Recovery Strategies for Young Athletes

Recovery is a crucial part of any athlete’s training regimen, particularly for young athletes. Proper recovery strategies can enhance performance, reduce the risk of injury, and support athlete mental health. Here are some effective recovery strategies to support your young athlete after training or physical activity.

Hydration

Encourage your athlete to drink water before, during, and after training to replenish lost fluids, as it is vital for recovery. Sports drinks or Hydralyte can be beneficial during and after longer sessions to replace electrolytes. Athletes should be drinking at ~ 2-2.5L of water per day (more on hot days or intense training sessions).

Nutrition

Proper fuelling is crucial when training for long hours, especially for growing bodies, to prevent injury and support optimal bone health. While we’ve provided some general nutrition tips, if you’re uncertain whether your young athlete is fuelling properly, we strongly recommend consulting with a sports dietitian for expert guidance.

• Balanced Meals: Include a mix of carbohydrates, proteins, and healthy fats in meals.
• In-training fuel is important: Eating a banana, oat slice or a muesli bar can help to replenish electrolytes and glycogen stores. More food = More fuel and improved performance.
• Post-Training Snacks: Provide snacks rich in protein and carbs, such as:
  – Greek yogurt with fruit
  – Whole grain toast with peanut butter
  – Smoothies with protein powder, fruits and spinach

Cool Down

A proper cooldown helps minimise post-training soreness and enhances flexibility. Include gentle stretching, breathing exercises and self-release soft tissue techniques to support relaxation and accelerate recovery.

Rest and Sleep

Aiming for 8-10 hours of sleep per night supports bone and soft tissue repair and hypertrophy (getting stronger) as well as laying down memories and improving mental acuity and focus. A good pre-sleep routine can be very helpful to fall asleep faster including a predictable order of getting ready for bed and reducing screen time 1 hour before falling asleep.

Recovery days are important to allow the body to respond to load including increasing bone density and muscle strength. On days off training athletes should be encouraged to do low-intensity activities like gentle walking, swimming, or yoga to promote blood flow without straining the body. Prolonged or intense high impact activities in addition to usual training can cause a spike in load which increases an athletes risk of injury. Being mindful of managing activities over a week and month period and talking with your coach around this is important to reduce the risk of overload.

Ice and Heat Therapy

Ice Baths/cold plunge or cold showers
Can assist in reducing inflammation and soreness when used shortly after intense training sessions. 2-5mins is enough to achieve positive effects. Best used during peak season to speed recovery. Avoid ice therapy when aiming to increase strength as regular cold therapy can reduce muscle hypertrophy/strength gains.

Heat Therapy
Can be used on tight muscles to assist in relaxing muscle tension. Avoid in the first 24 hours after intense training sessions as this may increase inflammation.

Compression clothing
Can be helpful to promote recovery following training sessions.

Mental Recovery

Relaxation Techniques
Encourage practices like guided meditations or deep-breathing exercises to help reduce stress and improve mental clarity. Sometimes journaling can be useful with cues such as “What went well today”, “What do I want to focus on next training”, “What do I need to feel 100% in my body and mind today”, “What challenge did I overcome today”, “How did I support my team mate today”…

Communication
Maintain open communication with your athlete about how they feel post- training. Encourage them to express any concerns regarding pain, emotional stress or fatigue with you and their coach.

Track Growth

Athletes aged 9-15 years old (in particular 12-14) can have sudden, large growth spurts. This impacts their body awareness, body shape and composition, strength, flexibility and fatigue levels. Being able to track an athletes growth (usually monthly) allows us to predict when an athlete is most likely to need some extra recovery time and injury prevention strategies to allow them to continue to perform well and reduce their risk of injury.