 Our next caller is Micah from Florida. Hey, what's up, Micah? How can we help you? Hey, guys, love the content. I just want to say thanks first. So what I got going on is I've kind of run into a string of bad luck, I guess you could say. I got sick probably six weeks ago, wasn't COVID. It was some probably daycare bug. Recovered from that after 10 days, got back to exercising, and then immediately caught COVID. I caught COVID three weeks ago, mild symptoms, sub-100 fever, tons of exhaustion, no real respiratory issues, minor respiratory issues. And that took me out for about, I'd say, 10 give or take days. And so now I'm three weeks post-it, but I'm still going through this post-COVID fatigue. And I'm at a point where I feel like I kind of need to push through it, start exercising again. But the problem of guys is the fatigue, weight feels so heavy, cardiovascularly feel, everything just feels extra. I want to put together a plan, but I don't want to overdo it. But at the same time, I don't want to sell myself short. So I figured I'd reach out for your advice on how to get back to what I was doing prior. Well, welcome to the club. And good timing with this question, since this is all on our mind. You know, Michael, when you're in a situation like this, you have to weigh out the risks of underdoing it versus the risks of overdoing it, right? Exactly. So what are the risks of underdoing it? Well, you don't, I guess, progress as fast as you possibly could. What are the risks of overdoing it? Way worse, right? You could really set yourself back. You could cause yourself injury, have to take a bunch of days off. So you really can't underdo it as would be the strategy that I would have. So I would go real easy. I mean, if you're doing nothing now, then I would literally, you know, and if you're used to, you know, on your question, it says here that you do six days a week of mountain biking before and it looked like you were relactive. Yeah. I would go like for like easy cruise on the bike and then come home and just do that, you know, every day or so and see how you feel. And then if you feel good after the first week of that, then I throw in one day a week of really light resistance training. Really your goal is just full range of motion and just practicing the lifts. And then if that feels good, then you ramp up a little bit again and just take your time. The other thing is that, and this is, I'm not a doctor, so I wanna say this ahead of time, but just for my own reading that some people post COVID just have this kind of lingering inflammation in their body and that they think that that could be what's contributing to some people having what they call long COVID. So I would structure my nutrition and supplements around inflammation. So like fish oil, lots of fish oil, I would take that, I would, you know, even reduce my carbohydrates a little bit that might help with some of that. A baby aspirin every day might be good. They recommend that anyway, just to prevent the potential blood clotting that can happen. And just pay attention to stuff that could help with inflammation and see if that makes a difference. But going easier than you should is way better than going harder than you should is my whole point with this. There's nothing wrong with just dipping your toe in the water a little bit right now. I know Doug is back to lifting, Sal is back to lifting. I don't think Andrew is. And yesterday, literally yesterday, I did five exercises, one set, and it was literally just to feel. I just wanted to feel it out and then assess how I felt later on. And I was fine doing those. I didn't obviously break a sweat. I didn't even lift weight that was challenging weight for me. I just wanted to see how I would feel afterwards. Definitely was a little fatigued and tired later on in the day. And so that's just the sign back to me that okay, I'm definitely not ready to get after it. Today I might do a handful more exercises. There's, you know, we have this idea all the time that if we're not sweating or not sore, it's worthless or we're not really working out. And it's so not true, especially in all of our situations right now where we're coming off something like this. So, and then I'm walking at night. So I walked with Katrina for like a good half hour just with the dog and just went for an easy stroll. And so just ease yourself in and I would lean on the easier, lighter, less work side until you get this feeling of after you do a few of those exercises, you go, oh wow, that's energizing me or making me feel good. And that would be my sign of, okay, let me start to ramp up a little bit more volume or intensity. Yeah, usually when I've taken time off and you know, me not having it right now. So it's like I've not kind of been the same boat as the guys, but it's to really like reframe this into address certain instabilities. I usually tend to gravitate more towards unilateral training. This is why like in our map starter program, we sort of laid things out that really addressed a lot of getting the body back to reconnecting and addressing any type of imbalance. So to be able to kind of dive into that because we get in kind of momentum with our training a lot of times where we're just