Prior to tonight’s session, I hadn’t been on the mats in days! Ugh, it felt like weeks! As my fever went away, I decided my cabin fever got the best of me. But, can you workout when sick? Apparently, you can. And, in many cases, you should.
Workouts when you are sick, propel your immune system to fight harder.
It’s a bit of a generalization, but, for the most part, as long as you don’t have a fever and your body generally feels almost normal you should be able to workout when you are sick. I prefer to grappling to running on the treadmill, obviously. Something tells me you might stand to agree with me on this one. Although, it is important to point out that you should NOT be working out when you are sick and running a fever. When you have a fever you are contagious, and your defenses are low. So, if you workout when you are sick AND have a fever, you will be doing more damage than good.
However…
If you are at the tail end of your illness, and you are experiencing illness symptons from the shoulders up you can safely resume your working out. Try not to hawk any loogies on anybody though.
Today, I came in to roll what I had thought was going to be an open mat. Little did I know that my instructor changed his mind last minute and snuck in some armbars from closed guard. I am not complaining, my armbars from closed guard can definitely use some work. After some techniques we did a little rolling.
Despite my thought processes being cloudy, body feeling sluggish from a weekend of laying in bed, and my sinuses being very congested I had a lot of fun today. I went in with the intention of just playing around a little on the mats. It’s very refreshing to be able to empty my mind and not have to constantly be worrying about counting points in my head, recovering from sweeps, and attacking submissions all out.
BJJ is supposed to be fun after all. And, it definitely helped my body feel a little more like normal after it was all said and done. So, again, you can workout when you are sick as long as your symptons are above the shoulders (sinus congestion) but not when the symptons are below the shoulders (fever). Be sure to take it easy on yourself; it is not wise to try to beat any personal bests at this time. But, have some fun and sweat a little.
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