Exercise After COVID: How to Safely Get Back to Your Normal Workout

Getting sick with COVID-19 can be challenging. Whether you had a mild COVID illness or needed significant support, you’re excited to feel better and get back to your regular routines. And, for many people, exercise is an important part of those routines. 

While exercise can boost your physical and mental wellness, you’ll want to ease yourself back into your usual routine after any illness, including COVID. Here’s how to safely get back to exercising.

How do you know you’re fully recovered from COVID?

It probably seems obvious that you shouldn’t go back to working out until your symptoms from COVID are improving. But knowing exactly when you’ve fully recovered can be tricky.

Some people don’t feel sick at all. But others can continue to feel unwell for several weeks. So what the stages of COVID illness look like will vary from person to person. This is why it’s important to pay attention to your symptoms and understand your risk for more severe illness. 

Possible symptoms of COVID illness include:

• Fever

• Chills

• Cough

• Nasal congestion or runny nose

• Headache

• Sore throat

• Nausea or vomiting

• Diarrhea  

• Body aches 

• Shortness of breath with activity

To be considered fully recovered from COVID, you should no longer experience these symptoms. You also need to be able to do your usual activities. If basic activities, like walking around the house, make you feel tired or give you a fast heart rate or trouble breathing, then you’re not fully recovered from COVID — even if all your other symptoms have gone away. 

Does a negative COVID test result mean your body is ready to exercise?

Not necessarily. A negative COVID test means you’re no longer shedding the COVID virus. But your body may still be feeling the effects of the illness. This is why it’s important to listen to your body and to pay attention to how you’re feeling.

When is it safe to exercise after COVID?

People are usually most contagious with COVID in the first 5 to 7 days after they catch the virus. Once you’re no longer contagious with COVID and you’re fully recovered, you can use the American Academy of Cardiology (AAC) consensus guidelines to figure out when to return to exercise. 

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These AAC guidelines are for adults only — there are separate children’s guidelines on how to safely return to sports and physical activity. The recommendations are based on the severity of your COVID illness. 

No matter when you get back to your exercise routine after COVID, pay close attention to your body. Stop exercising if you experience: 

• Chest pain

• Shortness of breath

• Chest pounding

• Irregular heartbeat

• A feeling like you’re going to faint 

If you experience any of these symptoms while exercising, see a healthcare professional before you get back to your routines.

When is it safe to exercise after asymptomatic COVID illness?

Not everyone who gets COVID experiences symptoms. Asymptomatic illness means you had a positive COVID test but didn’t experience any COVID symptoms.

You can gradually start exercising again after 3 days of rest. You don’t need to see a healthcare professional before returning to your usual activity — unless you have an underlying medical condition. 

When is it safe to exercise after mild or moderate COVID illness?

Most people experience mild COVID illness and experience symptoms like cough, sore throat, and fever — but don’t have any shortness of breath. Moderate COVID illness means you developed a lower respiratory tract infection, like COVID pneumonia. You also had moderate illness if COVID worsened an underlying lung condition, like asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).  

You need to get the OK from your primary care provider before getting back to working out if you had moderate COVID illness or if you had mild illness and have an underlying medical condition. 

But you don’t need to check in if you had only mild COVID symptoms and no other underlying health problems. You can simply start exercising again after all of your COVID symptoms resolve. Make sure to slowly work back up to your usual activities levels before your COVID illness.

When is it safe to exercise after severe or critical COVID illness?

COVID can still cause severe or critical illness that requires attention in a hospital. With more severe illness, you’ll need support to help you breathe. COVID can affect different organs and systems in the body, including the respiratory and cardiovascular systems.

If you were hospitalized with severe COVID illness, you’ll need to work with your care team before you get back to exercising. They’ll do a full evaluation before giving you the OK. You’ll need an ECG (electrocardiogram), echocardiogram, and blood tests to make sure your heart is healthy after your COVID illness. If these tests are normal, your cardiologist will give you a plan to follow on how to gradually return to your usual activity level.  

How do you gradually get back into exercise after COVID?

Experts recommend that adults “gradually” return to activity after having COVID. But there aren't super specific recommendations for what this looks like. In general, you want to start slowly and build up the time and intensity of your exercise. 

Experts also recommend starting with recumbent activities — like cycling and rowing. These sitting activities make you less likely to experience any dizziness until your body adjusts to exercise again. 

A graduated exercise routine can look like this:

• Start at 50% of your usual exercise intensity for 15 minutes for 3 days.

• Increase to 75% of your usual exercise intensity for 15 minutes for 3 days. 

• Increase to 100% of your usual exercise intensity for 15 minutes for 3 days.

• Increase your exercise time by 15 minutes every 3 days until you’re back at your baseline.

As you go through each stage, pay close attention to your body. Stop exercising right away if you develop chest pain, shortness of breath, chest pounding, or irregular heartbeat. And be sure to stop if you feel like you’re going to faint. 

Don’t push through your symptoms, and don’t keep advancing your activity if you don’t feel well. See a healthcare professional as soon as possible and wait for their “all clear” before going back to working out. 

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Written by:

Brian Clista, MD

Dr. Clista is a board-certified pediatrician who works in private practice in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He previously served as a National Health Service Corporation Scholar in the inner city of Pittsburgh for 11 years.

Edited by:

Alex Eastman, PhD, RN

Alex Eastman, PhD, RN, is a California-based registered nurse and staff medical editor at GoodRx, where he focuses on clinical updates and Latino health.

Reviewed by:

Farzon A. Nahvi, MD

Dr. Nahvi is an emergency medicine physician and author of “Code Gray: Death, Life, and Uncertainty in the ER.” He works clinically at Concord Hospital in Concord, New Hampshire, and is a clinical assistant professor of emergency medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. Prior to this, he worked as an ER physician and clinical assistant professor of emergency medicine at the Mount Sinai Health System, NYU Langone Health, NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue, and the Manhattan VA. He is a graduate of Cornell University and NYU School of Medicine.

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