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How to deal with sickness when training for a marathon & crossfit

Posted by Pascal Landshoeft

Jan 17, 2015 7:30:00 AM

Training__sickness

How to deal with sickness when training

This week I had food poisining and still i managed to do a personal best on my deadlift by doing 1x5 145 kg at 85 kg body weight. I should have listened to my girlfriend right from the start on how to get rid of it.

#1 Listen to your body

If your stomach is rumbling more than usual, if your wrists, arms and legs hurt more than usual beyond soreness after training and for longer, it is liekly that something is going on. Check yourself on a ongoing basis and be ready to make adjustments to your training plan accordingly. Here it is good to be knowledgeable and have different routines you can swap with each other when a particular part of your body is not functioning as normal and you just feel weaker than usual.

#2 Admit to yourself that you are sick

This is the hardest one for me personally as I always want to keep going. If a flu or stomach pain knocks you out admit to it rather sooner than later so that you can take action to get rid of it. It inhibits your performance in training or competition anyway so any session you do being sick is basically a waste of time, exposing you to the risk of getting even sicker, injured and therefore be out even longer.

#3 Get rest

Take a day off work and training or maybe two and lay down (also something I am not very good at). This will fasten up your recovery rate tremendously and bring you back on schedule faster.

#4 Stick with Soup 

Usually the healthy paleo, high protein, low carb diets are not particularly good for upset stomachs. Take a break from them when sick and get back to the good old soup. It is easy to digest and helps you.

#5 Stay away from alcohol and fast food

Even though the break is tempting to indulge in fast food and alcohol if you recover quicker than expected or you are not up for cooking the soup stay strong and do not give in. These things will not help you to recover.

#6 Give yourself one more day

After you think you are back on track give yourself one more day before you go back to the gym just to be on the safe side. This will set you up to nail it once you are back on the stepper, at the barbell or out on your run and get back into a good groove for your scheduled training, rather than getting back into the same old starting with a shoddy workout.

Doing this kept me out of the gym for five days but when I went back, I was back with a bang with a pr on my deadlift. The rest invested to fully recover paid off and I feel very energetic. Don't overdo it especially when you are sick, you will harm your long term performance, even though falling behind in your schedule will frustrate you. Croosfit & marathon training are not sprints, they are long term improvements in increments.

 

All the best

 

Pascal

 

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Topics: Injury free training