ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to combination of evidence for the fundamentals of exercise recovery, and to further explore some traditional and more contemporary strategies that might be of value to runners. Ensure the basics of hydration, nutrition and sleep are adequately catered for – no recovery intervention can hope to succeed unless these pillars are adequately met. Runners can adopt a huge range of strategies to help improve recovery, such as cryo-therapy, compression garments and nutrition. However, a more recent and comprehensive meta-analysis showed that compression garments can reduce muscle damage indices such as soreness and accelerate recovery of muscle function, but the most positive effects were following resistance-type exercise. Collectively, it seems that the use of compression garments used immediately after running might be of benefit to support recovery, but care should be exercised to ensure the garments are appropriately fitted and provide sufficient compression.
