Episode 13: How to Get Back Into the Gym After Being Sick

Trainer Tips

Mar 11

WATCH ON YOUTUBE | LISTEN

Personal trainer Jayd Harrison gives tips for getting back into your workout routine after time away to avoid injury and getting sick (again).

Many people work out way too hard on their first workout back in the gym after being sick or taking time off. In this episode, I spoke with my Twitch chat about how to get back into training in a way that will help, not harm, your body.

We also talked about why people feel the need to “punish” themselves or “catch up” from time away from the gym—and why that’s not necessary to get back in shape.

(00:00):
A lot of people feel really guilty and they feel really bad when they haven't worked out for an extended period of time. There's a lot of shame. You want to be really careful about that. You want to keep an eye on that kind a disordered relationship with exercise that you think like now you have to punish yourself extra, right? Or you feel like you got to make up for the time that you lost. And that leads a lot of people to pushing themselves way too hard when their body is still fighting off an infection or the immune system is still suppressed.
(00:37)
Hey there friend. It's Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. Welcome back to the Coaching Corner podcast. In this episode, we are going to talk about how to get back into the gym after some time away, especially if you have been sick. Now, this is one area that I find a lot of people make really common mistake, which is hitting the gym way too hard to make up for the time that they had away. So in this episode, I'm going to talk about the problem with doing that and what the possible results could be from hitting the gym too hard after you have had some time away, and I'm going to give some actionable tips for how to get back into the gym in a way that's not going to put you at further risk of getting sick again or injuring yourself. But first I want to remind you that I have a lot of new products and services coming this way, so make sure that you are subscribed to my email list. You can subscribe to that at jaydigains.com. Also, if you are interested in hanging out with me when I'm live on my Twitch channel, you can follow me there. That's Twitch.tv/jaydigains. So without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(01:44)
One big mistake that I see a lot of people make when they take time off from the gym or if they get sick and they come back or whatever the case is, the last thing that you want to do is jump right back into your program at the same intensity level, the same volume that you left off with when you stopped because your body is deconditioned. You had to work up to the point of being able to lift that much weight or do that many reps or that many exercises. If you do try to jump back in at the same intensity, the same volume, et cetera, you risk hurting yourself or just blasting your body to the point where you have a really hard time recovering and you may not feel like working out the rest of the week.
(02:29)
And so it can really, really make it difficult to get back in again. Or, oh my gosh, one of the worst is, oh geez, this happens if you hit the gym too hard on your first day back. You can actually cause yourself to have a relapse if you're coming back from being sick. Because if you think about it, building muscle is an immune system response and your body recovering from your workouts is an immune system function. And when your immune system is already suppressed, even if you're feeling better, you're going to be suppressing your immune system even more when it's already working hard to clear out your system of whatever it was that you had when you were sick. So when you hit the gym way harder than you need to on your first or second workouts back, you can actually cause your body to get sick again.
(03:18)
Some people are able to continue lifting and working out through being sick. It can be good for getting the blood flowing right, but even then you still, it's best practice to just reduce the intensity. You don't want to be hitting it super, super hard when you're sick, when you're working out, if you do decide to work out while you're sick. I would just recommend working at a deload intensity because again, if you hit your workout super, super hard, you're going to be triggering that immune system response and your immune system is already going to be suppressed from whatever it is that you're fighting. That's just something to keep in mind. If you do want to work out, it might make you feel better just to get the blood flowing, but work at a reduced intensity is what I would say. A lot of people feel really guilty and they feel really bad when they haven't worked out for an extended period of time.
(04:13)
There's a lot of shame. You want to be really careful about that. You want to keep an eye on that kind of a disordered relationship with exercise that you think now you have to punish yourself extra, right? Or you feel like you got to make up for the time that you lost. And that leads a lot of people to pushing themselves way too hard when their body is still fighting off an infection or the immune system is still suppressed. You don't need to make up for anything. You were sick. Your system has been like high, high functioning, trying to kick whatever infection you have or whatever the illness is, and that is work that's work on your body, that's energy expended. Don't feel guilty for that. If you do feel guilty for that, just remind yourself that your body has been doing what it's supposed to do, which is kicking the infection, kicking the illness, and you want to be careful about your energy management because some of your energy is still going to be going towards recovering your immune system and recovering your whole system.
