How do I keep moving through a cold or a busy period?

Routines rarely end because someone decides to stop. They end during a fortnight of illness or work, and what determines whether they survive is whether there was a smaller version to fall back to.

Safety

Step by step

1. Use the above-the-neck guide for illness.Blocked nose, sneezing, a mild sore throat — light activity is usually fine and often feels better. A fever, aching, a chest cough or breathlessness — rest. It is a rule of thumb, not a medical rule, and when in doubt rest.
2. Never exercise with a fever.Raised temperature with exertion puts real strain on the heart and can prolong the illness. This is the one part of it that is not a judgement call.
3. Reduce intensity before reducing frequency.A gentle walk instead of a run keeps the habit intact. Stopping entirely is what breaks it, and the habit is worth more than any individual session.
4. Define a minimum in advance.Ten minutes, one walk, five exercises — whatever is small enough to do on the worst day. Deciding this before a busy period is what makes it available during one.
5. Return gradually after illness.Roughly, allow a couple of easy days for each day you were ill before going back to normal intensity. Going straight back is a common route to a relapse or an injury.
6. Expect to feel worse than the time off suggests.Fitness drops faster than people expect and the first sessions back feel disproportionately hard. It returns quickly, and knowing that stops it being discouraging.
7. Move within the day rather than adding a session.During a busy stretch, walking part of the commute, taking calls standing and using the stairs cost no extra time. That is where movement survives when nothing else fits.
8. Protect one slot rather than three.Trying to keep the full routine through a busy fortnight usually loses all of it. Keeping one session and letting the rest go usually keeps the habit.
9. Watch for the things a busy period takes first.Sleep, food and movement, roughly in that order. Sleep matters most of the three, and protecting it is often the better decision.
10. Do not try to make up missed sessions.Doubling up after a gap raises injury risk and rarely helps. Resume at the normal level.
11. Take the long view.A fortnight off in a year makes almost no difference to anything. The pattern over months is what matters, and treating a lost fortnight as failure is what turns it into a lost year.
12. Have a specific restart date.Not 'when things calm down', which never quite arrives. A date in the diary, and resume at a reduced level on it.

Tips

• Decide the minimum version before you need it. In the middle of a bad week nobody negotiates a sensible reduction with themselves.
• Above the neck, move gently; below the neck, rest; fever, always rest.
• Two easy days for each day ill before returning to normal intensity. It prevents the relapse that catches people out.

Common mistakes

• Stopping entirely rather than reducing — The habit is what is hard to rebuild, not the fitness. A reduced version through a bad fortnight preserves the thing that matters.
• Going straight back to full intensity after illness — It commonly causes a relapse or an injury. Ease back over several days proportional to how long you were ill.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask