conditioning

As we begin to learn to live with Covid-19 and not have to deal with lock downs anymore, the likelihood of contracting COVID has increased, and while not ideal there will be some steps to take before making a full return to training/competition.

Obviously you will need to isolate for the prescribed time by your local government, miss training, games and stay at home until you are symptom free and ready to return to training.

As with any illness, it is imperative to give our bodies rest and time to recover, your immune system needs time to recover so you don’t want to cause extra undue stress on your body at this time, if possible gentle low intensity movement can be implemented.

After the initial infection you will need to take some time to build back into usual training. Particularly as with COVID-19, even once you are symptom free there seems to be a delay in regaining full respiratory function. So it may take a little more time before you are able to train/compete at your previous levels. So a gradually build back to your usual training load and intensity will required.

There are some guidelines you can follow for a gradual return to training post Covid-19 infection. These are based on the work done by Elliot et al. (2020). “Graduated return to play guidance following Covid-19 infection”. BJSM, Vol 54 No. 19 which you can see in the infographic on this page. It follows a minimum 6 days re introduction to training but each phase can also be lengthened out based in individual needs and response to increasing loads during training.