OK, Superman I ain’t, but I did catch a cold, or something. My guess is I became over-trained a bit.
I really did not mean to get sick. Honest injun. Seriously, I need a cold like a need another hole in the head, and I have seven holes already! This is why I did not train yesterday. Or today. Or the day before yesterday. Whew. In fact, I think I have worked out two times in two weeks. Is that setting a good example, or what?
Clearly, for the last two weeks my body was trying to get my attention. In whispers at first. An ache here, a twitch of pain there. Then, my body started screaming at me. I felt tired. Unmotivated. Listless. Premenstrual. Plus, I was feeling some stress with moving my web site from Go Shabby to Host Gator. Finances suck. News is depressing me. In short, all of this stress added up to a body that felt like a bad pot of expensive stew that had everything but the kitchen sink thrown into it, and because of all the ingredients tastes like ass (Hey, I think my metaphors are improving. Yayyyy!).
Listen to me, and listen good. If you are working out and you feel a cold coming on, then put down the weights. Now, this is not a prescription for getting better necessarily, but if you are training your ass off then chances are your body is telling you something, and you would be wise to listen to it.
I am not saying you need to hang up the iron indefinitely, but it would not hurt you to knock off for a few days at the very least. My reasoning goes like this: Working out is a form of stress. The heavier you train, the more stress you expose your body to, and the more recovery you need. If you do not get the recovery you need you will run your immune system into the ground. Add to that the other stresses normally associated with life and you could be opening yourself up to serious illness. And for those of us already managing chronic icky-ness, woe be unto us. Over-training increases our chances of getting some sort of infirmity exponentially.
So, if you find yourself getting sick or feeling run down when you are training, then this is a signal that on some level your body’s ability to manage that stress is getting compromised. Taking several days off, drinking lots and lots of fluids, doing high doses of Vitamin C (Ester-C or Emergen-C) should accelerate your recovery, or at the very least make you pee a lot, which is always good for a few laughs. OK, maybe not. In fact, if you find yourself giggling every time you take a piss I would suggest getting some counseling. But I digress.
So, class, what have we learned today? Well, we have learned that if you are 44, going nowhere in life, sitting behind a computer 12 hours a day working on a web site that does not make you a dime, then you are setting yourself up for financial ruin and homelessness by the time you are 50, all the while coming to the sad realization that your life has been a total sham.
Ummmm….
Strike that.
What we have learned is that your are only human, life is short and so is your webmaster, so it’s best not to be too hard on yourself and give your body the adequate rest it needs, or your body will take it by force.
Capice? Savvy?
Good.
‘Til next time BatFans!
Popularity: 10% [?]
