Recovery Protocols For Football Performance

The intensity and volume of training and matches in a week for not only elite players but amateur as well puts immense pressure on the body and thus having set recovery protocols in place following trainings and matches is vital to ensure you head into your next game or training at full capacity.
There’s a wide variety of recovery modalities around, some great and some not so great. When it comes to recovery we want to focus on things that have worked and been proven to work. Below i outline the modalities i use for teams i work with and that i recommend for everybody.

Cold Water Immersion:

Despite cold water immersion therapy being around as a recovery aid for many years there is still doubt around how beneficial it is scientifically speaking. There are limited studies on the technique with a mixed bag of reviews, however, going off several credible studies i believe it is one of the best recovery aids immediately post game and heavy training. Different studies focus on different recovery kinetics but results from several meta-analysis show consistent beneficial effects on force, sprint, jump recovery, RPE and DOMS 24hr, 48hr and 72hrs post-exercise. Many studies argue that it’s beneficial for reducing DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) via the constriction of the blood vessels and subsequent increase of blood flow following emersion from the cold water to the muscles bringing added nutrients to boost healing and aid in flushing of lactic acid. Whilst numerous research supports CWI in the reduction of DOMS and RPE there is limited research showing the distinct effects of CWI on objective measures such Creatine Kinase, Blood Lactate levels, Interleukines and C-Reactive protein. Despite the conflicting theories this is still my go to recovery protocol post game and heavy trainings. Temperature of the ice bath should between 10-15 degree C and either full body or full leg immersion is required for between 5-12mins. I personally use 5mins of full lower body immersion during team situations and ideally 10mins for individual situations and within 30mins of exercise completion.

Chocolate Milk:

Recent studies have shown 250ml of chocolate milk has great results in aiding muscle recovery. The chocolate milk has the perfect ratio of Carbohydrates, Fats and Protein to aid muscle recovery. Different brands will differ in their ratios, some with higher fat and sugars than other so choose the one with around 15-18g carbohydrates, 8-10g protein and about 4-8g of fat per 250ml. If you’re in New Zealand Primo Chocolate milk hits this perfectly! This year a good friend of ours released a performance protein sheep’s milk recovery drink which i also highly recommend. It contains 14.7g protein, 17g fat, and 17.5g carbohydrate per 250ml serve. It’s obviously on the higher side of fat content but are mostly short-medium chain fatty acids which have been shown to be broken down quicker in the body and only contains A2 beta caseins making it available to those who have intolerances to cows milk. It has also been shown that sheep’s milk can be digested in 45 minutes as opposed to cows milk which can take 2 hours to digest - excellent for recovery purposes!

Contrast Therapy:

Contrast therapy involves either the full lower body or entire body being immersed in alternating hot and cold water baths. These aren’t always a feasible option but can be a good recovery tool when available. There are varying protocols however standard practice is to always begin with hot and end with cold alternating between 2-5mins in each bath for 4-6 rounds and again performed within 30mins of exercise completion. Temperature of the hot bath should be between 37-43 degrees C and cold baths between 10-15 degrees C. The theory behind contrast therapy is that the hot water immersion causes vasodilation of the blood vessels followed by vasoconstriction in the cold water in turn increasing local blood circulation. In addition, the lymph vessels do the same thing and contract when exposed to cold and expand when exposed heat, by alternating between the hot and cold the lymph vessels dilate and contract to essentially pump and move fluid out of the area and it is believed that this positively effects the inflammation process. There is limited supporting research for objective measures but like CWI there is research supporting positive effects on RPE and DOMS 24hr, 48hr and 72hrs post exercise.
A good alternative to this if baths aren’t available is hot/colds in the shower with 2mins hot then 2mins cold repeated for 10mins with the water aimed at the legs and lower back.