(05:13)
And so when you work out, you want to be conscious of that. Energy management is everything. You don't need to push super, super hard to get yourself reconditioned properly and pushing super, super hard when you're just getting back into it can be dangerous. It can put you at risk of injury or getting sick again, so it's not worth it. So what I recommend for people when they take some time off from the gym is do a reconditioning block, set the foundations again, and basically you're going to do the same kind of level of intensity that you would if you were doing a deload or that you would do if you were a beginner with my clients who do online training or if they do it for their homework workouts, I try to stress to them, your first time back, I want you to work in an RPE seven, right?
(06:03)
That means leaving three reps in the tank. You're not going all the way towards muscle failure. You're just kind of approaching it a little bit, but you're leaving plenty of room between yourself and muscle failure at the end of every set. And the reason we do that is because your immune system is still suppressed. So that's going to do two things. One, it's going to make it harder for you to recover from that workout as it is. So even if you did RPE seven workout, you're still going to struggle to recover from that more than what you think you should, and that's because your immune system is already super, super pressed, right? But two, you're going to make yourself susceptible to getting sick. Again, it may not be a relapse of exactly what you just got sick from and you just got over because your immune system has probably kicked it, but you make yourself more susceptible to some new infection, and I see it all the time, all the time.
(06:53)
And so what I stress with my clients, especially the ones that I see for one-on-one personal training sessions when they come back and they restart their sessions after being sick for the first week, sometimes week or two, but for the first workout back, especially I'd say for the first week, we work at a deload. We do, I call it a reload or reconditioning, and you're doing everything at an RPE six or seven. Treat it like a mobility kind of training where you're not trying to approach muscle failure too, too much because even just that, even working at a lower intensity, you're still going to build muscle from that because your body has gotten no stimulus. You don't need quite as much stimulus to get the muscles building again as you don't need as much as you did when you stopped. Just do a deload intensity for the first workout, maybe the first two or three workouts.
(07:46)
It depends on how sick you were, and it depends on what kind of sickness it is. Sometimes you're going to be feeling kind of off or yucky, especially if it's a respiratory thing, you might be feeling kind of gross for a while, so just listen to your body deload as needed and just let your body heal. You're going to get back to where you were. That's just your brain lying to you. If it says like, oh, I'm never going to get back to where I was, yes you are. Shut up. Yes you are. You're going to keep showing up now that you can. You're going to get your butt in the gym. You're going to stay consistent. You're going to clean up your diet, you're going to start eating your protein. You're going to start eating your veggies again. It's going to happen. You're going to get back to where you were and then you're going to get even further along than you ever have been.
(08:28)
Okay? So that's just your brain, that's just your anxieties. That's just your insecurities, but they're not telling the truth. It's not the truth. You're going to get back to where you were, I promise you. And the another secret to keep in mind is this happens to all of us. It doesn't matter how in shape you are, it doesn't matter how athletic you are. Even competitive athletes, we all go through these cycles and setbacks. It is part of the healthy lifestyle. This is literally part of a fit lifestyle is experiencing setbacks and then coming back into it. I think some people have this misunderstanding of what it is to be fit and what it is. To be healthy, you have to be working out all the time, and you have to be eating exactly right all the time. We all experience setbacks, but the thing is, what you do most of the time on the grand scale is what matters most.
(09:25)
That's what your body is going to reflect. So if you get yourself back into the place where most of the time you're hitting your workouts, and most of the time you're eating the right number of calories, most of the time you're hitting your protein goals, most of the time you're getting enough sleep. If are most of the time doing the things that you've committed to, you're not going to be as affected or set back as you think you would be. I will say the one thing that's going to make it difficult, and I think that sometimes can lead to this spiral, is when you get sick and it doesn't take very long of not working out for your cardio system to go downhill, that system goes downhill very quickly, and that's the part that's really difficult to recover, and it takes time to build up.
