Could Strength Training Help You Sleep Better?

Had the Flu? Here’s When It’s Actually Safe to Go Back to the Gym If it feels like everyone in Melbourne has the flu right now, there is a reason. Victoria’s latest respiratory surveillance report says influenza activity is high and describes 2026 as a later-than-usual season, with cases climbing through winter and into spring. Influenza A notifications are currently higher than at the same point in recent years, and community reporting of fever and cough is also elevated (Victorian Department of Health 2026). So there are a lot of people asking the same question: I’m finally starting to feel human again. Can I go back to the gym? The frustrating answer is that there is no magic “day seven” when everybody is automatically ready. Flu recovery varies enormously. Some people bounce back quickly. Others lose the fever but remain wiped out, weak or coughy for another week. What you should not do is make the decision based on guilt. Missing a handful of gym sessions because you have influenza is not going to undo months of training. Trying to make up for them before your body is ready is far more likely to turn an ordinary week off into a much longer interruption. First: Flu Is Not the Same as a Mild Cold The old fitness advice about using the “neck check” has been around for decades. The basic idea is that symptoms confined above the neck - a mild runny nose, sneezing or minor sore throat - may be compatible with gentle exercise, while fever, widespread aches, gastrointestinal symptoms, significant fatigue or chest symptoms mean you should rest. There is some common sense in that distinction, but it is not a scientifically validated permission slip to exercise whenever symptoms happen to sit above your collarbone. Modern sports-medicine researchers have pointed out that evidence behind the rule is limited and that respiratory illnesses vary greatly in severity (Ruuskanen et al. 2024). And genuine influenza tends to be a different beast from a sniffle. Fever, chills, body aches, exhaustion, headache and a significant cough are all good reasons to forget about training and recover. Research on febrile illness also shows that fever increases metabolic demand, fluid loss and perceived fatigue while reducing strength and endurance (Dick & Diehl 2014). If you are lying in bed wondering whether you should train, you probably already have your answer. Definitely Stay Home If You Still Have These Symptoms There are some fairly straightforward signs that today is not gym day. If you still have a fever or feel feverish, significant body aches, chills, marked fatigue, vomiting or diarrhoea, poor hydration, dizziness, unusual shortness of breath or a heavy chesty illness, rest. The same applies if you are technically out of bed but ordinary activities are still wiping you out. If showering, walking to the shops or making lunch feels like an event, your body is giving you useful information. You also need to be eating and drinking reasonably normally again. Influenza can leave people dehydrated and with a poor appetite, which is not an ideal starting point for a strength session. There is no prize for being the person who trained with the flu. “My Fever Is Gone. Am I Ready Now?” Possibly. But losing the fever is the beginning of the decision, not the entire decision. Before returning, ask yourself a few simple questions: Are my symptoms clearly improving rather than just temporarily suppressed by medication? Can I get through a normal day without needing to lie down afterwards? Am I eating and drinking normally? Can I walk for 10–15 minutes without feeling unusually breathless, dizzy or completely depleted? Does my body feel ready to move, or am I trying to convince it? A 2022 systematic review examining more than 31,000 athletes found that the average duration of symptoms from an acute respiratory illness was about seven days, but recovery and return to sport varied considerably (Snyders et al. 2022). More recent prospective research found that even among athletic people with confirmed respiratory infections, returning to some training happened earlier than returning to full training and full performance (Jooste et al. 2026). That distinction is useful for the rest of us too. Going back to the gym does not have to mean going straight back to your normal workout. Your First Session Back Should Feel Almost Too Easy This is where people often get themselves into trouble. You have missed a week. You feel behind. So you go back and decide to “see where you’re at” by doing exactly what you were doing before you got sick. Your body has other ideas. There is no universally validated percentage-by-percentage protocol for returning to strength training after influenza, so pretending everybody should follow exactly the same formula would be misleading. A sensible approach is to treat the first few sessions as a gradual test of how well you have actually recovered. At CGPT, that might look something like this: First session: keep it deliberately easy. Reduce the amount of work, use comfortable loads, take longer rests and avoid chasing personal bests. The aim is to move and see how your body responds. Next one or two sessions: if there has been no return of significant fatigue or symptoms, gradually add more of your usual exercises and training volume. After that: continue building towards your normal training only if your energy, appetite, sleep and general recovery are behaving normally again. The important information is not only how you feel during the session. Pay attention to the following day as well. If a light workout leaves you flattened for 24 hours, that is a good sign that you tried to advance too quickly. What About a Lingering Cough? This is one of the greyer areas because a cough can hang around after the worst of a respiratory infection has passed. A minor residual cough does not automatically mean you cannot exercise. But a deep, persistent cough, wheezing, unusual breathlessness or chest discomfort deserves more caution and, if persistent, medical advice. The same applies to fatigue. Feeling slightly below your best after influenza is very different from feeling overwhelmingly exhausted after basic activity. If your energy is still dramatically reduced, give yourself more time rather than treating the gym as a test you have to pass. Nausea