Social Wellness

Every few months someone sends me a version of the same message. “I’m feeling rubbish this week. Should I still do my session, or will I lose my progress?”

It is a good question, and I understand where it comes from. When you have finally found a rhythm with training, missing a week can feel like the whole thing might start to unravel.

My answer is almost always the same. Treat the week like a deload. Keep moving gently if you can. Then pick up where you left off.

Here is why.

What a strength session is actually for

Progressive overload works because you ask your body to do something slightly harder than it is used to. You push close to your limit, and that effort sends a signal: this was hard, we had better get stronger in case it happens again.

The getting stronger happens afterwards, in the hours and days while you recover.

So two things need to be true for a session to make you stronger. You need to be able to push hard enough to send the signal, and your body needs the resources to respond to it.

When you are sick, neither is reliably true. If you cannot push, the signal is weak. And if your body is busy fighting an infection, the response will be weak too. You end up with all the effort of training and very little of what it is meant to give you.

A session you drag yourself through with a fever has very little strength to offer you.

The building crew

The way I like to picture it is this.

Imagine your body has a small, dedicated building crew. Every strength session, you hand them a work order: reinforce this wall, add a little more here. Between sessions they quietly get on with it, and over weeks and months the building gets stronger.

Now imagine a storm arrives and the roof starts leaking. The crew drops everything to deal with it, as they should. That is the most important job right now.

If you keep handing in renovation orders during the storm, nothing gets built. The orders just pile up on the desk. And because training itself creates a little wear and tear that also needs repairing, every new order quietly pulls someone off the roof.

Being sick is the storm. The kindest and most sensible thing you can do is let the crew fix the roof.

What the research says

There is good science behind this picture. Fighting an infection is genuinely expensive for the body. In one study of young men with ordinary respiratory infections, resting metabolic rate rose by around 8 percent on average, and by as much as 14 percent in some, even when there was little or no fever. A fever pushes it further still, by roughly 7 to 15 percent for every degree Celsius. Your body is already working hard while you lie on the couch.

Sports medicine guidance generally follows something called the “neck check”. If your symptoms are mild and sit above the neck, like a blocked nose or a scratchy throat, light movement is usually fine. If they are below the neck, like chest congestion, a cough, body aches, fever or an upset stomach, or you simply feel unwell all over, rest. Researchers in this area are clear that gentle is the way to go, and that the idea of sweating out a virus is a myth. Pushing hard through a feverish illness carries small but real risks, including to the heart.

And the thing most people worry about, losing their progress? That is far less of a concern than it feels. A review of strength studies in trained athletes found strength can be maintained for up to about three weeks without training, with losses only picking up after that. Other studies looking at two to three weeks off found strength losses of around one to two percent, which is barely measurable. Older adults may start to lose a little sooner, from around two weeks.

A week is well within the safe zone. Everything you have built will still be there.

Treat it like a deload

So here is what I suggest.

Treat the week you are sick like a deload week. A deload is a lighter week that many strength programmes build in on purpose, giving the body space to absorb the work you have already done. You are simply taking an unplanned one.

If your symptoms are mild and you feel up to it, move gently:

• A slow walk, ideally outside
• Some easy stretching on the floor
• A couple of relaxed sets of bodyweight movements, like sit to stands, glute bridges or wall push ups

Keep it well away from your limit, and stop while you still feel better than when you started. Gentle movement keeps the habit alive and often helps you feel a little more human.

If you cannot manage that, that is fine too. Rest is part of the process too.

Then, when you are well again, pick up where you were. Say you were in week two of your programme, doing three sets of 12. You can either repeat week two, or move on to week three, three sets of 15, as if nothing happened. If you are not sure, repeat the week. Your first session back will tell you a lot.

Either way, your progress will be right there waiting for you.

The harder part

For many people the hardest part of a sick week is mental.

Training is often where we feel in control. It might be the one thing in a busy week that is ours, the thing that makes us feel capable and steady. Missing it can feel unsettling, as if the whole habit might slip away.

That feeling deserves respect. It might also be worth getting curious about. Do I need to feel in control of this right now? What is training actually giving me, and could something else give me that this week?

Maybe it is ten minutes of slow breathing. Maybe a walk with no destination. Maybe stretching on the floor while the kettle boils. Or maybe it is simply practising doing less, which for some of us is the hardest exercise of all.

The Stoics had a simple idea that I come back to often. Some things are within our control and some are not. Getting sick is mostly not. How we respond to it is. Choosing rest, without guilt, is a response too. It is a skill, and like any skill it gets easier with practice.

The long game

I often think of health as what the philosopher James Carse called an infinite game. A finite game has a winner and an end. In an infinite game, the whole point is to keep playing.

Strength is an infinite game. You “win”, if that is even the word, by still being here and still moving, still lifting your shopping, your grandchildren, yourself off the floor, in ten, twenty, thirty years.

Across that span, one week is almost nothing. What shapes the long arc is the habit of returning, again and again, after life interrupts.

A thought to leave you with

Next time you are sick, try to see the week as part of your training. Recovery is when your body builds. Sickness is when it defends. Both are your body doing exactly what it should.

Let the crew fix the roof. Then go back to building.

References

• Muehlenbein MP et al. (2010). Toward quantifying the usage costs of human immunity: altered metabolic rates and hormone levels during acute immune activation in men. American Journal of Human Biology, 22(4), 546-556.
• Schwellnus MP et al. (2011). Sport and exercise during acute illness: a brief review and practical recommendations. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 45(1), 1-4.
• McMaster DT et al. (2013). The development, retention and decay rates of strength and power in elite rugby union, rugby league and American football: a systematic review. Sports Medicine, 43(5), 367-384.
• Bosquet L et al. (2013). Effect of training cessation on muscular performance: a meta-analysis. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, 23(3), e140-e149.
• Carse JP (1986). Finite and Infinite Games.
• Epictetus. Enchiridion.