When following a fitness program, and missing a few days due to sickness, what's the best course of action?

Question

I've been doing the Insanity Beachbody series of workouts, and, near the end of week three, had to take a 5 day downtime due to a severe flu. I spent most of the 5 days in bed, and got little movement, never mind exercise.

Now that I am back on my feet, I'm not sure what's best to do. Should I continue the workouts from where I left off, should I skip the 5 days in the routine and do the next one up, or, should I just start the whole regime over from the start?

(I'm looking to make sure I get the best long term effects for my health and fitness - I'm not worried about sticking to the program or any other issues with commitment to it, I normally complete programs I follow).

Answer 1

A lot of people don't realize that you can exercise just fine through a lot of minor illnesses. However, given that you had severe flu, you body is probably in worse condition than it was the day before you got sick. The actual physical causes could be not only recovery issues from the flu -- such as dehydration -- but also loss of muscle capacity from five days of lying in bed.

I am not familiar with the exercise program you mentioned, but if you are working on a schedule of progressively harder workouts, you should probably go back to the previous week rather than skip ahead to the next week. The schedule of workouts is designed to get increasingly harder as your fitness increases; you haven't kept up with the schedule, and if anything your body is probably behind.