- When most people get sick they grab some blankets,
pop on the TV or their favourite YouTube channel
and curl up on the sofa or bed in the warmth,
but triathletes aren't like most people,
no triathletes are determined not to miss
a single day of training,
even if they have a cold or the flu.
And unfortunately I have just been fighting
an extremely tough bout of man flu.
So it feels like good timing discuss
whether you should be training when you're ill.
(electronic chimes)
(drumming)
- Now then exercise is fantastic for us.
It has a number of benefits,
including improving performance of our immune system.
See with moderate exercise it's believed
that it helps to stimulate the production
of a type of white blood cell known as Th1,
which essentially helps to kill off
and fight any of that nasty bacteria
and viruses that you might have in your system.
However, as we start to push our training harder
and increase that overall stress and fatigue on our bodies,
we actually see our immune system take a sharp turn
in the opposite direction,
and therefore making our bodies more susceptible
to infection and viruses.
♪ Baby when you move your body, ♪
- I always used to refer to this as if
you're teetering on the edge of being in peek fitness
and possibly illness.
Now I could talk about this for a very long time
about how you should manage your training,
stress levels, your fatigue levels,
to really make sure that you're not
compromising your immune system too much,
but there is actually a whole separate video
in that all together,
and even then you could still get ill
as I am proving right now,
but as endurance athletes we do have a tendency
to think we're as tough as nails
and that actually it's more important for us
to hit that training session even if we're ill,
but this could be a really, really bad idea.
We could actually potentially causing us
more harm than good.
In fact, let me just demonstrate this to you now.
Now jogging up this hill now,
to help demonstrate to you the difference
between my ill self and my normal healthy self.
Now I'm going at a really quite steady pace right now,
and my heart rate is around 160 beats per minute,
which is really very high compared to usual for this pace.
Now I do know from experience having had colds
and illnesses before, that if I was to push the pace now,
well A, I would really struggle to do it for long,
and B, my muscles would really fatigue
and I'd really feel it a lot after.
So on that not, I'm gonna stop there.
Now obviously that is just my illness.
I do appreciate there are a whole host
of different illnesses and colds and all sorts out there,
some more severe than others,
but regardless, any illness is going to be
making your body work overtime to try and fight it.
So it's really an additional stress on your body.
So if you are trying to train through it,
you could be at risk of making that illness worse.
See what happens, is your immune system reacts
by trying to produce a inflammatory protein called Cytokines
and what these can do is actually damage respiratory tissue
and accelerate the impact of that illness.
So that can end up with things like chest infections,
pneumonia, mononucleosis, and so on.
So on that note, we are gonna get back indoors
and into the warmth.
( slow music)
Right, that's better.
Now I always suggest that whatever the illness,
it's much better to back off
right away for a day or two at least
to really try and nip it in the bud quickly.
You see if it's just a small cold,
nothing like your man flu or anything like that,
then it's quite likely that after one,
or two days of really good rest,
and I really mean complete rest,
you might be back to full health
and you can get back to full training really quickly,
rather than limping along and dragging it out
for a number of days.
Now there is actually worth remembering
that you can't really build fitness on a sick body.
So whilst you are ill,
it's a really good idea to start monitoring your heart rate.
So what I mean by this, is in the morning
getting your heart rate monitor out
and straight away, monitoring that heart rate.
Get your resting heart rate.
So what happens is when you're ill
and you're fighting and infection,
you'll see your resting heart rate starting to climb,
as it is fighting the infection,
and then all you want to do
is just wait until that resting heart rate
starts to drop back down into that normal range
and then you can start thinking
about cracking back on with some normal training.
Now in the meantime, there's no harm
in just doing some light stretching
or even some low level conditioning exercises
from the warmth of you own home.
However I do know that most people
are probably going to ignore me with that advice.
So here is quite a good and rough rule
as to how you should go about recovering from illness
and doing training.
It's called the above the neck, below the neck rule
and that obviously refers to the location
of the symptoms in your body.
So first off with the above the neck rules.
That's referring to things like your blocked noses,
your runny noses, your sore throat.
Maybe just even sneezing.
Anything like that, then you can get away
with some very, very easy training,
keeping your heart rate between zones one and two.
Definitely still want nothing intense,
or where you're going to increase
the fatigue levels in your body.
Now with the below the neck rule,
and that is referring to things like your chesty coughs
to a chest infections, body aches, vomiting, and so on.
Now that you really want to make sure
that you're recovering from fully.
So you want to completely stop on the exercise,
and really put your feet up and recover.
No whilst you are ill, it's a really good idea
to just relax, chill out.
As I said before, just put your feet up,
Drink plenty of fluids and you may even find some comfort
in some of the over the counter cold remedies.
(upbeat music)
So once you've recovered it's time to start thinking
about returning back to training.
If you've had quite a big illness,
I normally suggest taking an extra day off
after you feel like you're ready to return
because quite often you're just feeling
a heck of a lot better than you have done
for the last week or so,
and actually still not quite back to 100%.
So making sure you have that extra day,
just allows you to fully recover
and it' really just a case of airing on the side of caution.
Now if you have had quite a big illness.
Then it's also worth pointing out,
that you're going to have lost a little bit of fitness,
having had a fair amount of time off.
So there's no point in jumping bay in of your training
as you have been pre illness.
You're not gonna be quit ready for that.
So you want to make sure that you gradually
reintroduce your training and build up really steadily.
(upbeat music)
You can also continue
to keep monitoring your resting heart rate in the morning,
to make sure that doesn't start climbing back again.
And if you do train with others,
perhaps in a squad.
Now this in another reason
to wait until you're fully back to full health,
because worrying about missing,
perhaps a swim session and potentially passing the germs
on to other athletes within your squad.
It's quite a selfish act.
If they're training quite hard, they're immune system
is possibly going to get knocked as well
So they're going to be successful to picking up illnesses.
Unfortunately, I've learned the hard what in the past,
by not listening to my own advice
and it really hasn't ended well.
In my opinion, if you're ill it's far better,
to just rest up completely,
so you get yourself back to full health
and full training sooner.
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