always trying to perpetually progress and using this as an opportunity to kind of address maybe some instability of things that could come back to kind of haunt you later as you're trying to really like work on your performance again, I think would be a great strategy. Yeah, so are the infamous cardio killers telling me I should probably ease in with some cardio first and then you have to progress from there. Walking is not a bad idea. And also you wrote, you did a lot of mountain biking. I'm sure you enjoyed it. So, and you know, look, here's the deal. You know, we talk, when we talk about cardio and the context that you're referring to, it's when we talk about people who are, you know, that's all they do and they want to lose body fat, yeah. I say tongue in cheek, that's it. But someone like, so you think just so ease into some cardio kind of increase the intensity of it until like, or mix in maybe a day of cardio, a day off, a day of very light resistance training. Yes. Strategy would you implement? Yes, absolutely. Just what you just said. So I would do a really light ride with my bike and then the day after or the day after that, then do really light full range of motion, resistance training, give yourself like, you know, I mean, you figure you were sick for, you were sick before, then you got COVID. Give yourself like three, four weeks of slowly ramping things up and muscle memory is a beautiful thing. You don't need to do much to get that to kick in. So let your body do its thing. I really like Justin's advice too, cause I'm kind of dabbling with this right now. I don't like putting it out on the podcast cause I haven't fully committed yet in my head. But when this happens to me where I have to kind of like reset and kind of start from scratch again, this is also always, I always like to come back with kind of a new goal too. Like that thing that I haven't been addressing, you know, whatever, what Justin was alluding to like posture stuff and stability or range of motion or that mobility, you know, thing that I should be doing that I know I'm not doing. And so I like to take this opportunity of like a clean slate starting over and it's like, okay, you know what? There's that thing that I've been, you know, telling myself I need to be doing in the gym or like I'm going to start to implement that. Since I had to start so slow and gradual, this is a good time to start at square one with this kind of new goal. So there's a good time to do something like that right now. So only you know what that probably is for yourself, but not that idea to start to maybe implement that too. So maybe let's focus on some rotator cuff instead of just jumping it into a chest. There you go, exactly my point. You know you've got some rotator cuff stuff, you know that's kind of tedious and boring probably to do and you know, but you know you need to do it. It's like, you know what? You shouldn't be training super hard right now anyways. So why don't you do some of that stuff that you know you should have been doing for quite some time anyways and start with a little energy and focus there. Okay, perfect. That makes sense. All right, very cool. Thanks for calling. Well thanks guys, I appreciate it. No problem. People like a tangible example of what we're talking about. So my typical workout, let's say my typical leg workout would usually consist of something like four or five sets of squats, four or five sets of, you know, front squats. I might do some hips thrusts. I might throw in some stiff legged deadlifts. And so that would be a total workout, right? So probably a combined, you know, 15 sets for my legs. Here's what I did yesterday for my legs. Three sets of walking lunges. I held 30 pound dumbbells, which for me is super light. Normally I'd put as much as 135 or 160 pounds on my back. So I held 30 pound dumbbells. Three sets of walking lunges. Three sets of stiff legged deadlifts with 30 pounds. That's it. So I did six sets total, super light. So just to give people an idea of just how easy you wanna kind of ease yourself into it. And today I feel okay. I feel good. My legs feel good. I could tell I did a little bit of work on them. And I'm not gonna ramp up the volume until next week, but I'm not gonna ramp it up to what I left at still. I'm gonna give myself at least two reps. Yeah, I was even weaker sauce than that. I mean, I did, yesterday I did incline bench press with like 100 pounds. And I did like 10 real slow controlled reps. I went over, did some tricep push downs. I did some cable rows with like hardly any weight. I mean, literally, I did some reverse. Yeah, it was literally just to move. It was like, let me see what happens when I lift some of this weight and just see how my body feels. And really I'm looking to see how I felt later on. It's like, okay, let me do this stuff right now. And do I get that feeling of, it energize me for the rest of the day or did it make me feel fatigued and tired? And I actually felt some fatigue and tired. So to me, that's the sign that like, okay, I'm definitely not ready to get after a workout. And so staying kind of in this, one to two sets of exercises really, really light and just move the body right now is kind of where my focus is.