How to Exercise If You Are Still Sick After Your Last Workout

The hardest part of adhering to a workout routine is getting started, but the second hardest part is showing up for the next workout when everything seems to be on fire. But you won’t get off the hook! In fact, staying at home is not the best course of action. Here’s what to do instead.

Change your plans

The most important thing for your safety is that you do not go into extra-hard training if you are in serious pain. Overcoming pain can cause you to hurt yourself, hinder your progress, or both.

Delayed Muscle Soreness ( DOMS ), which starts in the morning after a hard workout and can hurt for several days, is associated with muscle damage . This is not entirely bad: muscle damage leads to muscle growth . But while you are sick, and often for a while after that, your muscles are weaker and more vulnerable than they were before training.

Some people pursue this painful feeling and rate their workout as successful if they can actually feel it the next day. But it’s counterproductive: heavy exercise isn’t always painful , and soreness can be a warning sign rather than celebration. Overloading the diseased, vulnerable muscle fibers can stretch or tear the muscle.

I tensed my muscles hard twice, both times when I trained for many days and overcame the pain. I wanted to keep up with my workouts, but it turns out that it takes weeks for a torn muscle to heal. First, I should have just relaxed.

Even after the soreness subsides, your muscles may not fully return to normal. It can take weeks for your muscles to return to full strength after a severe DOMS attack. This is where you sabotage your own progress: if you come to the gym with weak muscles, you can’t work that hard or get the results you want. It is better to slow down at the first sign of pain and recover a little.

But don’t miss a workout

With all these workout drawbacks, you’ll probably be tempted to just stay at home with Netflix instead of taking your sick body to the gym. But this also has disadvantages. Getting rid of the soreness takes some getting used to the exercise, and you’ll never get used to it if you take a week off every time you have the idea to start over.

Even if you are actually in pain, you can probably do some exercise. For example, squatting with body weight instead of loading with a barbell. Gentle yoga instead of plyometrics. A leisurely walk instead of a hike.

Don’t take this as a routine workout. Think of it as a form of outdoor activity in which you perform movement, but without physical activity.

If the workout that caused you pain was the first (or second) of a new exercise program, the real value of an active rest session is in habit formation. You don’t want this first ambitious day to be a fluke!

If you let the soreness lead to laziness, it’s easy to skip a week or two of your workouts before heading back to the gym. At this point, you have allowed your small win to recede and you are back to where you started. You’ll just get sick again.

Imagine for a moment that you are twins. You and your coworker are in insane pain after Monday workout. On Wednesday morning, when you have your second workout scheduled, your twin is asleep. You put on spandex anyway and go to the gym. You do light exercise while your twin is asleep and do the same again on Friday when both of you are feeling better but not yet ready for a full workout. When the next Monday rolls around and the soreness subsides, which of you is most likely to actually show up at the gym? You, of course. And thanks to the workouts that you did during the week, you already get used to this type of exercise and, most likely, you will have fewer problems in the future.

How to deal with pain

There are many myths about painful sensations in the muscles, and one harsh truth: only time really helps to get rid of painful sensations.

In this explanation of muscle pain, we have provided evidence for common therapies. Things like ice packs and light stretching can make you feel better in the short term, so keep doing this if they feel good. However, don’t confuse them with medications: after they run out, your muscles are still just as damaged and painful as before.

Many of us have been taught that stretching relieves pain, and the deeper the stretch, the better. But this is fake . Intense stretching can make the pain worse, as you are pulling on this weakened muscle tissue and can lead to it later. If stretching is your thing, rolling on foam is a good alternative, which can give you the same “so painful” feeling. As a type of massage, it can even help your muscles recover .

When you are sick, it’s time to pay more attention to caring for yourself. Oddly enough, I find sleep helps to cope with soreness: if I stay up late, then the next day I’m more likely to get sick. Eating a lot of protein won’t hurt either, since protein is important for building muscle . However, vitamins are overpriced: eat healthy foods, but don’t assume vitamin pills will help. They can even interfere with muscle recovery .

Pain relievers such as ibuprofen are popular among athletes, but they don’t help either. By the time you are consuming enough to reduce the pain you are feeling, you are also taking in enough to prevent healing. Use pain relievers as short-term medicine if you need them during the day, but don’t take more than you need to.

This article was originally published in January 2017 and has been updated on November 20, 2020 to include updated links and align content with current Lifehacker style.