When Can People With Long-Term COVID Return to Training?
Returning to training after any physical setback is difficult. You trust yourself to listen to your body, but it’s also tempting to get back there before you’re fully healed. However, returning to fitness too early can do more harm than good, and this is especially true if you’re dealing with the long-term effects of COVID-19.
According to Michael Frederickson, M.D. in Everyday Health , “Resuming physical activity after COVID-19 has an added layer of complexity due to potential complications such as myocarditis ,” which is inflammation of the heart muscle. And with all the uncertainties and complications associated with the long COVID, extra caution is needed.
After a positive case, it may not be possible to tell the difference between a long-term COVID and a case of “normal” (yes) COVID that needs its sweet time to resolve. In addition to the damage to your body, there’s also the mental breakdown of feeling like you’re being held back from your fitness goals. Below, we’ll break down what we’re doing and what we don’t know about long-term COVID, the current state of advice for athletes post-COVID, and how to mentally deal with fitness setbacks.
We have a lot to learn about the protracted COVID
Whether you’re a serious athlete or a casual gym goer, no one wants to be a COVID “trucker” experiencing prolonged symptoms of the virus. These lingering complications include blood clots in the arteries and inflammation of the heart. Some athletes also report fatigue and breathing problems that persist after recovering from COVID-19.
Unfortunately, long-term COVID is still difficult to define and more time is needed to properly study and understand it. The symptoms of long-term COVID overlap with those of other conditions, including what used to be called chronic fatigue syndrome . For now, we have general advice on how to be careful when exercising post-COVID.
Recommendations for returning to training after COVID
The following recommendations for returning to exercise were developed by a team of physicians at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. (One of the authors, Jordan Metzl, also wrote about the reasons for these recommendations in The New York Times.) Among the recommendations:
- If you were previously healthy and had a mild case of the virus, you can return to training after you have had no symptoms for seven days.
- After that, expect about a month to pass before you return to your full training schedule.
- If you have heart or lung problems, check with your doctor before returning to training.
- Stop exercising and call your doctor if your symptoms return, especially chest pain, fever, heart palpitations, or trouble breathing.
In our previous roundup of how to safely return to training after you’ve recovered from COVID-19 , Lifehacker Senior Health Editor Beth Skwarecki explained that
The recommendation to build up progressively suggests starting with half your usual amount of training activity (so, if you’re a runner, this could be half your usual amount of running). The guidelines don’t specifically recommend lifting weights, but the authors point to a set of non-COVID guidelines that also recommend starting light when you get back to the gym and building up gradually.
These recommendations were written before the advent of delta, but they still apply to cases caused by different variants, says James N. Robinson, MD , chief sports medicine physician at HSS New York and co-author of the study. paper.
Additional recommendations for athletes
In this synthesis of current recommendations for athletes to safely return to physical activity after COVID-19, the researchers found that the expert consensus is to abstain from all exercise for at least 10 days of rest from the onset of symptoms, including a minimum of seven days of rest. be asymptomatic. At this point, a “gradual return” to exercise may begin.
If you’re looking for some specific guidelines to make your life easier, here are some tips taken from the American College of Sports Medicine :
- Make sure you can easily carry out daily activities and walk 500 meters on level ground without becoming overly tired or out of breath.
- Initial physical activity should consist of light exercise for 15 minutes.
- If post-COVID energy levels are reached, the duration of activity can be increased and then body-weight exercises such as yoga or strength training can be resumed with sufficient rest.
- Then heavier resistance and specific athletic training may follow.
For more up-to-date information on returning to exercise, visit this site to find the most recent research on returning to strenuous activity after contracting COVID.
How to deal with long-term symptoms
Each person recovers from COVID-19 at a unique rate, and there is currently no formula that tells exactly how and when a person should return to activity.
Long-distance truckers experience the unique frustration of dealing with symptoms that just won’t go away. You’ve heard the advice to “listen to your body” and “trust your instincts”, but what if your body refuses to return to peak performance?
While we wait for more research on how to manage lingering COVID, it could help approach your invisible symptoms like fatigue as if they were a tangible injury — say, a broken ankle. You wouldn’t treat a broken ankle by “pushing it through” and pounding the pavement like you always do. Instead, you will realize that full recovery time is necessary to achieve your long-term goals.
Likewise, it won’t help you “push through” the symptoms of COVID-19. The current medical consensus is to wait until all symptoms are gone, but I realize this sounds unrealistic when there is no end in sight to your symptoms. So if you’re still suffering from long-term problems with fatigue and headaches, try to show the same gentleness and enforced patience as with a broken ankle. You need to recover now so that you can return to your old self in the long run.