and diarrhoea are also reasons to wait, particularly because of hydration and the obvious consideration of not taking gastrointestinal symptoms into a shared training environment. There Are Actually Two Tests for Going Back to the Gym One is whether you are ready. The other is whether it is fair to everyone else in the room. Victorian health guidance says adults with influenza are usually contagious for around three to five days after symptoms begin, while Australian health information notes that people may remain infectious for longer in some circumstances. You can also spread influenza before you realise you are sick (Better Health Channel; Healthdirect). So even if you feel capable of doing a few squats, going into a shared gym while you are still acutely coughing, sneezing and clearly unwell is not particularly considerate. CGPT may be a private personal training environment rather than a huge commercial gym, but that makes protecting trainers and other clients even more important, not less. If you are still obviously sick, stay home. The weights will survive. You Haven’t Lost Everything This is probably the reassurance regular gym-goers need most. A week away does not wipe out your progress. Research on resistance-training breaks shows that meaningful losses are much more closely related to longer periods away from training than a brief interruption. One study examining a one-week planned break found no appreciable difference in muscle growth, muscular endurance or power compared with continuous training, although continuous training produced somewhat greater strength improvements during the study (Coleman et al. 2024). Longer-term detraining research tells the same broad story: strength and muscle adaptations decline progressively when training stops for extended periods, not because you took several days off while sick (Bosquet et al. 2013; Grgic 2022). So forget the idea that you need to compensate for being ill. You do not owe the gym anything. This Is Where Personal Training Has a Real Advantage Coming back from illness is one of those times when a fixed class or self-directed workout can be awkward. You might normally squat a certain weight, complete four sets, or train at a particular intensity. None of that means it is appropriate today. With one-on-one training, the session can be rewritten on the spot. Maybe your usual weight suddenly feels heavy. We lower it. Maybe you are breathing harder than normal. We extend the rest. Maybe you arrive feeling much better than expected. Great - but we still do not need to turn the first session back into a fitness test. At CGPT, your trainer can meet the person who walks through the door that day rather than blindly following what was written in the program before you got sick. For somebody coming back from flu, that flexibility can be incredibly useful. So, When Should You Come Back? There is no single countdown that works for everybody. Wait until the acute illness has clearly settled. Do not train with fever, significant systemic symptoms, gastrointestinal illness or substantial fatigue. Make sure you are eating, drinking and managing ordinary daily activity reasonably well. Be considerate about whether you could still be spreading the virus. Then come back gradually. Not heroically. If the first session feels easier than you think it “should”, that is probably fine. You are not trying to prove that you are recovered. You are giving your body a chance to show you that it is. And if you are a CGPT client returning after the flu, tell your trainer exactly how you have been feeling before the session starts. That gives us the opportunity to adjust things properly rather than discovering halfway through that your body was not ready for your normal program. If you are new to CGPT and getting sick has made you realise how much you would benefit from having somebody else manage your training properly, come and have a chat with us once you are well. Email Andrea at andrea@chrisgympt.com to arrange an intro session. Just maybe wait until you have stopped coughing first. Disclaimer This article provides general information only and is not medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Recovery from influenza varies between individuals. Seek medical advice if you are experiencing difficulty breathing, chest pain, severe or worsening symptoms, persistent fever, dehydration, confusion, significant ongoing fatigue, or if you are concerned about your recovery. People who are pregnant, immunocompromised, older, or who have significant underlying medical conditions may need individual medical advice about influenza and returning to exercise. References Victorian Department of Health 2026, Victorian Respiratory Surveillance Report — 2 October 2026, State Government of Victoria. Better Health Channel, Victorian Department of Health, Influenza (flu), State Government of Victoria. Healthdirect Australia, Influenza and preventing the spread of flu, Australian Government-supported health information service. Snyders, C. et al. 2022, ‘Acute respiratory illness and return to sport: a systematic review and meta-analysis by a subgroup of the IOC consensus on acute respiratory illness in the athlete’, British Journal of Sports Medicine, vol. 56, no. 4, pp. 223–231. Jooste, M. et al. 2026, ‘Factors associated with return-to-sport outcomes following pathogen-confirmed acute respiratory infections in athletes: AWARE X study’, British Journal of Sports Medicine, vol. 60, no. 14, pp. 1028–1035. Dick, N.A. & Diehl, J.J. 2014, ‘Febrile illness in the athlete’, Sports Health, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 225–231. Ruuskanen, O. et al. 2024, ‘Sport and exercise during viral acute respiratory illness — Time to revisit’, Journal of Sport and Health Science, vol. 13. Coleman, M. et al. 2024, ‘Gaining more from doing less? The effects of a one-week deload period during supervised resistance training on muscular adaptations’, PeerJ, vol. 12, e16777. Bosquet, L. et al. 2013, ‘Effect of training cessation on muscular performance: a meta-analysis’, Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. e140–e149. Grgic, J. 2022, ‘Use it or lose it? A meta-analysis on the effects of resistance training cessation (detraining) on muscle size in older adults’, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 19, no. 21, 14048.