(10:16)
But even with that, if you stay consistent, you're going to make gains. So don't worry about the past. Don't worry about even if you took time off and it wasn't because you were sick, maybe you took time off for other reasons. It doesn't matter. What matters is what are you going to do right now? What matters is, are you going to continue to show up? Can you let it go, and can you show up consistently for the things you've committed to? If you can do that, you're going to reach your goals. It's going to happen. It's just going to happen. Okay, I promise. I promise. So whenever you're doing any kind of workout, especially with resistance training, I encourage you to listen to your body in more than one way. One is like, listen to your body. Read your overall energy levels. If you feel something like a sharp pain, stop what you're doing immediately check your form.
(11:07)
Reduce the weight. Sharp pain is something we never want to experience while we're working out. Muscle fatigue, muscle burning, that type of sensation, that's fine. But there's also kind of different degrees to that, right? The closer that you get to muscle failure, which is when your muscles completely give out in the context of a muscle building workout, you're going to experience a lot of burning as lactic acid builds up in your muscles. If you were to go to RPE 10, you would go until your muscles completely give out, right? RPE seven is like trying to leave three more reps. You think about leaving three more reps, estimating for yourself. If I did three more reps, then my muscles would give out after that. So that's kind of where we want to be in your first workout, at least for your big exercises like squats and deadlifts, you can push yourself to an RPE eight on your accessories.
(11:58)
That's like your isolation exercises that just work one muscle or maybe like a small muscle group. That's fine. But again, listen to your body. If you're starting to get really, really gassed, remember, especially if you're sick and your body's still recovering, you probably want to back off a little bit. Now, you can repeat the same workout in the second week. If you do it a second time, then you can start to push yourself a little bit more, get a little bit closer to an RPE eight, which would be like approaching muscle failure, leaving two more reps in reserve so you stop when you feel like you could do two more reps and then your muscles would fail. And then when you've been working out for weeks and weeks and weeks and you're used to your routine and you're feeling good, your energy levels are good, you're conditioned.
(12:41)
Again, that's where you can start to bring in that RPE nine where you're leaving one rep in the tank. Best practices though, in general for most of the time, is to leave one rep in the tank. Unless your program says to do an AM rep, set as many reps as possible, that's when you actually go to muscle failure. Or if you're doing a max test where you're trying to lift as much as you can or hold a position or do as many reps as you can, that kind of thing, then you actually allow your muscles to fail. If you're going to be doing full muscle failure or going really close to muscle failure like an RPE nine, it's a good idea to have some safeties up if you're squatting or benching or have someone there to spot you, because sometimes it's hard to judge how close we are to muscle failure, and sometimes we don't know that we're close to muscle failure until our muscles literally fail.
(13:32)
So again, the first time that you do a new workout or a new routine, especially if it's been a long time since you've lifted, or if you are brand new, you want to think about on a scale of one to 10, how hard am I working overall, you want to work at about a 7, 7, 8 ish. Okay? As you get more and more shape, you can push it to an RPE eight/nine.
(13:53)
Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode of The Coaching Corner podcast. Remember that this podcast is available on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts, so you can watch or listen wherever you are. I hope that you found this information helpful, and let me know what you think about what we talked about in this episode. You can leave a comment below if you are watching on YouTube, or you can leave a comment on the website page associated with this episode on my website, jaydigains.com. Just click on podcast in the top menu. I will see you soon for another episode. In the meantime, make sure that you eat your protein, eat your veggies, drink your water, and prioritize your self-care, and I will see you soon.

I filmed this podcast episode just before recording my first guided workout in my new Body Sculpt program. This program will help you build a solid foundation in the gym, either for the first time or while reconditioning. See more info below:

Body Sculpt

Build strength and tone your body with expert-guided workouts by Jayd Harrison.

Learn more

ABOUT JAYD HARRISON

Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains) is a personal trainer and content creator. She helps people to build muscle, burn fat, and clean up their diets with her online coaching programs and social media content. Check out some of Jayd’s coaching videos on Youtube, or join Jayd live on Twitch and follow on social media: