Working out while being sick

When you are sick your body needs to focus all it's energy on getting healthy again. And if you decide to workout, even if it is just a simple exercise like for example walking, how efficient will that workout be for you? It's not worth it. You are exercising to become fit and healthy, and working out while being sick will lead to the exact opposite.

Just because you skip a day of exercise, or even a week or two while being sick, doesn't mean that you'll gain weight or that you have to work harder at the next gym session. It could actually be that you are over trained because you didn't let your body rest enough and this is the reason why you got sick to begin with, resting time is so important when working out.

If you do not rest properly in between workout days and make sure that you have 2 days off per week, your body will not have time to recover, putting added stress on your central nervous system and that will lower your immune system. Low immune system will make you sensitive to all sorts of illnesses. Working out while being sick will lead to your body getting sicker and for example lead to pneumonia, and in worse cases it could even lead to heart problems like heart murmurs (where a valve stops functioning properly) because of the added stress.

Even people who tend to workout while being just a little sick, will have a constant lowered immune system, making them sick more often and this will have a negative effect on their exercise results because they can never give it their all during their exercise sessions, making it almost impossible to progress and therefore they will not lose the fat weight they want or build desired muscle mass.

As long as you do not stuff your face while being sick, you will not gain fat weight or lose muscle mass. Take time off to recover when you are sick, do not exercise again until you know that you are well enough to do so. Don't risk your health.

Relative Flexibility

Relative flexibility is another word for poor/bad flexibility. It's when the body (kinetic chain) seeks the path of least resistance during an exercise due to tight muscles. Prime example of relative flexibility is seen in people who squat with their feet externally rotated. Most people today have a tightness in their calf muscles, and lack enough dorsi-flexion (lifting the foot up) at the ankle to perform a squat with proper mechanics. A common reason why women lack enough dorsi-flexion and have tight calf muscles is because they wear high heels that forces their feet to be in a constant plantar-flexion (pushing foot down).

When squatting, these people have to compensate for their tight calf muscles by widening their stance and externally rotating their feet.

Relative flexibility/ tight muscles will cause one not to be able to do exercises through a full range of motion since they automatically have to compensate, this will leave some muscles to become overactive and others underactive and because of a decrease in neural drive for muscle to muscle- muscle imbalance will occur. This will lead to injury while working out since the right muscle won’t be targeted and the goal with your exercise won’t be reached.

How to avoid:

• Always stretch your muscles after workout (static stretches)
• Do self-myofascial  release (foam roll stretches) before and after exercise
• Do warm-up stretches
• Take notice in your body and how it wants to move to see if you can have any movement compensations anywhere. This might be hard for you to see though, since you may not know the exact right way to do an exercise. But check in the mirror at all times when working out to see how your body moves, it's a great way of discovering a faulty movement pattern!