You got ill and now you feel like you've blown it

Short answer: being ill doesn't wipe out your progress. What costs you is the gap between getting better and actually restarting. Shrink that gap by returning to a small, easy version of your routine within a day or two of feeling human again, and build back up over the following week or two.

Here's the usual story. You catch something. Energy tanks, appetite goes, sleep is rubbish, and training is the last thing on your mind. A few days pass. Then a week. You start feeling better, but you look at your calendar, look at your old plan, and think "I'll start properly on Monday."

Monday comes and goes. Now you're ten days out, you feel behind, and the plan that used to feel normal looks like a mountain. That's the bit that does the damage. The cold or the bug is a few days. The guilt spiral can be a month.

Why being ill feels like a disaster (and mostly isn't)

When you're ill, your body is busy doing a job: fighting off whatever it's up against. Training and food take a back seat, and that's fine. A few days of lower activity and messy eating won't undo months of work. Your fitness doesn't vanish in a week. Your habits are the fragile bit.

Habits run on momentum. Once the routine stops, you have to make an active decision to restart it, and that decision gets harder every day you put it off. Most people don't fall off because of the illness. They fall off because they wait for the perfect moment to come back.

So the real question isn't "how do I make up for lost time?" It's "how do I make restarting as easy as possible?"

The mistakes that turn a bad week into a bad month

• Waiting for 100%. You don't need to feel brilliant to do a 20 minute walk or eat a proper meal. Waiting until you feel perfect usually means waiting too long.
• Trying to make up for it. Doubling your sessions or slashing your food to "balance it out" is a great way to get ill again or injure yourself. You can't bank missed sessions.
• Going all or nothing. If you can't do the full plan, you do nothing. That's the trap. A small version of the plan beats no plan, every time.
• Judging yourself against the old numbers. Your first session back will probably feel flat. That's normal. It tells you nothing about long term progress.

The three step plan to get back on track

1. Pick your minimum and do it as soon as you can function

Decide on a bare minimum version of your week. Not your ideal week, your "I'm still getting over something" week. For most people that looks like:

• One or two short sessions or walks, kept easy
• Three proper meals a day with a decent amount of protein
• Normal bedtime, or as close as you can get

Then start the moment you can do it without feeling worse. If you're not sure whether you're well enough, a good rule of thumb is that mild symptoms from the neck up (sniffly, bit of a sore throat) usually allow easy movement, while a fever, chest symptoms or feeling properly wiped out mean rest. If in doubt, or if it drags on, speak to your GP.

2. Rebuild gradually, not heroically

Your body has just been through something. Treat the first week back as a ramp, not a restart. Drop the weights or the pace a notch below where you left off, keep a couple of reps in the tank, and stop sessions feeling fine rather than flattened.

A simple way to do it: week one at roughly half your usual volume, week two at around three quarters, week three back to normal if you feel good. Nothing scientific about those numbers, they're just a sensible shape to follow. If you feel rough, hold where you are for another few days.

3. Make the next session non-negotiable, and keep it small

The most useful thing you can do on any day is book the next session. Put it in your diary, lay your kit out, decide what you're having for dinner. The goal for the first week back isn't a great workout. It's proving to yourself that you're someone who turns up again after a knock.

Consistency isn't about never getting ill. Everyone gets ill. It's about how fast you get back to normal once it's over.

A quick example

Say you normally train four times a week. You get a nasty cold and miss ten days. You feel better on a Thursday.

• Thursday: 25 minute walk, proper meals, early night.
• Saturday: light full body session at about half your normal volume.
• Monday to Sunday: two sessions at roughly 75% effort, steady food, normal sleep.
• The week after: back to four sessions if you feel good.

Total time to being back in full flow: about two and a half weeks from feeling human. Compare that with the person who waits for the "right Monday" and is still planning their comeback a month later.

What to remember

You haven't blown it. A short break barely dents your fitness, and the progress you made before is still there. The only thing that can really undo it is letting a few missed days turn into a new habit of not training.

So when you're ill, rest properly. When you're better, do a small version of your routine quickly, build it up steadily, and don't try to make up for lost time. That's the whole game.

- Patrick Moorshead 

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