having a cold - taking off the training?

[suruba]

hey guys!

i recently caught up a cold from a stupid workmate, whose habit is to go to work even when she is ill!

however, my approach is to take off that training day and go to the gym again when the cold is gone!
it makes no sense to me to train even with let´s say 80% of 5RM!
my cold is not that bad, so wednesday will be fine again!

guys, what is your approach?
go to the gym and train no matter what, reduce weight or take off a full week?

suruba

[Tiburon]

Go to the gym, do your warm up sets, see how you feel. Then if you can at least bang out one heavy set you'll keep the movement patterns fresh without doing doing any taxing volume. (You can pick back up where you left off next workout). If you feel good after warming up, then do your worksets. You'd be surprised at the number of times that you just train right through the cold.

[Alyion]

Go the Gym, at least try.

Last time I had a cold (like 2 months ago) I went and toughed it out, my squats/dead still increased, but my bench didn't.

[gzt]

Depends on how I'm feeling. If I'm dripping goo everywhere and can't breathe, I'll take the day off. If it feels like something very minor, I'll go in and try to hit the numbers prescribed for the day. If it's in-between, I'll see how I feel after warmups. Sometimes that means I'll end up cutting volume and maintaining intensity (say, one set instead of three), sometimes it means I'll take a light day, sometimes it means I'll push hard. If I've been sick for several days and I can't seem to kick it, even if I feel fine, I might cut things down and take extra rest even though I "feel" like I could hit things. That happened yesterday to me, actually. I've had a light cold all week, it hasn't felt too bad, but it's just been dragging on and I didn't hit Friday's numbers, so I decided to just take Sunday off and bump it to Monday and not lift Tuesday (I lift Friday-Sunday-Tuesday, usually). This means my training won't be ideal, sure, but I think my recovery will be a lot better. The important thing is not to make too many excuses for yourself. If you're consistently in the weight room, you'll make progress. If you're consistently missing workouts, you're not going to make progress. But consistency doesn't mean driving yourself into the ground.

[Tom Campitelli]

As long as you can promise us that you will infect others, then yes.

[Albert987]

I got a cold last week and decided to opt out of the gym. I lost some sleep thanks to school, and I still have my cold, it's actually worse now.

If losing some hours of sleep did that much, I can imagine what the stress from training would do. I would just take it easy for a few days, it won't make a difference in the long run.

[DaveR]

Dude, seriously? A cold? Train!

[DaveR]

One more thing... I am guessing you are not a parent. Try being a parent and getting through a single month without picking up a sniffle or scratchy throat from one of your kids. Ain't happenning!

[Rorschach]

There's a cold, and there's a cold.
I've trained with sniffles no problem, but some knock you for six and you can barely get out of bed. You know your body better than the rest of us, you'll have to be honest with yourself.