By Martino Crivelli, physiotherapist and co-founder of Kineo, Kineo Escher Wyss
Progress happens during rest
You train regularly, but your legs stay heavy, your performance stalls and minor niggles no longer really go away. Often the cause is not the training itself, but what happens between sessions.
Training is a stimulus. You only get stronger once your body recovers from it and adapts. There are many products and trends around recovery. In this article, we sort out what really helps, what is nice but not decisive, and how to tell that you are not recovering enough.
What happens during recovery
- Refilling energy stores: The glycogen stores in your muscles and liver are replenished through carbohydrates.
- Repairing and building tissue: Muscles, tendons and bones adapt to the load. Tendons and bones respond more slowly than muscles.
- Recovering the nervous system: After very intense or technically demanding sessions, your nervous system also needs time.
- Replacing fluids and minerals: Especially after long or hot sessions.
How long this takes depends on intensity, volume, training experience and everyday life. You shake off an easy session overnight, but after a race such as HYROX or a marathon it can take several days to weeks.
The big three: sleep, nutrition, load management
Sleep is the most effective recovery tool there is. Most adults need 7–9 hours. Too little sleep worsens reaction time, strength, mood and pain perception. Regular sleep times, a dark, cool bedroom and no hard session late in the evening, if it makes it hard for you to fall asleep afterwards, all help.
Nutrition: After training, eat a meal with carbohydrates and protein. For strength and endurance athletes, around 1.4–2 g of protein per kilogram of body weight per day is usually recommended, spread over several meals. Drink enough throughout the day. The colour of your urine is a simple guide.
Load management: Not every session has to be hard. A large part of your training should be easy, so that the hard sessions really go well. After two to three weeks of building up, plan in an easier week.
What else helps
- Active recovery: Easy cycling, walking or swimming promotes blood flow and often feels better than complete rest.
- Massage: Can ease muscle soreness and the feeling of exhaustion. But it does not replace sleep.
- Foam roller: Can reduce the feeling of stiffness in the short term. A few minutes are enough.
- Compression: Compression garments or devices can improve the subjective feeling of recovery in some athletes.
- Cold: Cold water or cold treatments ease muscle pain after very hard sessions or competitions. However, there are indications that regular cold baths straight after strength training can slightly weaken muscle growth. So use cold deliberately, for example between two competition days, and not after every strength session.
How to tell that you are not recovering enough
- Your performance stalls or drops over several weeks, even though you train just as much
- Your resting heart rate in the morning is raised for several days
- You sleep worse, are irritable or no longer feel like training
- Minor pain in tendons or joints keeps coming back
- You catch colds more often than usual
If several of these signs appear, clearly reduce volume and intensity for one to two weeks.
Warning signs: Extreme muscle pain with severe swelling and dark, cola-coloured urine after a very hard session can indicate muscle breakdown (rhabdomyolysis). This must be checked by a doctor immediately. Unexplained persistent tiredness, chest pain or heart palpitations during exertion also belong in a doctor's hands.
How we work at Kineo
If you no longer recover despite training, or keep getting minor injuries, we look at your whole load picture, not just the painful spot.
1. Assessment: what we examine in your first session
- Training analysis: volume, intensity and distribution of your sessions over the past weeks, including perceived exertion (RPE scale)
- Everyday life and sleep: working hours, sleep duration, stress and eating habits
- Symptoms: Where do signs of overload show, for example in tendons, calves or back?
- Strength and mobility compared side to side: for example with the single-leg squat, single-leg bridge and knee-to-wall test
- Your data: If you measure resting heart rate or heart rate variability, we look at the trend together
2. Treatment in phases
- Weeks 1–2: Offload. Reduce volume and intensity, easy sessions instead of a break, and build sleep and nutrition in as fixed components. We treat symptoms in a targeted way.
- Weeks 3–6: Rebuild. A training plan with clearly hard and clearly easy days, complemented by 2 strength sessions per week with 3–4 exercises each, 3 x 6–10 repetitions.
- From week 6: Steer yourself. You learn to manage your load yourself with simple tools such as perceived exertion and morning heart rate.
3. Kineo services we use
- Sports physiotherapy: analysis of training and symptoms, load plan
- Medical massage: for muscle tension and after intense competition phases
- Cold therapy with Game Ready: targeted cold with compression, for example for irritated joints
- Medical training therapy: strength training that makes your tissues more resilient
- Lactate step test: to determine your training zones, so that easy really is easy
An example week
This is what a balanced week can look like for a recreational athlete with four to five sessions:
- Monday: full-body strength training
- Tuesday: easy endurance training, 40–60 minutes
- Wednesday: rest day or a walk
- Thursday: intense session, for example intervals or HYROX training
- Friday: strength training, a little lighter
- Saturday: longer easy session
- Sunday: off
Two hard days never follow each other directly. If you want to train more, add easy sessions first, not hard ones.
From our practice
Many ambitious recreational athletes invest a lot in equipment and recovery products, but sleep too little during the week and train almost every session at a moderate to hard intensity. When we make the easy days truly easy and prioritise sleep, recurring symptoms often disappear and performance rises again.
Training and recovery at Kineo Escher Wyss
At Kineo Escher Wyss at Hardturmstrasse 18 on Escher-Wyss-Platz, you will find sports physiotherapy, a supervised training area and Game Ready under one roof. Kineo HYROX trains in the same building. To determine your training zones, we work with the Kineo Performance Lab in Seefeld.
Frequently asked questions
How many rest days do I need?
That depends on your training. For most recreational athletes, one to two days a week without intense training make sense. Easy movement on rest days is fine.
Should I train when I have sore muscles?
Light movement often helps. It is better to postpone intense sessions for the same muscle group until the soreness has clearly eased.
Do ice baths do anything?
They can ease pain and tiredness after very hard efforts. If building muscle is your main goal, do not use them routinely after strength training.
How long does an appointment take?
An appointment lasts 30 minutes. In your first session, we clarify where your recovery is falling short and start straight away with treatment and an adapted plan.
You might also like
- Sore muscles, strain or muscle tear?
- HYROX: typical injuries and how to avoid them
- Cold therapy after injuries
Book an appointment
Do you train a lot and recover poorly? Book your appointment at Kineo Escher Wyss and we will bring load and recovery into balance.
