body. 

Some illnesses are far more impactful than others. Generally speaking, you can continue to do workouts if your symptoms are contained within your head, and I'm not just talking about in your mind. I'm talking literally in the skull, in your head. 

Think runny nose, earaches, scratchy throat, basically common cold symptoms, head cold symptoms. While you can continue to do workouts with symptoms like this, you should be modifying what you're doing. Decreasing duration, intensity, or both of these is a really good idea. 

Managing expectations is also important. Just because it's relatively safe to do workouts with symptoms like this does not mean that you'll have the same level of performance that you're used to when you're healthy. A few things that you can expect, you will be slower, your power outputs will be lower, fatigue will onset more quickly, and you will not see adaptations during this time. 

Not all illnesses require a trip to the doctor, but some do. If your symptoms continue to get worse or linger for more than a few days, it's a good idea to go to the doctor, get a diagnosis, and get some guidance on what your current illness means for your training. I've seen a lot of athletes avoid this because they don't want to hear what the doctor's going to have to say because intuitively they know the doctor's going to tell them something that they don't want to hear. 

So don't get frustrated with or ignore a medical professional if they advise that you take time off of workouts. Even if they are telling you something that you don't want to hear, they're almost certainly telling you what is in your best interests. There are certain times when ceasing workouts is truly the best course of action. 

This is true if you have a fever, your symptoms spread away from your head or in your chest, and or if you have a stomach bug or gastrointestinal illness. Fevers are one of the hallmarks of the body being out of homeostasis. And for adults, fevers are honestly pretty rare.

(5:32 - 9:06)
An adult needs to be really sick for a fever to happen. Fevers are an incredibly important part of the body's immune system. Most of the viruses and bacteria that cause infections and illnesses in humans thrive at our normal average body temperature, 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. 

In response to these bacterial or viral invaders, the body raises this temperature to make the environment inhospitable to viruses and bacteria and to kill them off. While fevers feel pretty awful, they are actually working for you, not against you. As long as you have a fever, it's very unwise to do workouts. 

For fevers of 102.0 degrees Fahrenheit or less, I advise athletes to wait until they are fever free for at least 24 to 48 hours to resume workouts. Remember, that's an at least. It could be longer. 

It might be wise for it to be longer. If athletes have a fever higher than 102.0 degrees Fahrenheit, I recommend that they wait until they've been fever free for at least five to seven days before they resume workouts. And if athletes have a fever of 104.0 degrees Fahrenheit or higher, it's a mandatory seven days minimum off of workouts, not negotiable. 

When I say fever free, I mean that athletes should be fever free without medication. Medications such as acetaminophen, commonly known as Tylenol or ibuprofen do lower fevers. But when we're considering when to return to workouts, we are seeking signs that your body is returning to homeostasis. 

The only way to truly know this is to see how your body is doing without fever reducing medications. We don't want to be masking symptoms and thinking that we're okay. We want to know how is the body actually doing. 

If your symptoms are in your chest, think a wet cough, a productive cough, compromised breathing or a tight or a sore chest, then you no longer have head cold symptoms. It's either progressed into something worse or it's always actually been something worse. At this point, the lungs are involved, which means that the lungs are not only compromised, but that the heart is going to have to work harder because the lungs aren't functionally optimally. 

As a result, the heart needs to pump more frequently to transfer oxygen around the body. Doing workouts when you have symptoms in your chest is definitely not advised due to the additional strain that workouts place on the cardiorespiratory system. If you have a stomach bug or a gastrointestinal illness, so symptoms of vomiting, diarrhea, or both would be examples or indications of this, dehydration is a very real risk since you are losing fluids faster than you are able to consume them. 

When you have symptoms such as these, workouts are not only unwise from a physiological standpoint, but they're impractical from a logistical standpoint. A workout isn't going to be able to be completed anything close to what it needs to be if you are having to throw up, make frequent trips to the restroom, and if you cannot hydrate or fuel sufficiently. If you get sick, you will likely not only have to miss some workout sessions, but you will likely also need to scale back on what you're doing when you do resume workouts. 

I've coached literally hundreds of athletes through having illnesses over my career as a coach. I have learned that it is generally best to expect it to take twice as long as you were out or sick to feel somewhat normal on your training again. Some illnesses such as influenza, COVID-19, pneumonia, bronchitis, Lyme disease, mononucleosis actually extend this timeline beyond double the length of the illness, but in my experience, recovery timelines are rarely, if ever, shorter than double the length an athlete's illness. 

So if you are sick for a week, don't get annoyed when it takes two weeks to feel more normal again. If you have symptoms or you're sick for three weeks, it will take at least six weeks for you to feel more like you're normal again. If you contract COVID-19, influenza, or pneumonia, it will likely be months, not weeks, before you feel normal in your exercise again.

(9:06 - 10:25)
Some illnesses, COVID-19 and Lyme disease are just two of them, may cause an athlete to never feel the same as they did before they got sick. They may never recover to what they were able to do before they got sick. I'm actually an example of this. 

