55 year old male. Recent influenza-like illness - spiking high fevers, chills, drenching sweats, fatigue, muscle aches, the whole megillah. Once fever broke for 24 hours tried to do a little of my normal exercise routines but took it very light the first few times.
Been better for a week now and I am damn annoyed at how much strength and endurance I lost during that week of illness. Crap. I’m not the easy newbie gains anymore, what I lost took a lot of work to achieve. Now, for example, what I lifted as my sets of 5x5 I am failing on at 1.
Anyone with experience recovering exercise capacity lost after illness? Is it going to recover faster than it took to gain it in the first place or is it going to be the same gradual progress or slower given my aging body?
A major part of my fitness habit motivation has been to have cardiorespiratory and strength fitness deposits in the bank so to speak to be able to enter my 60s to (presumed) 90s high enough that I will be able to stay fully active until a very short time before I die. (Expressed sometimes as minimally wanting to dance all night and lift the chair when my youngest, now 13, gets married someday, and maybe at a grandchild’s B’nai Mitzah too - none of the adult kids currently seriously involved.)
I gotta say the amount just one crappy viral illness can suck out of me in short order is really depressing in that regard.
I don’t have an answer but I wouldn’t be too bummed about “one crappy viral illness.” It’s not like you had a cold or a sinus infection. How much time did you spend in bed? How much food did you miss? How much weight did you lose?
I’m 20 years your junior and I just got over a week-long stomach virus that started with being bed-ridden for 3 days. I was near dehydration and on about 300 calories a day during that time. My main thing is swimming so I don’t really have weight amounts and reps to compare against, but Sunday after my Friday swim I was sore from head to toe. Usually I don’t get sore after I swim at all.
When I was lifting a lot I don’t remember having any huge illnesses like that, so I can’t speak to recovery. But IMHO I would not discount the severity of your illness and let it make you feel old. If you missed a week just for fun and came back with diminished capacity I’d be worried. But not after your body went through something so draining.
In general, you will recover fitness faster than it took to build in the first place.
However, you do need to be fully recovered from whatever the illness was.
Clearly, your body is still fighting off/recovering from what you had.
It can be long term. I had chicken pox at age 31. Didn’t even feel all the sick at the time but I wound up taking 3 months off from work as I couldn’t even stand the effort of driving to work let alone driving all day( courier) I finally returned to full time driving about 18 months after the initial illness and regained my previous level of running at around two years.
The only real problem was sheer, crushing fatigue on any exertion.
On the other hand, after my accident, 2 weeks in an induced coma and two months in the hospital, I returned to the gym at 5 months and at 13 months rode a metric century on my handcycle.
Yeah I slept 20 hours a day, hardly ate and lost about 7 pounds. Shaking with chills and fever burns a lot of calories! (Of course some was water weight I am sure.) And yes I still want to nap whenever I can.
Still, that is lot of retirement savings blown in one bad market dip.
running coach your recovery after your accident and prolonged detraining period is impressive … and to no small degree likely partly based on the superior cardiorespiratory fitness and discipline of mind you had going in.
I guess my question is how much is actual lost fitness and how much is not really being fully recovered. If the latter then recovery should hit a point of rapid gains so long as I don’t push too hard now. If the former my psychology is to start hitting hard as soon as possible to make up my losses as quickly as possible.
I agree with the advice to completely let yourself rest and heal before you try to restart your exercise regimen. If you start too early, it can really prolong your recovery time and make things worse.
That being said, if you give yourself adequate recovery time, getting back into your former shape really shouldn’t take long at all once you’re back. “Muscle memory” is the term. I don’t know how much validity there is to that concept, it may be “bro science” but the idea is that your body “remembers” it’s former, muscular self and can revert to such a state with less training than someone who is of similar shape and fitness levels but never was in shape before.
At least you had savings rather than going bankrupt.
At this point it’s not easy to tell if you’ll have long term effects. It does sound like you have some recovering to do before you can start pushing again.
100km. ≈ 62 miles DSeid, you had your butt kicked by something microscopic. The key there is had your butt kicked. I’d agree that you’re not yet back to your pre-illness levels yet, as evidenced by your stating that you still want to nap & therefore, not ready to do your previous hard workouts.
Sounds like it may be a tad early to resume your regular workouts. Perhaps taking it easy for a little longer, maybe even another week, may be in order. I think rest is vastly under-rated, even when you are not recovering from an illness like that.
Once you are feeling better and able to do your normal day (sans workout) without any fatigue, then you may want to dip your toe back in the water. Maybe a short run or ride, or a brief gym workout, just to shake-off the cobwebs, and see how you feel afterward. If still not feeling it, then back it down and rest more and try again next week. If that first workout goes OK, then gradually ramp back to your routine workout regimen. It wont take as long as you may think to get back on the horse, but everyone is different, and with age it take longer, yada yada…
You’ve been one to provide a lot of health advice to us on these boards, so it seems odd going the other way for a change. <I mean that in a complimentary way>.
I think there is a difference between detraining from time off and the impact of illness. As already admitted I lost about 7 pounds, and in Ambi terms, I am pretty sure it was a bad cut.* IOW this was not preserving muscle mass while losing fat with gradual loss while maintaining muscle mass with resistance exercise.
I probably should post in the stereotypes you fit thread - doctor who is a bad patient.
I’ll not push too hard, do relatively easy work-outs, and try not to let my frustration over my diminished state get me to goad myself to pushing to catch back up to pre-illness levels … by yesterday dammit! … but complete time off? Psychologically I cannot do that. Yeah, I know I am acting just like that poster who asks for advice and then refuses to take it. Sorry.
*How long does it take to rebuild from a bad cut Ambi?
