COVID Isolation for the Fitness Enthusiast
Am I writing this for you? Or to remind myself that limiting my movement more than I have in my adult life as I isolate for 10 days during (an extremely mild) case of COVID is indeed the best decision for my overall health and fitness? Either way, here are some thoughts on COVID isolation in relation to fitness.
Completely forgoing physical activity is hard for those of us who rely on movement and exercise for mental health. Here are four big reasons that I think it’s smart, responsible, and actually good for your long term fitness to take at least 10 completely sedentary days (yes, i said it - completely sedentary - that’s right, sit yourself down).
Taking 10 days off will have an extremely minimal effect on muscle strength and hypertrophy.
Losses in muscle force production (aka muscle strength) are very minimal during the first MONTH off of exercise.
If you were completely immobilized and in a cast, you might lose up to 0.5% of your strength per day. While this is not the case for COVID isolation, I’m saying this to illustrate a point - even if your whole body was in a cast and immobilized (a far extreme), the most muscle you’d theoretically lose in 10 days is less than 5%.
If you’re like me and you feel like you’ve instantly lost all your gains, here’s why that probably is an illusion:
Workouts result in more blood flow to muscles. This is because they’re more metabolically active when you use them. Blood delivers oxygen and nutrients to fuel exercise efforts and aid in muscle repair post-workout.
Muscle glycogen levels are higher when you’re exercising regularly. Glycogen is the type of energy our bodies essentially keep on hand for immediate use. We need more of it when exercising at higher intensity (lifting heavy or during higher intensity cardio efforts). Glycogen also takes up some physical space because it has a high water content. This is part of what contributes to the post workout 'muscle pump.’
Inflammatory stress means muscles are more swollen a lot of the time. If you exercise really regularly, your muscles are likely usually in a somewhat swollen state.
So, if it looks like you have lost muscle, it’s loss in muscle hydration and reduced inflammation. This will return immediately after you resume exercise.
This explains why it can feel like we lose aesthetic progress so quickly during a haitus, but why do we feel weaker during that first session or week back if we haven’t actually gotten weaker? Essentially, the first session back feels bad because motor patterns might feel rusty the first session back. In other words, you’ll just be a little less coordinated that first day or two.
Overall, you won’t lose any noticeable strength over 10 (or even 30) days of relatively sedentary activity. Plus, typically it takes about one third to one half the time to regain strength you’ve lost than it did to lose it in the first place. So, for a 10-day break that means it’d take you approximately 3 days. Maybe 5? Not a lot in the grand scheme of things.
The nature of life. We all face setbacks during one time or another that force us to take a short (or extended) breaks from exercise. This is inevitable.
Covid isolation is just one of many reasons. Other reasons? Californias fire season, life changes, you get it. It is normal and expected to face setbacks that prevent you from exercising. We need to try to be ok with that, even if exercise is one of our happiest and safest places (it is for me).
As a fitness enthusiast, it’s easy to get lost in numbers based goals like lifting heavier, running faster, etc. Don’t let yourself lose sight of the absolute best and most constant reason to exercise - just to actually feel better and life a healthier life. We are training for life. We are exercising in order to be better prepared for whatever life throws at us. Life includes periods where obstacles and hardships require us to take a break from the gym and use the mental and physical strength we’ve developed elsewhere.
It looks like it’s actually pretty bad for us to exercise, even if symptoms are mild or barely there.
Premature physical exertion is linked to long covid symptoms, regardless of how severe your acute symptoms were. This means that you should absolutely not cut your time off short, I’m serious!
We don’t know a lot about COVID honestly - and we know even less about long COVID. We do know that it looks like long COVID can affect healthy people, even if they didn’t have serious symptoms during their COVID infection. It also is looking like exercising too soon will increase your chances at experiencing long COVID.
Even if you might be ok, the risk (potentially quite large) is really just not worth the reward (very small). We’ve already learned that we can regain all the strength we lose from 10 days off within 3-5 days at the most. To me, avoiding a 3-day setback just isn’t worth risking any chance of longer term reduced lung capacity or cognitive ability.
What you can do
Learn the common signs of incomplete recovery like breathlessness, cough, fatigue, headaches, racing heart, and aches and pains. If you feel any of this, don’t push through. The first workouts back are not the time to forge mental toughness. They’re a chance to stay in touch with your body and the signs it’s giving you. Remember, you can maintain strength with less than 1/7 of the work it took you to gain it in the first place.
Wait to feel 100% better. This varies by person, that’s why there’s no official guideline. The best thing you can do is to get familiar with the signs of incomplete recovery and really pay attention to how you feel when you do go back to exercise. Be ready to cut it short if you experience symptoms.
Take this opportunity to prove to yourself that your fitness isn’t hanging on by a thread.
If you are convinced that 10 days off will be detrimental, then taking 10 days off to show yourself that it in fact will not be detrimental might be long term great for your relationship with exercise. Perhaps this will make it less obsessive (or am I just projecting my own hopes and dreams onto the reader?).
As I write this in isolation, I am honestly still a bit nervous about taking 10 days. I am clearly addicted to exercise! I have no idea where I’d be mentally without it in my life and I’ve been nervous that it will do a lot of damage to the healthy relationship I’ve (slowly) built with my body and food over the past 10 years.
My movement practice really grounds me and keeps me in touch with what my body needs for fuel (a lot of food it turns out) and I honestly am not sure how to handle navigating food and body image without regular exercise as a grounding force. As is typical, I’m doing it by passing the time reading studies that remind me of the cold hard facts - and that is that 10 days off is nothing. That’s exactly what I’d say to a family member or client and it’s what I should say to myself.
So, there you have it. Four major reasons that I, a certified gym rat, really urge you to take the full isolation period off from activity. Maybe even more than that! Still coughing and lethargic on day 14? Take it easy. Losing a a bit of muscle is nothing compared to risking your capacity to do hard stuff and think complex thoughts.
Four points to go through if you or a loved one are struggling with just doing nothing during isolation
Remind yourself how much food your body needs just to exist. To exist as a 30 year old woman weighing about 135 lbs, I need about 1,700 calories even when not moving much! While this is almost 1000 calories less than I’d eat during my regular day to day, but it’s still quite a lot. I’m not telling you to count calories, but reminding yourself that the baseline number is much higher than zero might help. Your body needs fuel - fighting this virus takes energy.
Take yourself through a classic self-love reflection exercise. What would you think if a friend took 10 days off of exercise? Oh, nothing? You wouldn’t even notice??
Remind yourself that supporting long term health the most important priority for exercise. Exercising with COVID, or too soon after COVID, does not support positive long term health outcomes.
Go read the first part of this post and remind yours of those cold hard facts. Taking sufficient and generous time off is better for you you long term than starting your exercise routine back a couple days early ever could be. Missing a few extra workouts over the course of your life isn’t even a drop in the bucket.
Other nice articles for continued reading
On returning back to workouts after a hiatus
sources/studies:
effects of immobilization on exercise
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6548068/
Muscle glycogen stores during exercise
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6019055/#nuy001-B1
Minimum exercise dose to maintain strength