When Your Body Starts Making the Rules: How to Keep Training Around Niggles It can happen so gradually that you barely notice it. You stop doing lunges because one knee feels a bit unreliable. You avoid lifting anything heavy from the floor because your back has “gone” before. The overhead cupboard becomes something you reach into carefully because of that shoulder. You skip tennis when the hip is grumbling. Someone else puts the suitcase in the car. None of these decisions feels particularly significant on its own. You are just being sensible. But over time, the list gets longer. Eventually, you are not simply managing a niggle. You have quietly started organising your life around it. This is something we see regularly at CGPT. It is particularly common from the 40s onwards, although it can happen at any age. An old injury, recurring ache or unexplained twinge makes someone cautious. Caution becomes avoidance. Then, because they are doing less, they often become less strong and less confident in the very movements they were trying to protect. The answer is not to ignore pain or push through everything. It is to find out what you can do, adjust what needs adjusting, and start rebuilding from there. The List of Things You Don’t Do Anymore Think about whether any of these sound familiar. You take the lift because stairs make your knee complain. You stopped squatting years ago. You no longer carry all the shopping bags in one trip. Gardening now requires strategic planning. You avoid certain exercises in a class because you are not sure whether they are safe. You stopped playing a sport you used to enjoy because you do not trust how your body will respond the next day. Perhaps somebody once told you never to do a particular movement again. Or perhaps nobody told you that at all - you just decided it was safer. There are absolutely situations where an exercise or activity needs to be stopped, particularly when there is an acute injury or a healthcare professional has advised you to do so. But permanent avoidance is not automatically the safest option either. Australia’s Low Back Pain Clinical Care Standard, for example, encourages people with low back pain to remain active where possible and gradually return to normal activities rather than waiting for every symptom to disappear. It also recognises that people can become fearful of bending, twisting or lifting after experiencing pain (Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care 2022). That principle extends beyond backs. Sometimes the route forward is not “never do that again”. It is “let’s find a version you can do comfortably today”. Pain, Discomfort and the Fear of Making Things Worse One of the hardest things about a recurring niggle is not always the sensation itself. It is uncertainty. Is this normal? Am I damaging something? Should I stop? Is this just muscle fatigue? What if I make it worse? You do not need to become an expert in pain science to understand one useful idea: pain and damage are not always the same thing. Pain is complex. Previous injuries, stress, sleep, fear, expectations and how much activity you have been doing can all influence how something feels. At the same time, pain should never simply be dismissed. New, severe, persistent or worsening symptoms deserve appropriate clinical assessment. The problem comes when fear takes over every movement decision. If you have spent six months protecting your knee from stairs, avoiding loading it at the gym and choosing the easiest possible way to move, it would be unsurprising if that leg now feels less capable. The body generally becomes better at what we ask it to do and less prepared for things we stop asking it to do. That is why getting the right guidance can be so reassuring. Modification Is Not Failure There is a strange idea in fitness that an exercise only “counts” if you can do its hardest version. It does not. A squat does not need to look like someone else’s squat. A shoulder exercise does not have to be performed overhead. A lunge can become a supported split squat. Range can be shortened. Load can be reduced. Tempo can change. Machines can be used. An entirely different exercise can sometimes achieve the same objective. Modification is simply training meeting you where you are. At CGPT, this is one of the advantages of working one-on-one. Nobody needs to keep pace with the person beside them. If something does not feel right, the session can change immediately. Your trainer can watch what happens rather than expecting you to make that judgement alone in the middle of a group class or crowded gym. And as confidence grows, the exercise can change again. The easier version is not necessarily where you stay. It is often where you start. Getting Stronger Can Give You More Options For people who have become cautious about movement, strength training is not about chasing a huge lift or proving how tough you are. It is about increasing the number of things your body can comfortably handle. Research in older adults consistently shows