Dr. Squat - Dr. Fred Hatfield

I agree with BMcquire1 - I used to train through sickness when I was younger ( I'm assuming you mean something more than a cold or some hay fever ) and all it ended up doing was dragging me down more and making me sicker or prolonging the time it took me to get well. Now, if I'm really sick, I let the workout schedule slide and I get better faster. Generally, when I come back after one of these forced layoffs I'm really haven't lost anything and am back to training poundages within a workout or two.

Vaughn

I work through a cold and up my glutamine, vitamin c intake, and if the cold is severe I may avoid going heavy. Something involving stomach distress will take me right out though.

Above the neck - blocked nose, headaches etc... OK to train.

Below the neck - stomach problems, diarrhoea, cramps, chest pain etc... NOT OK to train.

Can't remember where I read it but normally works OK for me.

Just my .02

Nick

Can we come up with a checklist of some kind?

Like this.

Do you have...

Fever? = no training.

Cough? = can train.

Sneezing? = can train.

Coughing up green stuff? = no training.

Coughing up yellow stuff? = can train.

Coughing up clear stuff? = can train.

Vomiting? = no training.

...... how's my list so far? Anyone disagree?

Sometimes vomiting is caused by training! Mmm, 20 rep breathing squats...I remember the days.

Just to add another comment, this topic reminds me of how a lot of old people think. They get older and they start to think like you have to take it easy otherwise this or that will happen. But guess who generally live to be healthy up into their older years? Its the people who take care of themselves and stay active! For example, my friend's father used to chop wood out in the yard all the way up until he was 85. I've even known older men and women 70 years old and older who still do powerlifting, and even powerlifting in gear.

There are extreme health conditions. I wouldn't recommend someone who has an aneurism to do powerlifting. But that is obviously a much more extreme condition as opposed to a cold. Some conditions can be a matter of life or death. A cold is just a cold and you can easily fight it off. Someone older would obviously have more trouble. Perhaps even they could still train, but take it easy and try to rest more.

Nick,
I'm not sure what you meant by "it wasn't the flu".

I'm not sure if you are saying I couldn't have worked out while having the flu? Well, the flu is horrible! I can remember having it a few years ago and I was out of work for a week, thought I was going to die. Over this past winter I can remember feeling almost that bad, not quite, but definitely really bad and every time I did a set I felt even worse. It was so bad I felt like just being there and working out was only going to make it worse and hinder my recovery. That month it seemed I had a cold that kept coming back over and over again. Perhaps it was only a cold, a relentless cold that kept coming back because my immune system was run into the dirt. It was definitely pretty bad.

I know a lot of people thought Mike Mentzer was a waco, but besides where he got extreme and nutty, if you ask me he actually did used to have a few good points and ideas. One thing I'm sure a lot of us would agree upon is that recovery is an important issue in terms of sports training. Mentzer used to argue that people never focused enough on recovery when it came to program design. And I thought that actually was a great point. (Pardon though; that doesn't mean I'm saying his way was the solution or anything like that.)

So agreeing with what you said about something being wrong if you're constantly getting sick, I think I'm with you on that. I look at how people train these days and often wonder if even 70% of what they do in their training is even necessary. Some people work out every day or even twice per day. Others do 3 hour sessions. I've personally done long workouts like that and if you ask me, I was probably only benefiting off from my first hour and a half of the workout at the most; the rest was just a waste of time and cutting into my recovery.

Well, in reality people have tried do address recovery but I don't think so as much in the right ways. Its all about proper nutrition, rest, supplementation, and for some athletes even resorting to illegal drugs. And then you have guys like Brooks Kubik who have been able to set great records naturally by spending less than 3 hours per week in the gym and no more than one hour per workout.

I guess what I'm getting at is quite simple. I believe there has got to be more sensible ways to train than what is most common and recover better so you can get better results. The reality is that some training such as powerlifting with gear is incredibly stressful. Why make it worse than it already is? I think the answer to the problem I'm talking about is avoiding redundancy in your workout design.

And I have seen folks get great results with the less is more idea. I've got many friends who set world records only working out 2 times per week. I've also got a few friends who have benched 500 lbs from only working out once per week. Charles Bailey even told me he was only doing 6 workouts per month last year, taking one week per month off.

So I guess where this all comes in on the question about colds is, don't excessively beat yourself into the dirt beyond the point of no return for no reason and you should get a severe cold. And if you're smart you'll take some time off once in a while anyways. As a side note, you really have to make every set count and perform your best at it. Because if you do your sets right the first time you won't need to do as many sets. And unfortunately it takes experience to be able to get that good at it. If you don't have the experience it could take more sets to learn a movement properly and get good at it; that is the unfortunate reality.

Quote Charles:

"I'm not sure what you meant by "it wasn't the flu".

I'm not sure if you are saying I couldn't have worked out while having the flu? Well, the flu is horrible! I can remember having it a few years ago and I was out of work for a week, thought I was going to die."

THAT's the flu. Off work and in bed for a week. The point I was making was that you wouldn't be getting out of bed for training (because you couldn't!), and I'd taken my understanding of a previous post that you would. Sorry if I got it wrong. It seems we agree on most things, and we DO agree on what the flu is.

The illnesses that cause the most problems might well be the aches/pains/niggles/sniffles etc. that make you feel a bit crap but that can still be trained through ... and that's not always a good idea. Flu is more straightforward - if you're collapsed in bed, you don't need to think about the gym, and you don't tend to go back until you feel a whole lot better.

Most important thing? Train SMART.

Nick

N

Todd,
I wasn't sure if that post was directed towards me. But if so, the answer is yes. Remember I sent you a pm about that a while back?

