The flu

[Peter Dempster]

Male, 38 yo. 218 current weight. 6’1.

Crushed for the past 9 days with the flu and couldn’t train. I was on a four-day split when I went down. I’m going to start back tomorrow, so a 10-day break with a loss of 6 lbs of body weight (224 to 218 lbs). Making matters worse is that I leave Sunday for 4 days of international work travel so I really will have a break of closer to 16 days before I can fully resume training. Since I got sick after my upper day, it’s actually been like...14 days for lower.

For tomorrow I’m thinking something like:

SQ: Work up to a set of 5 @8, then 2 more sets of 5 @8
Bench: same as SQ
DL: work up to a set of 5 @8
Press: same as SQ

I figure this is a lot of volume for, nothing but since I’m stuck out of the gym until at least next Thursday it will stave off some of the losses. I don’t want to simply pick work weights now since I don’t know how best up I am just yet from the flu.

When I return next Thursday I was thinking of perhaps a 10-day LP, just to try to build back up as quickly as possible. Or, should I just try to resume my current program with say a 10% offset and more argressive week to week progress until I’m back at my last pre-illness work set weights?

Tx

[Dlk93]

Depending on how advanced you are, you would probably benefit from a short LP as you described.

[Dlk93]

PP recommends around a 20% reset for lifters missing over a week's worth of training. But your jumps can be more aggressive this time around, 10-20 pounds. This is in the context of a late stage novice, though I assume it's generally the same for early intermediates. If you're beyond early intermediate or advanced I assume you wouldn't be here asking this.