that resistance training can improve strength and physical function. A 2025 systematic review and network meta-analysis covering 151 randomised trials found that even relatively low volumes of resistance training could substantially improve aspects of physical function in older adults, while higher volumes produced larger improvements in lower-body strength (Radaelli et al. 2025). That does not mean everybody needs the same dose or the same exercises. Quite the opposite. If you have a history of pain, injury or reduced confidence, the sensible starting point may be surprisingly modest. A sit-to-stand might precede a squat. A light carry might come before something heavier. A shortened range might expand gradually. What you can tolerate this month may be different from what you could tolerate three months ago. Progress does not have to look dramatic to be valuable. Be Careful of the “I’ll Wait Until It’s Better” Trap Rest is sometimes exactly what an injury needs. But for a nagging issue that has been hanging around for months or years, continually waiting for the perfect day to resume activity can become its own problem. You wait for the knee to feel completely normal before training your legs. You wait for the shoulder to stop talking to you before doing upper-body work. You wait until your back has had a good week before booking the gym. Months pass. This is where a physiotherapist, GP or other appropriately qualified health professional may need to come first. CGPT does not diagnose injuries or replace clinical treatment. If something needs assessment or rehabilitation, that is where it belongs. But there is often a point after treatment — or with a long-standing, medically assessed niggle - when the question changes from “what is wrong?” to “how do I get stronger again?” That is a question personal training can help answer. You Don’t Have to Trust Your Body All at Once Confidence tends to return in small pieces. You do the exercise you have been avoiding, in a modified form, and nothing terrible happens. You repeat it the following week. It feels easier. A little more weight is added. One day you realise you carried the suitcase without thinking about it. That is a very different experience from being told simply to “push through”. Good training gives you evidence. Evidence that your knee can tolerate load. Evidence that you can bend down safely. Evidence that your shoulder has more options than you thought. Evidence that getting older does not automatically mean steadily shrinking the boundaries of what you do. For somebody in their 50s or 60s, those small wins can have an enormous effect on everyday life. But the same principle applies at 30, 40 or 70. Strength is useful because life keeps asking things of your body. Maybe the First Question Isn’t “Can I Exercise?” It might be: What can I do comfortably now, and where could we build from there? That is a much more useful conversation. If you have spent months avoiding movements because you are unsure what is safe, you do not have to solve it on your own. Bring the dodgy knee. Bring the cranky shoulder. Bring the history of stopping every time your back feels tight. If you have already worked with a physio or another clinician, bring that information too. An intro session at CGPT gives us a chance to hear what has been happening, what you have stopped doing, and what you would like to get back to. From there, we can work out whether personal training is appropriate and what a sensible starting point might look like. The goal is not to pretend your niggles do not exist. It is to stop letting them make every decision for you. To have a chat with us, email Andrea at andrea@chrisgympt.com Disclaimer This article provides general information only and is not medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Pain can have many causes and some symptoms require clinical assessment. If you have new or severe pain, pain after significant trauma, unexplained weakness or numbness, changes to bladder or bowel function, fever, unexplained weight loss, or symptoms that are persistent or worsening, speak with your GP, physiotherapist or another qualified healthcare professional before beginning or changing an exercise program. References Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care 2022, Low Back Pain Clinical Care Standard, ACSQHC, Sydney. Radaelli, R. et al. 2025, ‘Effects of resistance training volume on physical function, lean body mass and lower-body muscle hypertrophy and strength in older adults: A systematic review and network meta-analysis of 151 randomised trials’, Sports Medicine, vol. 55, no. 1, pp. 167–192. Rocha, J.N.S. et al. 2024, ‘Different resistance training volumes on strength, functional fitness, and body composition of older people: A systematic review with meta-analysis’, Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics, vol. 119, 105303. World Health Organization 2020, WHO Guidelines on Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour, World Health Organization, Geneva.