Recovery Strategies for Coaches

What’s This Research About?

This opinion-based guide by Kraemer & Nitka offers advice on how coaches should think about recovery and prioritize different methods. Rather than presenting new experimental data, it organizes existing concepts into a practical hierarchy—start with foundational basics like sleep, hydration, and low-intensity movement, then layer in more advanced tools such as compression, heat, cold, floatation, or red-light only when appropriate. The authors emphasize matching the recovery method to the specific stressor, staying within one’s scope of practice, and monitoring how athletes respond over time. Nutrition and psychological strategies are acknowledged but largely outside the scope here; the focus is on physical methods that can be sequenced around training and competition. They acknowledge that client perception, preference, and buy-in play a meaningful role—a recovery method that feels good or reduces stress for the individual may be more effective in real-world settings than a theoretically superior option they dislike or won’t consistently use.

Recovery according to the authors entails integrated physiological and psychological restoration. It is the body/brain’s process of restoring balance, repairing tissues, and resetting systems after stress so you’re ready to perform again.