Recovery Basics

Written By Tanna Baggenstos

Let’s talk recovery! This week on the Athlete Degree we discussed different forms of recovery modalities that you can use daily or weekly. We went over when to use them in order to be most effective and why each are important. In this blog we will break it down further so you have a one-stop-shop for your recovery information. 

Recovery Tools and Timing:

It is important to understand the tools we have at our disposal to recover, how we can use them and when they can be most effective. You may think you only have stretching or a foam roller at home and that is recovery, but recovery is so much more than stretching. More than you’d like to admit, most of our recovery comes from us, our time management and priorities. Below are the tools we posted on the Athlete Degree and why we use them:

Sleep: Sleep is the purest and most effective form of recovery. It is free, effective when done consistently and allows your body and most importantly, your brain, to rest and decrease stress. When we sleep our nervous system finally has the opportunity to come back to rest and start our bodies internal recovery process. When we are asleep our nervous system calms, our muscles begin the repair process, and we combat our mental fatigue. Prioritize your sleep!

Nutrition: Nutrition and hydration are the next most important, if not just as important as sleep. Keep it simple! There is a time and place to break down how each macronutrient is involved in recovery and energy levels, but it all comes down to ingesting food consistently and often. When it comes to athletics, you are likely so active and busy that simply getting enough calories/fuel in your body is hard enough. If you are still working on consistently fueling around your schedule, then ignore what your plate “should look like” and eat any food available. What you eat won’t matter if you aren’t eating enough. Food is our fuel and our energy, give it the respect it deserves for how it can make you feel!

Stretching: Stretching and foam rolling are not our “best” form of recovery, but they are an easily accessible tool that can help us. If we don’t have access to fancy recovery tools like a cold tub, a massage therapist, NormaTec boots, etc. then combining sleep, nutrition, stretching and even adding active recovery is an incredible recipe for success. Stretching can happen at any time, should happen often to prevent injury, and can be used to warm-up for games or training sessions. It is easily accessible, so there is no excuse to not stretch.

External Modalities: When accessible these are an added accessory to recovery that can further diminish the perceived feeling of soreness. They are not the end-all-be-all recovery tools, but when paired with sleep, nutrition and other forms of recovery they can further improve our recovery and body “feel”. These can be ice baths, NormaTecs, electrical muscle stimulation devices, massages and more. I would say that these tools are often promoted online or advertised as your “best form of recovery”, well by now we know that is actually sleep and nutrition, but if these are available to you they are great accessories to recovery and highly recommended. Research has shown that these are effective for decreasing perceived muscle soreness and DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness). So if accessible to you, use these post-exercise or post-game to speed up the recovery process prior to another game, practice or training session.

Active Recovery: Active recovery is a way to produce physiological recovery responses while exercising. This is not a replacement for a true rest day, but it can help reduce the feeling of stiffness in the body and DOMS. By training at a lower heart rate (zone 2 heart rate about 60-70% of your max HR) your body can increase blood flow to working muscles to begin damage repair, flushes out lactate that build up during exercise, as well as decrease cortisol levels which are our stress hormones in the body. Active recovery doesn’t need to be long, it can be anywhere from 15-60 minutes depending on your goal, time available and aerobic capacity. If you choose an aerobic activity for your active recovery there’s an ability to increase your VO2 max (max oxygen consumption during exercise) over a certain period of time. The timing of active recovery is based on your schedule and availability. I would use it for different reasons:

Traveling? When you get off the plane, that night, or the next morning/day are good opportunities for a “shake out” or active recovery workout. 

Long, hard training week and your body feels beat up and fatigued? A quick active recovery workout, a day or two before a rest day to shake out the fatigue would be a good opportunity. 

Have a game today or tomorrow and feeling heavy legged or fatigued? Active recovery in the morning or day before can be an opportunity to feel more fresh by game time.

Has intensity of training been high for a prolonged period of time and a true rest day hasn’t made you feel rested in weeks? Try mixing in active recovery on a separate day from your true rest day as an “extra” session to see if it makes you feel better.

Active recovery can look different to everyone and every time you do it. It can be a short, but steady walk or stationary bike with 15-20 minutes of stretching or a yoga flow. It can be a easy 20 minute swim that doesn’t get your heart rate up. It can be a light walk/jog keeping your heart rate down. It can be a low intensity lift to activate your muscles without stressing your central nervous system. It can even be a high volume, lighter lift to bring more blood flow to fatigued muscles. You can choose what it is, try different variations of it, and figure out what feels good to you!

The key to recovery is finding a routine that works for you and that you enjoy. Give it time, notice the changes in your fatigue and soreness levels, and you’ll find that you look forward to your recovery days. You may even notice how daily decisions can change how you feel, all of these will help you feel more attuned with your body. Find a routine that works for you, be consistent and try new things! Don’t forget that what you see online may not always be true, so research or try things out for yourself before you trust them.



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Tanna Baggenstos
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