Recovery has exploded in popularity over the past decade or so.
Every year there seems to be a new innovative recovery device, company, and strategies that are touted as effective.
And with that numerous recovery options available, athlete and coach perception of recovery methods may not align with current scientific evidence.
What are the best science-backed recovery options for athletes?
What did the researcher do?
The researchers reviewed the available research on recovery for athletes.
- Studies were then graded based on the the study design.
- Recovery strategies were discussed as a cupcake where the fundamentals are the “cake” and the additional strategies are the “icing”.
- The icing strategies are divided into 2 sections based on high level of evidence (meta-analyses and/or systematic reviews) and low level of evidence (not meta-analyses and/or systematic reviews).
What did they report?
The Cake
The evidence supports sleep, nutrition, and periodization as the primary effective recovery strategies, which are considered "the cake" in the cupcake analogy.
- The fundamentals (“the cake”) have a much greater overall contribution to athletic recovery and performance than any potential marginal improvements from added devices/tools (“the icing”).
- The "cake" strategies should be prioritized, monitored and optimized before hyper-focusing on the "icing" strategies.
The Icing
The "icing" strategies are not created equally and can be implemented and categorized as follows:
- High evidence with positive outcomes
- Foam rolling
- Cryotherapy
- Photobiomodulation
- Hydrotherapy
- Active recovery
- High evidence without positive outcomes
- Electromyostimulation
- Stretching
- Low evidence with mixed outcomes
- Sauna
- BFR
- Massage guns
- Low Evidence with Positive Outcomes
- Recovery boots/sleeves
- Float tanks
What does this mean?
- Recovery plays a fundamental role and should be tailored to individual athletes.
- Sleep, nutrition, and periodization are the fundamental aspects of recovery.
- Other strategies should be implemented based on their level of evidence.
Recovery strategies can be periodized across different training phases, especially for modalities that may affect adaptations.
Coach's Takeaway
- Coach’s should prioritize sleep, nutrition, and periodization before considering additional recovery modalities.
- It may be better to target recovery modalities that may improve the fundamentals of recovery.
- Recovery modalities can be periodized so it doesn’t interfere with the stimulus for physiological adaptations.
- For example, avoiding cold water immersion during pre-season to reduce interference of hypertrophic and strength gains.
