Doctors advise being especially careful if you are experiencing vomiting or diarrhoea, which can be severely dehydrating. Comander recommends waiting at least 24 hours after you have recovered from a gastrointestinal illness before exercising. For flulike symptoms, including muscle aches, fatigue and joint pain, patients can return to exercise gradually when symptoms have resolved.
If you are recovering from a severe illness such as pneumonia, or if you were hospitalised, ask your doctor when it’s safe to exercise.
What if it’s COVID-19?
The guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for returning to your normal activities after COVID is now similar to that for other respiratory illnesses, but it’s important to consider the severity of your case before exercising.
Comander points to the most recent guidelines from the American College of Cardiology: if you’re asymptomatic, according to those guidelines, you can try working out three days after you test positive. (Taking even a few days off can be helpful in case you develop symptoms later, Comander says.) But if you have any significant heart- or lung-related symptoms such as chest pressure or a persistent cough, wait until they resolve before trying to exercise.
The decision on when you go back to working out should primarily be based on how you feel, not necessarily on how you are testing or how long you have had COVID, says Dr Tanya Melnik, co-director of the Adult Post-COVID Clinic at M Health Fairview in Minnesota. Individual responses to the infection can vary significantly, she adds. For people who experience more fatigue during and after COVID, “patience becomes a really necessary virtue,” she says.
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Once you feel up for more activity, Melnik recommends, make sure you can do basic chores without feeling wiped out. Try going up and down a flight of stairs, running errands or simply standing up for a few minutes. If any of those activities leave you exhausted, it’s probably too early to exercise. But if you are able to do routine tasks without experiencing fatigue or shortness of breath, it is safe to try low-intensity, short workouts, she says.
Build up the intensity and duration of your exercise gradually, Melnik says, “but not both at the same time.”
Start slow, and be patient
Instead of going for a personal best once you’re feeling well enough to exercise again, focus on “completion days,” says Dr Daniel Anderson, a cardiologist at Nebraska Medicine. Pay less attention to your running pace or how much weight you can lift and embrace the fact that you made it out the door.
And don’t be surprised if it takes a few weeks to get back to your usual exercise routine. “For every day you’re down and out, give yourself three to recover,” Anderson says, although your age and fitness level can affect your recovery time.
As you ramp back up, Anderson also recommends trying the talk test: if you can’t hold a conversation during your workout, you may need to dial it back.
“The last thing you want to do is to get in trouble by doing too much coming out of the chute,” he says. “Take it with caution, take it with ease.”
The New York Times
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