Sleep:

Nothing sounds better than squeezing in a few extra zzz’s in the afternoon or hitting the snooze button on our alarms for an extra 5mins in the morning but they can also sound counter-productive. But what if doing exactly this could help improve your performance on the football pitch and in the gym? Sleep, like nutrition and hydration, can have massive impact on your physical performance. Not only could your performance suffer from poor sleep quality but you could also be putting yourself at risk of injury.
When we climb into bed our body goes through 2 main cycles - NREM (Non-rapid eye movement) and REM (rapid eye movement). During NREM we typically go through 3 main phases:
1. We fall into a light sleep our eyes are closed but we’re easily woken
2. We are still in a light sleep but our body begins to prepare for a deeper sleep - our heart rate and body temperature begin to drop.
3. We fall into a deep sleep and generally feel very disorientated if we are woken
During deep stages of NREM our bodies start repairing our muscles, bones, tissues etc. As we continue to sleep and have been in the 3rd phase of NREM for around 90 minutes, we begin to enter the REM phase of our sleep. A study in 2015 found that a lack of sleep can severely affect your brains ability to process information and delay your decision making. This means that your reaction time might be slower, which may mean the difference between reacting effectively in a defensive move or controlling a pass or making a decisive run.  A scientific study conducted in 2016 found that young athletes who slept, on average, less than 8 hours per night increased their risk of injury by 1.7 times when compared to those athletes who slept more than 8 hours per night. As the athletes got older, each additional year increased their risk of injury by 1.4. This showed that getting your solid 8 hours of sleep per night was vital to contributing to keeping you on the pitch and doing what you do best. 

Nutrition:

The correct nutrition is incredibly important following a match or training in order to start your bodies recovery and to assist with its adaptation. The aerobic energy system is highly taxed during a football match, with average and peak heart rates around 85% and 98% of maximal values, respectively, corresponding to average oxygen uptakes of around 70% of maximum.

Replenish
In terms of replenishing the body’s carbohydrate stores after a match, the type of carbohydrate and the timing of when it’s eaten play a significant part in how quickly glycogen stores are refilled. However, if we’re talking about the average athlete who only generally trains once per day timing and type of carbohydrate (glycemic index) isn’t the most important, ensuring you hit a daily total of carbohydrate intake is what you should focus on since levels of muscle glycogen will be similar 24-hours-post-match. To figure this out you can get in contact with us and we can work your daily nutritional macronutrient goals out.

Repair
Repairing involves consuming an adequate amount of protein to stimulate muscle protein synthesis (MPS). MPS is the process of using proteins to repair and manufacture new proteins for muscle growth and recovery. Since a pretty standard meal will maintain the body in anabolic state for roughly five or more hours, then a conservative approach would be not to allow more than four to five hours to pass between the pre- and post-training/match meals. For example, a 90-minute training session would leave feeding windows of roughly 75-105 minutes on either side of the training session in which to consume protein-containing meals or snacks. The anabolic effects of a single meal are maxed out at roughly 20-40g of a high-quality protein source such as meat, poultry, eggs or dairy. As such, a conservative guideline regardless of the training goal would be to aim for at least 30-40g of protein in the post-match window, with the higher intake for larger individuals among you.That 40g looks like 6 whole eggs, one and a half chicken breasts or 2 scoops of protein powder, however, we do recommend whole food intake following training/matches over a protein shake.

To sum the nutrition side of things up, ensuring you have a balanced meal following training/matches is the best way to replenish your carbohydrate stores and begin the repair process of your muscles. Nutrition is one of the most important aspects to an athletes performance and is often neglected by amateur and youth players. If you want to go far in your game do the work off the pitch as well as on.

Rachel Finlay

REFERENCES

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Vitale, J.A., Bonatom M., Galasso, L., La Torre, A., Merati, G., Montaruli, A., Roveda, E., Carandente, F. Sleep quality and high intensity interval training at two different times of day: A crossover study on the influence of the chronotype in male collegiate soccer players. Chronobiology International, 34(2): 1525-6073, 2016.

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