I have long COVID and I've had it since 2021, and I am nowhere near what I did before I got COVID-19. Getting sick is a form of unplanned detraining, and depending on the illness, it can be a form of unplanned training cessation. Detraining is the partial or complete loss of training-induced adaptations in response to a lower or an insufficient training load. 

Training cessation is a complete stop of all training activities. Unplanned detraining or training cessation occurs when an athlete has something unexpected happen, such as an illness or an injury that causes them to have to take time off from training and or to reduce their training load. Conversely, planned detraining or training cessation happens when an athlete or a coach plans for a decrease in fitness or a stop in training-related activities. 

Examples include recovery weeks, weeks off, such as during vacations or maintenance phase. Unplanned detraining or training cessation means that during the time that you are sick and during the time that your body is recovering from being sick, you will not be making progress from where you were before you got sick. You will only be recovering to get to a point where you can handle training at the volume and intensity that you could before you got sick.

(10:25 - 14:38)
Your actual abilities will, not might, will diminish during this time, and you will be quote unquote behind where you were right before you got sick. This is one of the most important points to take in. A lot of athletes have the misconception that once they're better and once they're healed from being sick, that they're going to be exactly where they were before they got sick, and that's not true. 

You're going to regress behind where you were. Illness is a setback. That's the hard truth. 

No amount, no amount of positive thinking or willpower will change that. Illness is a setback. Once that double-time window has passed, you will still be regressed fitness-wise behind where you were when you got sick, but since you'll be recovered enough to handle full quote unquote training again, you can then start to make and you can expect forward progress and gains in your fitness. 

In my experience, this truth is the hardest thing for athletes to wrap their minds around and accept, that when you resume exercising, that you're going to have to work to come back to where you were before you were sick. The amount of patience that this process requires is very real. That being said, trying to rush or expedite this timeline because you don't like it, because you wish it was different, or because you think that you're the exception to all of this is not going to serve you well. 

Disregarding what it takes for the body to heal and rushing back into workouts prematurely is going to stress your body more, prolong your illness, and therefore extend your timelines even further and cost you more fitness- wise than if you managed your return to training with thoughtfulness and wisdom. If you get sick close to your A-goal race, or really any race, you will likely need to adjust your expectations of the day, especially if you have a performance-based, a time-based goal. Setbacks in training that occur within the final 8 to 12 weeks before race day will, not might, have an impact on how you perform on race day compared with how you would have performed if you didn't get sick and if you didn't have a disruption to your training. 

This is because you don't have the luxury of enough time to be sick, to recover from being sick, and then to make enough gains in your fitness to have the same level of performance that you would have been able to if you had been healthy during the entirety of your training cycle. This is frustrating, and it's also true. Many of the athletes I've coached over the years have gone to the doctor when they've been sick and they've asked about whether or not they'll be okay to do the race they're training for. 

It's not uncommon for a doctor or any medical provider to say, you'll be okay to race, or you'll be good to go for your race. There is something really important that athletes should keep in mind about this. First and foremost, if you are an endurance athlete, you are very different than the general population because you are doing something, training for endurance events, that is literally extraordinary. 

A lot of people exercise, very few people train. So, honestly, it's not uncommon for medical providers to misunderstand what you actually mean when you say you're training for a race. They think you're an exerciser. 

They don't understand what this means to you. So, when they tell you that you'll be okay to race, what they think of as a race and what you think of as a race are probably two very different things. Secondly, if a medical provider tells you that you'll be okay to race or you'll be good to go for your race, they almost always mean this, you will be okay to do the race. 

The statement you'll be okay to race or you'll be good to go for your race does not mean that you can or that you should expect the same performance that you would have had if you didn't get sick and if you didn't have this interruption and setback in your training. In other words, while you may be okay to do the race, as in complete the race, you may or may not be actually recovered or fit enough to actually race the race. All of this means that it's really important to reframe and reset your expectations when it comes to race day after you've been sick during your training. 

If you do not do this, you will end up disappointed and frustrated when race day comes and your race performance isn't what you wanted or what you expected. Since getting sick is an inevitable happening for all humans, it's something that all athletes will face at least once, probably more than that though, during their training for their goals. When the day comes that you are actually sick, it is important to accept it, to recognize what it actually means for your training, to modify things appropriately, and to manage your expectations in terms of both timelines and performance so that you can recover and come out on the other side ready to resume training and to pursue those all-important goals.

(14:41 - 15:25)
That was another episode of the Full Circle Podcast. Subscribe to the Full Circle Podcast wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. If you like what you listen to, please be sure to leave us a rating and review as this goes a long way in helping us reach others. 

The thoughts and opinions expressed on the Full Circle Podcast are those of the individual. As always, we'd love to hear from you and we value your feedback. Please send us an email at podcast at fullcircleendurance.com or visit us at fullcircleendurance.com backslash podcast. 

To find training plans, see what other coaching services we offer, or to join our community, please visit fullcircleendurance.com. I'm Coach Laura Henry. Thanks for listening.