How long should I wait to workout after having Covid?

herringboxes

Acknowledging this is an old thread, I agree based on my own experience. The first of two times I got Covid, I tried exercising maybe a week after recovering. I had felt fine. But trying to exercise revealed noticable weakness in the heart. It scared me.

The weakness continued for months, maybe six months. I didn’t do anything strenuous during that time. I feared permenant damage, especially since I had already gotten chronic fatigue symptoms from a different virus many years before.

Fortunately for me, it seems to have healed. I can exercise again, and got my cardiac fitness higher than it’s been in a long time.

Second time I got Covid, I did not notice any lasting effects.

My experience is just that, one experience, but I would like to share the hope that even months-long issues have a chance of healing.

williamsonmj1

I will chip in here.

It is *very* dependent on the individual, the severity of the symptoms, and the the extent and type of persistent symptoms. People talk about 'long COVID' but really this is several different things. One flavor is just symptoms that you had while sick that take a long time to go away. If you have severe COVID then you get congestion that takes 3-9 months to clear, and many other things can last. The second is new symptoms that can appear. The third is the famous symptoms that are like chronic fatigue syndrome or ME.

My wife has had COVD twice very mildly. The first time was just like a normal cold, she had to take some medicine, didn't feel great. Second time it was even less than that. Both times she isolated and didn't interrupt her exercise schedule. That being said, we have both heard of people with very mild cases who felt quite a bit worse after exercising.

I got COVID twice, the first *severely*. I was medically evacuated from the place I work, in an private air ambulance, and nearly died. Once I got out of hospital I rested for about a week and then I started walking up the very steep hill outside my family home, twice a day and then once a day when the walks got longer. First day, I could only make about 20m and I had to stop three times and was pretty much doubled over. Within a week or so I could walk the whole hill (it was about a mile) and within two weeks we were able to go trekking in the UK lake district. Had to stop quite often on the uphill parts but we did it. Getting to this point was *very* hard but I did it. My breathing was back to normal within three months and my cardio was actually better than it was before I got sick. So in this case exercise worked extremely well for me. But this was because I had pretty much no persistent symptoms except the 'COVID changes' in my lungs and weird liver function.

The second time I got COVID it was not as severe but I was hospitalized again- mainly precautionary. However this time it left me with a lot of fun, persistent symptoms. And for about two-three months exerting myself would often cause mini-crashes in my Oxygen saturation and make my BP spike. But after that I was able to exercise fairly normally. The mini-crashes came anyway, but I was able to lift and run.

So... people have really different experiences.