Should You Exercise When Sick?

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At this most recent Thanksgiving get together, one of my cousins was sick with a real bad cold.  I didn't worry about catching what he had as I hadn't been sick in years and didn't plan on getting sick anytime soon. But a few days later I felt minor pain and itchiness in my throat. I thought it was just from the night before where I had to scream so I could be heard over the loud music at the club :)


Unfortunately, my symptoms started getting worse throughout the day and I knew I had caught my cousin's cold...Damn! So the question was should I exercise when sick?


This is a question that I would have answered "Hell yeah!" to in the past. However, my experiences  with this have taught me that lifting weights when you're sick can actually do more harm than good. 


I've noticed in the past that it would actually take me LONGER to get over the sickness so I would miss even more gym days if I went to workout while sick. Plus the days that I did force myself to go, did not provide very productive workouts. I would feel very weak and also have a harder time breathing so I was resting longer in between sets. These forced workouts just did not feel good at all when I was done.

How the weights feel when you're sick

My symptoms had started this past Sunday so I did not go workout that day. The symptoms got even worse the next two days so I knew there was definitely no working out for me for a couple of days. Today is Wednesday and I feel better but not yet fully recovered. 


I feel like I could go workout but I still have some symptoms affecting my breathing. I am not 100% percent yet and I don't want to do anything that would slow my body's ability to recover from this cold so I decided against going to the gym....almost a whole week off from the gym! :(


Now don't get me wrong and think that I like the use of being sick as an excuse to not go to the gym. I actually hate that I can't go pump some iron, but at the same time I know I need to let my body get better.

Let these guys do their job!

Exercise has been shown to boost the immune system but too much exercise or too intense exercise has been shown to actually decrease immunity. This is what occurs when you workout while sick. A regular weight lifting session when healthy would be good for the immune system, however the same workout while sick would be an added stressor to the body possibly making symptoms last longer and become more severe.


I've experienced this myself in the past. Before when I got sick, I continued to force myself to go to the gym while sick and I just wouldn't get better. It felt like my cold was lasting forever. I think it wasn't until I came down with a flu that I stopped working out and just let my body rest. This forced rest finally allowed my body to recover and overcome the cold!


These days when I get sick, I tell myself to just relax and get as much as I can. The more rest I get, the quicker my body can recover and the quicker I can back in the gym! I also take some extra vitamin C, vitamin D, and plenty of fluids to hopefully speed recovery :)


How is everyone else's experience with workout out when sick?

What inspired me to start working out

What inspired me to start working out


I remember when I was a chubby 5th grader, my older sister would tell me that I should exercise.


When I asked her why, she would respond with "so you don't look fat". Me being in 5th grade at the time, I didn't care about looking fat. I knew she didn't want to look fat but at that time I care how I looked.


I wasn't at the age where I was interested in girls yet so I wasn't trying to impress anybody and I wasn't so fat that I was being made fun of at school.


What I was interested in however were how comic book heroes looked with their big, defined muscles. I didn't know at the time, that they also had very little fat...I just thought they had huge muscles!


Had she shown me that I could have built a muscular, athletic body like the comic book superheroes instead of saying "so I don't look fat", I believe I would have been very interested and started working out like she had suggested.


What inspired me
What actually did get to start working out though, is an infomercial...a Tony Little infomercial to be exact.

This guy actually inspired me to start working out!

I don't remember the exact product he was selling at the time, but I'm sure it was a series of videos showing people how they can workout at home and lose weight.

The thing I remember most about those infomercials was the story about how he got into an accident, then felt sorry for himself and couldn't work out so he gained a lot of weight. They showed a picture of him looking bloated and out of shape.

Tony Little after his first accident

Seeing these before pictures and then seeing Tony as he was on the infomercial, in the great shape that he was, had a huge effect on me as I'm sure it did on many others. 

Seeing what he looked like in his before and after made me think that it was possible for me to make a change to my body with exercise!


So after seeing his infomercial multiple times, I started to do some of the exercises Tony showed on his infomercial. 


These were just simple exercises that I could do at home like push ups, crunches, leg lifts, and some light lifting with 5 lbs dumbbells. 


Changes occur
I didn't start looking like Tony Little, but I did see some changes.


I know the workouts didn't seem like much, but I actually started to see some results even as a 6th grader. I could tell I was getting thinner and actually starting to gain some muscle definition in my arms.


Now I'll never know whether these changes were a result of me working out or me starting to go through puberty. But seeing that infomercial was a great influence on me and impacted the rest of my life. 


So this was the start of me exercising but I hadn't learned anything about nutrition yet. I'll write about how I got started learning about nutrition in a future blog post :)


What inspired you to start working out?