Recovery Standards for Athletes: Why Recovery Is Not Optional

Elite athletes are obsessed with standards – qualifying standards, movement standards, performance standards, regulatory standards and physiological standards are just a few that guide their approach. 

But all too often, recovery is the standard missing from that list. If you’re training like a pro but recovering like an amateur, you are effectively “no-repping” your training. So, why do we often treat our recovery like it’s optional?

A movement standard exists to ensure efficiency, safety, and measurable progress. Performance standards measure important physical outputs, like your one-rep max. Qualifying standards determine your level as an athlete.

A recovery standard serves the same purpose. It benchmarks the minimum requirements you need to support your body. Recovery standards allow the physical and physiological adaptations to sink in, while also reducing your injury risk. 

More importantly, your recovery standards determine your performance, whether that’s at your next training session, or your race or competition 8 weeks from now.  

If you expect more from your body, you have to recover like it matters. That means your time outside the training ground or gym must be as disciplined as your time inside it.

Training creates physical stress. Recovery is how your body adapts to the stress and compensates for the physical demands you constantly impose on your muscles, tendons and cardiovascular system.

Without adequate recovery, performance plateaus or declines, or you overload your body and get sick or injured. 

And life comes with its own set of stressors, too. Poor sleep, high cognitive load, and irregular routines affect the nervous system in the same way intense training does, which means you need to consider your total stress load when determining your recovery needs. 

Every high-standard recovery protocol has a few non-negotiables, starting with nutrition.

Eating doesn’t just fuel your efforts. It supports the rebuilding process afterwards. That means you need sufficient protein for tissue repair, ample carbohydrates to replenish glycogen stores, and fats for hormone production to support your bodily functions.

Using high-quality, third-party tested supplements supports your diet to provide everything your body needs. 

The standard for replenishing glycogen and protein within the optimal post-training window is the 4:1 ratio – 4g of carbs for every 1g of protein – found in products like Biogen Recovergen.

A 4:1 carbohydrate-to-protein ratio in a recovery supplement is scientifically recommended to maximise muscle repair and glycogen replenishment, particularly for endurance athletes or individuals undergoing high-volume, strenuous training. 

For those recovering from resistance training (weightlifting), high-intensity interval training (HIIT), or moderate-duration exercise, a 2:1 ratio is optimal to repair muscle damage while still providing enough carbs to restock depleted energy reserves. 

A serving of highly bioavailable whey – the gold standard in protein supplements – from Biogen Premium Iso-Whey mixed with a serving of Biogen Pure Carbs offers the ideal blend, with 50g carbs and 21g protein.

Beyond the nutritional guidelines, there are other important recovery standards you need to meet daily to maximise your recovery:

It’s easy to work hard. It’s much harder to have the discipline to support and accelerate your recovery between training sessions. 

If you want to perform at the highest level, whether you’re a weekend warrior or a competitive athlete, you have to stop viewing recovery as rest and start viewing it as part of the process you need to execute daily, applying the same standard you do to your training. If your recovery doesn’t meet the standard, your performance never will either.