How to return after illness
With training and recovery tips from a professional coach
For everyone it’s possible to get sick once a year. But what happens with your fitness then? We’re gonna find out how to get back on track after an illness.
When getting the flue you possibly go into panic mode, especially if you’ve already set a goal. You can’t be to much busy around family, because you could infect all of them. So at the end of the day you’re practically locked up in your bed. When you panic, that is when you set yourself back. But if you take it more easy, you will accept it much faster and get back on track a lot quicker. Remember, not all is lost!
How long and when should you rest?
The fact that you could just sweat out an illness is not backed up by science. You shouldn’t put more stress on yourself while your body needs rest. There is a simple trick to determine if you can stay riding or not. If the disease is located above the neck it’s still okay to stay on your bike. But if it’s below the neck, such as things like muscle pain, caughing from the longs and a fever, it’s not very recommended to keep doing it.
“Health first, fitness second.”
Neal Henderson
Restarting training
It’s generally recommended to be 24-48 hours symptomfree before you start riding again. But when you do start riding the best strategy is to begin your first 2-3 days with low intensity. That’s probably the moment where you actually want to give more and more, but when being in recovery from an injury that could be a disaster. Plus when symptoms do return it’s possible you will get sick for an even longer time.
After your illness is gone it’s the time to get back to your previously planned workouts. But watch out! For the next series of training you want to make sure to reduce your intensity. Besides that you’re recovery time is still very important. Your body still has impacted a lot from the illness.
Where you start after illness depends on how long you’ve been sick. For instant, when you’ve been sick for five days it’s fine to pick things up where you left them. But if you’ve been gone for a week or more you won’t have lost that much fitness but you need to look at the bigger picture for a moment.
Recovery
A good indicator of your recovery is your resting heart rate. So if you know what your morning pulse is before you got sick you should be waiting for it to return to that level before you resume training. To keep track of it you could write your resting heart rate down or use wearable tech. If you see the rate getting up that is the moment where you want to recover, because if you don’t do that it can and will impact the time you will be road biking in the future.
Tips from a professional coach
Global Cyling Network has interviewed Neal Henderson fort his particular subject. Henderson has coached some really high level riders. He says that if you get sick and you need to get time off the bike you’ll certainly lose some fitness. If being sick for two weeks you’ll possibly lose between five or ten percent of your fitness. When having illness for longer than two weeks you’re VO2 max or five minute power will also be affected. When proffesionals are getting back on track they will probably ride around twelve hours in the first week. Neal Henderson: ‘We’re gonna ease back into it consistently, but without any very long or very intense sessions’. But everyone can use that principle. When getting out of illness begin with 50 percent of what you’re used to be doing and build that consistently up. If you have been training for months to attend a big event, but you have something that derails you, Henderson says ‘reaslize not all is lost’. It’s still possible to get back in your top performing state, but simply don’t overstress what you’re losing. He also puts it as ‘health first, fitness second’.
If you don’t want to get sick, like many of us, here are some tips that will help you steer clear of illness. First, you don’t want to overtrain. That means that you don’t want to train too much in too little time with a lack of rest. You actualy want to increase the intensity of your training bit by bit. Second, follow all the usual hygene practices like washing your hands, drinking out of your own glass. Besides that, what your body really needs is good food like you would when having a diet and having plenty of sleep.
