Exercise While Sick

If you haven’t seen him before Pukie the clown is sort of CrossFit’s mascot. (If you don’t count the Glassman’s dog Athena). Anyway, he’s an example of exercise induced puking. We’re going to talk about another thing that induces that wonderful experience we’d all like to avoid forever… Illness.

Just like with injuries, being sick sucks. It slows us down, prevents us from accomplish our normal daily tasks, runs the risk of infecting others, and just makes you feel miserable. This year in particular we’ve had a lot of CFM members out due to illness so I’ve had a lot of folks ask me how to train while sick.

First off, if you have something contagious, please don’t come in and share with others in the gym. We’re all about sharing and mutual experiences, but with illness we want you to keep that to yourself. At the gym your hands, sweat, whatever will be all over equipment that other folks are touching. It’s next to impossible not to spread illness in this environment if you’re contagious.

Ok, so back to how to train while sick. If the illness is severe, just take some time off and get better. Putting in training time will expend energy your body needs to fight the illness, and the illness will last longer, resulting in more lost training time. If it’s a light cold, or you are on the tail end you can train through the illness. What I am going to discuss comes from empirical evidence of myself, others I have trained with or coached. I do not have any studies to back this up. When you are sick you want to avoid training at the normal intensity we expect with CrossFit workouts. Dial it back. In particular highly metabolic workouts can extend illness, or make the illness worse. Use sick days to focus on dialing in technique. Really drill your movements. Keep the workout reasonably light. Some strength work can be done without prolonging your illness, so lift reasonably heavy, and keep the rep count low. Allow plenty of rest so you’re not getting taxed metabolically.

Above all, nutrition and sleep are even more critical when trying to get over an illness. Keep your diet clean and get a lot of sleep. This way you can get back to training and life full bore sooner.

Are there any particular illnesses you have questions about? Post them here.