Recovery from Competition in Team Sports

Recovery from competition in team sports is an important aspect of training. By improving recovery, you will be able to start training sooner, and your training will be of higher quality (Coutts & Sirotic, 2015). Here we will look at some of the ways in which you can improve the speed of recovery from competition to improve the effectiveness of your training along with your overall level of match performance.

The recovery process

The role of the recovery process following competitive sport is to restore your body and mind to the states they were in prior to taking part in the event; in other words, to mend all the damage that has been inflicted by playing in the match. From the point of view of both the athlete and the coach, the aim of a recovery strategy is to reduce the recovery time to its minimum, and this can be achieved by focusing on the restoration of physical, metabolic and mental stress.

The role of rehydration

When you play in a competitive match, you are likely to lose between 600 and 1,400 ml of water each hour (Broad, Burke, Cox, Heeley, & Riley, 1996). If the conditions are hot and humid, you could lose considerably more. Thus, it is vital that you restore your fluid balance following exercise along with ensuring that you also restore the correct level of electrolytes.
But how do you know when you have achieved this? By far the simplest way is to go on your weight loss during the game. Simply weigh yourself before and after the event and make up for the loss by drinking an appropriate volume of water with balanced electrolytes, for instance a sports or specially formulated recovery drink. You will need to drink more than the actual with loss to allow for the usual bodily functions such as urination.

Nutrition

Most team sports involve brief periods of high-intensity exercise interspersed by lower intensity activity. During brief sprints you derive your energy from intra-muscular phosphocreatine and glycogen, in other words the exercise is anaerobic. With multiple sprints, your store of muscle glycogen is depleted leading to reduced power and work rate. While carbohydrate and electrolyte drinks taken during the event can improve performance, recovery following completion is enhanced considerably by immediately ingesting carbohydrate (Williams & Rollo, 2015). It is vital that you replace the lost muscle glycogen before you recommence training. For more information on recovery nutrition, please see our related article “Recovery in Sport – the benefits of recovery nutrition”.

Physiological recovery

Team sports often result in significant levels of muscle damage, and the result is they feel stiff, tender and sore. When this appears after one or two days after the exercise, it is known as delayed onset muscle soreness (Cheung, Hume, & Maxwell, 2003); generally referred to as DOMS, the condition affects athletes at all levels from novice to elite.

DOMS has a range of possible causes, including lactic acid, muscle damage, connective tissue damage, muscle spasm, inflammation and the enzyme efflux and is likely to involve more than one of these. Its effect on performance can be severe, reducing the range of joint motion, peak strength, and shock attenuation. It can also change the way in which we use our affected muscles to compensate for the soreness, resulting in additional stress on ligaments and tendons with the possibility of additional injury. Thus it is important not to return to sport until your DOMS has been fixed.

Post-match activities such as walking, cycling and swimming are believed by some to reduce DOMS and these can play an important role in the recovery process. They have the benefit of reducing the levels of lactate, hydrogen ions and potassium and so reduce recovery time. Also, increasing the blood supply to the fatigued muscle helps repair any neurological damage. However not all sports scientists agree that post-match activities help. Often athletes are reluctant to participate in them; they require additional energy and so further deplete muscle carbohydrate, and could delay the replenishment of muscle glycogen (Choi, Cole, Goodpaster, Fink, & Costill, 1994).

Alternative approaches include hot and cold immersion, cold treatments (cryotherapy), massage and water massage, which are thought variously to reduce the early stages of injury, stimulate blood flow, and reduce swelling. They may also help reduce metabolite levels along with reducing inflammation.

Athletes who train daily should reduce the intensity and duration of training for 1–2 days following intense DOMS-inducing exercise. Alternatively, exercises targeting less affected body parts should be encouraged to allow the most affected muscle groups to recover.

Psychological recovery

The old proverb “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” is as applicable to elite sport as it is to any other part of life. Leisure time is an important part of recovery, with the potential of improving mental attitude and general motivation. While some coaches organise leisure activities with their athletes, it is important for coaches to understand that time away can also be beneficial, and should allow their athletes sufficient space and time between training sessions to pursue their social activities. Naturally this requires compromise on both sides.

Finally

Improved recovery can mean more time for training and enhanced performance levels, however recovery is a complex process, and can vary significantly between athletes. Managing recovery is an important role for any coach, with the aim being to minimise recovery times and concomitantly improve peak performance.

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References

Broad, E. M., Burke, L. M., Cox, G. R., Heeley, P., & Riley, M. (1996). ‘Body weight changes and voluntary fluid intakes during training and competition sessions in team sports. International Journal of Sports Nutrition, 307-20.
Cheung, K., Hume, P. A., & Maxwell, L. (2003). Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness – Treatment Strategies and Performance Factors. Sports Medicine, 145-164.
Choi, D., Cole, K., Goodpaster, B., Fink, W., & Costill, D. (1994). Effect of passive and active recovery on the resynthesis of muscle glycogen. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 992-6.
Coutts, A., & Sirotic, A. (2015). Post-match recovery for team sport athletes. Sydney: School of Leisure, Sport and Tourism, University of Technology.
Williams, C., & Rollo, I. (2015). Carbohydrate Nutrition and Team Sport Performance. Sports Med, S13–S22.