Check it oot.
Training when you're sick, no pain no gain & letting go.
Issue ten. Double figures.
This one's about knowing when to push and when to back off. When you're ill, when something hurts, and when you've been carrying something around for longer than you should.
Two days after I finished writing this issue, I got Covid. You couldn't make it up.
Thankfully it's not been too bad. It's a bit all over the place, like it's prodding around for a weak spot. Sore throat? Nope. Cough? Not today. Fever? No chance. So far it's a bit of everything, but a lot of nothing. I'm not training. I'm working online, or outdoors if a client still wants to see me in person, and resting as much as I can. I'm in bed by eight or nine and sleeping a full eleven hours. Best sleep of my life.
Funny how the minute it's confirmed as Covid, people take notice. Me included. In a way, it's good to know.
Audio Issue
Me reading this one out loud, with Covid, so apologies in advance for the voice. If you're under the weather too, it's perfect for the sofa.
The Question
A client messaged me this the night before a session.
“I'm not feeling 100%. Should we still train?”
My answer always starts the same way. It depends.
It depends on what it is and how bad it is. In her case, she wasn't that unwell, so she came, and we adapted the intensity to how she felt that day. Most people who arrive feeling rough are the same. On the edge, but very rarely unable to work out.
Very rarely. I used to train a famous Russian rapper, who shall remain nameless. He'd regularly arrive hungover, sometimes with his crew, sometimes with girls. Once he came to a session straight from the night before, still drunk. Russians, man. Tougher than the rest of us, and they love a bit of punishment. I can say that, I'm going out with one. He insisted on training. He's the boss, after all. We trained a little, then he puked. If it were up to me, I'd probably have sent him home.
Either way, the goal is always the same, to leave the session feeling better than when you arrived.
My theory
Your body only has so much energy. When you're unwell, the reason you feel rubbish is that it's putting what energy it has into getting you better. Train hard on top of that and you're asking it to split that energy between healing and recovering from your workout. If you aren't careful, you end up sick for longer.
What the research says
The science backs up the lighter part. Researchers in Indiana took 50 reasonably fit students and gave them a cold on purpose. Nice! 34 of them did 40 minutes of moderate exercise every other day for ten days. The other 16 didn't train at all. The colds lasted just as long and felt just as bad in both groups. They even weighed everyone's used tissues to measure the snot. No difference there either.
Where I draw the line
A blocked nose or a sore throat, you can usually train, just lighter. A fever, aching all over or anything in your chest, you stay at home and rest. A fever makes your heart work harder before you've lifted a thing. And if you've got chest pain, a racing heart or a fever that won't shift, that's a job for your doctor, not me.
My own reset
I very rarely get sick, so when I do, assuming it's not horrific, I lean into it. It's the one time I let myself veg out without feeling bad about it.
The first time I had Covid, I didn't get terribly sick, just a small fever, so once I knew what it was, I rested for seven days. Then the fatigue and lethargy kicked in. I rested one more day, thought fuck it, I'm training, and did my normal workout at 60 to 70%. Less weight, fewer sets, fewer reps. It was a reset, and I was back, baby!
Sources: Weidner et al., 1998
01
No pain, no gain?
If you're not sore, did it work?
I used to run a group class called Ab Fab, first in Buenos Aires and then in Barcelona. One day in Barcelona, a pal of mine came to her first class. A complete beginner, in a group that had been training together for over a year. I gave her one instruction. “Don't try to keep up with the others.”
When I'm training a group, I can't tailor everything to one person, so everyone has to go at their own pace. She did the opposite. She could barely walk for a fortnight. To be fair to her, she came back and kept at it. She learnt the hard way.
DOMS is the soreness that appears a day or two after training, and people treat it like a scorecard. This happens all the time with people who don't stick to a routine. They train, can't stand up the next day, and take it as proof the workout was a good one.
The reason you're sore probably isn't that the workout was hard. It's that your body isn't used to it yet.
If you can't stand up after every workout, you're either going far too hard or, more likely, you aren't training often enough for your body to figure out what it's doing. Train regularly and it does figure it out. There's even a name for it, the repeated bout effect. The first time you try a new exercise, you can feel it for days. Do it again a week later and you feel it far less, even though you worked just as hard. The body is incredibly good at adapting if you allow it the time.
DOMS certainly isn't a bad thing. We need to challenge our bodies. But having it constantly isn't the goal. I'm well conditioned, and I still get it when I try something new.
What you're aiming for
Pain doesn't equal results. You do want some discomfort, though. Light, low-level discomfort. I've got a bit of it most of the time, and I'm so used to it now that I barely notice. That's the sweet spot. It means you recover properly and can train again a couple of days later, which is where results come from. Training regularly, not flattening yourself once a week.
When it's a stop
Sharp pain is a different story. Stop first. Then you can try a few gentle reps to see how it feels, but you know when you know. If you have to sacrifice your form because of the pain, that exercise is over. Sometimes the whole workout is. And for every exercise that doesn't feel right, we'll find the one that does.
02
Coach's Pick: letting go, or at least trying to
This pick isn't something I've nailed. It's something I'm working on right now, and no doubt will be for the rest of my life. Letting go.
In Issue 08 I said I probably needed to work on my meditation. Consider this the homework.
Two monks and a river
I heard this one in a meditation on the Calm app, and it's stuck with me. Two Buddhist monks are walking together when they come to a river. A woman is standing at the edge, unable to get across. One of the monks picks her up, carries her over, puts her down and carries on walking. The other monk can't believe it. Monks aren't meant to touch women, and he stews on it for the rest of the walk. Eventually he can't hold it in any longer and asks how he could do such a thing. The first monk says, “I put her down ages ago. You're still carrying her.”
Monks, it turns out, can hold a grudge too.
My river
Somebody disrespected me recently, and I didn't take it too well. I was fine in the moment, but then I woke up during the night pissed off and carried it around with me for days. For the record, nothing annoys me more than having my time disrespected. And people playing their phones out loud, obviously.
Yes, I'm aware that writing about it in a newsletter isn't the best example of letting go.
Holding onto things is a punishment, and the only person being punished is me. I doubt they woke up during the night thinking about it.
So I practise. I do a letting go meditation on Calm regularly, alongside the guided meditations from the London Buddhist Centre I mentioned in Issue 06. I'm not saying it's easy, but at the very least, practising helps me.
Chau for now.
Martin ยท Barcelona