I really do think I was overtraining. And I did end up making proper adjustments. One thing I am convinced of by now is that overtraining can add up over time. Now days in my training I'm just trying to keep it goal specific while focusing on recovery. No more typical periodization schemes. Just simple progression. I figure if I am progressing then I have no need to do excess volume anymore, unless I just want to look cool and brag to my friends. Even if my gains are small, I know with consistency it will add up over a year or two. And I know I'd much rather do it that way than to try to make gains yesterday only to overtrain and take a lay off or to do too much volume and end up losing track of my goals.

Kid,
You are trying to make things more complicated than they really are or have to be. Have you ever heard of the acronym "KISS" for keep it simple stupid? Don't try to make a rocket ship out of a bicycle.

That is the thing about science and I believe its misuse. Sometimes the answer lies right under your nose plain and simple, but use humans with our big brains want to make things into more than what they really are.

How about a good few rules of thumb?
1) Don't overtrain. If you are putting too much into your training and progress slows down and you're getting colds real easily that won't go away, that should tell you something.
2) Your instincts should tell you if you should go to the gym or not. A cold can often be something you can work through. But even the biggest idiot can tell when they have a cold so bad that they need to take a day off from work so they can get better, otherwise they will get worse.

I'm going to hold pretty stern about #2. Because for example, I have had people tell me before to go to the hospital for a simple cold. That's just being way overly cautious. You know what you can get away with. Even a dog is smart enough to know when it feels like crap and just wants to sit there and rest. There's no reason why a human wouldn't either.

Todd,
I wasn't sure if that post was directed towards me. But if so, the answer is yes. Remember I sent you a pm about that a while back?

I really do think I was overtraining. And I did end up making proper adjustments. One thing I am convinced of by now is that overtraining can add up over time. Now days in my training I'm just trying to keep it goal specific while focusing on recovery. No more typical periodization schemes. Just simple progression. I figure if I am progressing then I have no need to do excess volume anymore, unless I just want to look cool and brag to my friends. Even if my gains are small, I know with consistency it will add up over a year or two. And I know I'd much rather do it that way than to try to make gains yesterday only to overtrain and take a lay off or to do too much volume and end up losing track of my goals.

### Was just speaking to the question in general, but you make good points..... Small, incremental improvement over a year, 3 years, etc. will yield much greater results than large increases every few months followed by weeks or months of zero or mediocre improvement due to illness.

Sick people aren't big and strong. Find the strongest guy in your gym and ask him when his last 2 colds were. He'll have trouble remembering.

As for the other questions coming up...... whether you can workout with a fever of 100.6 vs 101.2, working out with a runny nose and all this horse crap.....

That's why your sick! Get over it! Stop being anal retentive. You're worrying yourself sick over common sense nonsense.

If your sick, get in bed, ramp up the vitamin C and get well and/or go to the doctor.

If your not sick, go work out!

Frankly though, anytime I've actually been sick, working out wasn't even a consideration. I was frickin SICK! Porcelain god forgive me I'll do whatever you want, never curse again, go on a mission trip to the Congo.....SICK!

When I've had some allergies or a sinus infection in the spring time because everything is blooming..... not working out wasn't/isn't an option. You're not feeling 100% boohoo you frickin baby.

If you're having trouble with gains and are wondering about crap like this, that's part of your problem as opposed to that guy that doesn't worry about it and just goes about his business making consistent progress in the gym.

I'll take a wild guess and bet that some of you that get sick regularly worry about picking up germs when a family member, co-worker, etc. announces they're sick. You start germxing and washing your hands 8 more times a day and so forth.

I haven't had a cold or flu in close to a damn decade.... you know what I do? Laugh at them and arrogantly proclaim that I don't get sick. It never re-enters my consciousness.

I live my life in an attempt to be healthy, not just big and strong. My diet and supplement regimen supports optimal immune function because sickness=death in the jungle.

Taking extra vitamin C and antioxidants is relatively cheap to prevent lost days of work, workouts, family time, passing sickness on to family that end up missing school, work, etc.

You can't prevent every illness, but with a little effort you can instantly improve your immune system and decrease chances, duration, & severity of illness. But this check list of sick workout guidelines is akin to guidelines of when our military can and cannot shoot back at the Taliban.....

What's the damn question? If you're getting shot at shoot back.

If you're sick you're sick, if you've had a few crappy nights sleep and a headache from an after work cocktail party, screw you pansy! Go jog! Stay out of my weight room because you get in the effin way doing 16 variations for every goofy ass chest and bicep movement ever invented. How are those inverse pronated angular cable curls with a rectal squeeze working for you anyway?

It's also similar to when I was coaching basketball coach, we had to have this talk with our players every year, because invariably in the 4-6 weeks of practice leading up to the season guys get tired of practice and want to take a day off when they get a boo boo......

If you're injured, we don't want you on the court in a game or practice, we want you getting treatments, ice, heat stem, massage, rehab, etc......

But if you're just hurt...... get your ass in gear!

What's the difference? You know! But it takes being honest with yourself.... and that's hard.

I gotta agree, the inverse pronated angular cable curls with a rectal squeeze is a stroke of genius. I think I am gonna do a few sets tonight and start a fad amongst the bicep specialists at my gym. The secret is to clinch the buttocks at the top of the motion for optimal bicep hypertrophy. I heard all the top body builders do these. For advanced trainees, try them standing on a stability ball. Somebody is gonna crap their pants and break a leg tonight, woohoo!

Just when I was about to skip my workout because I was tired... Screw tired, I am going to the gym.

Willis Lewis, Jr.
"The man that dreams success is already successful"