When I was on the Novice LP, I remember getting a cold twice and a sinus infection. Yesterday I spent my workout testing how well I could guess my RPE, and ended up hitting 9s and 9,5s on all lifts and today I noticed I feel a cold possibly coming on. When I thought back on my Novice LP colds, they came when the weight was very heavy and the RPE was at 9-10 on every set. So question: can doing high RPE worksets over time affect your immune system?
Yes, stress in general (or as we prefer to describe it, allostatic load) has effects on the immune system … though you’re not developing a viral common cold every time you go heavy.
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I’m glad you posted this MC Whizzel because I’ve been curious about this as well, and allostatic load hasn’t been discussed directly in any of the podcasts that I recall. Between the Starting Strength dogma of “grinding it out,” my own persistence in perfecting my technique, and the initial inconsistency of getting in the gym when first making the barbell training lifestyle change, I was one of the guys that did Starting Strength for almost 2 years. In that time, I got sick a few times that never felt like I was truly sick (via a virus or bacterial infection), but it was significant enough that it impacted my life, work, and training. By about the third time this happened is when I finally wisened up to the fact that the months-on-end high intensity workouts were likely the cause, and I moved on to the Bridge. Initially, my uneducated thought was that this was due to overtaxing my CNS. However, in some of the more recent BBM podcasts, Austin and Jordan have said this isn’t the case. It also is not overtraining. From the brief bit of reading on allostatic load so far, this seems to describe it, but I will read more.