3 Recovery Tips for Optimal Performance

By Alaina Curry, DPT

When it comes to setting fitness goals and planning workout routines, our focus tends to be all about the work. We devote almost all of our attention to details like how many days per week we’ll train, how our workout split will look, how long our workouts will last, and how intense they’ll be.

Yet we rarely give recovery the attention it deserves.

In short, the importance of adequate recovery is often overlooked — even by elite athletes, trainers, and coaches.

The good news is that it’s becoming increasingly evident that taking sufficient time to rest and recover between workouts produces better results. But if you fail to do so, progress slows, performance drops, and the increased risk of injuries starts to creep in.

Not sure where to start when it comes to prioritizing recovery? Don’t worry, you’re in the right place.

Here are three recovery tips for optimal performance.

Change Your Mindset

It’s not exactly shocking, but in the fitness world, the popular dogma is that it’s all about the grind. The sports world is no different — work harder than your opponent and success will follow. Common mantras like “no days off” and “rest is for the weak” echo through weight rooms and training fields everywhere.

This mindset has its place. It can be helpful when motivation is running low and you need that extra push.

But what about the days when we’re physically running on fumes? Like when you’ve pushed yourself through back-to-back intense workouts without a break?

Sooner or later, the desired effect of the “no days off” mantra flips.

Rather than motivating you to work harder when you may not feel like it, it pushes you to a point where your progress stalls, fatigue builds, and the consequences outweigh the benefits.

That’s why I chose to lead with this tip. For many, the first step in prioritizing recovery is to change the way they think about recovery.

Here’s a good starting point for how to think about recovery: It isn’t for the weak.

In fact, especially if you’ve been a serious athlete for most of your life, it can take just as much — and often more — discipline to focus on recovery instead of continuing to “push through” with your workouts.

Recovery isn’t just about taking a day off. This is the time when your body repairs and grows stronger from all the effort you’ve been putting in.

Keep in mind that for most strength workouts, muscle recovery typically takes 24-72 hours. High-intensity cardio can take 48 hours or more. And very demanding sessions — or long endurance events — may require up to 5 days or more for full recovery.

So, even if your mind is ready for another hard training session, your body might not be. And that leads us to my second recovery tip.

Listen to Your Body

Not blindly sticking to a rigid schedule can be one of the hardest things to do when it comes to fitness. That’s why one of the best recovery skills you can learn is to listen to your body.

Soreness, fatigue, irritability, and poor sleep can all be signs that you need extra recovery.

But what many people don’t realize is that rest and recovery don’t have to mean just sitting on the couch. This is where the concept of active recovery comes in.

Active recovery can mean a lot of things depending on your goals, from lighter weightlifting sessions (such as a de-load week), stretching, walking, or focusing on mobility work. But the main objective of active recovery is to stay moving in a mindful way — without further taxing your body’s natural recovery processes.

Learning to listen to your body intuitively takes practice. But, as with many things nowadays, technology can really help. It’s not always easy to know whether you should push through or back off. Tools like heart rate monitors and fitness trackers can make that decision a lot smarter and safer.

I’m a big advocate for wearing heart rate monitors and tracking exercise — so much so that I wear one fitness band on each wrist.

My Garmin device doesn’t just act as my watch. It also tracks my heart rate and uses GPS for running, cycling, and more.

On the other wrist, I wear a WHOOP, which focuses on heart rate data. It uses an app to break all the data down into easy-to-understand insights about strain, sleep, and recovery.

Is it necessary to have more than one?

No.

But having at least one device that helps you interpret your data can be a game-changer. Knowing exactly when to push hard and when to rest based on real numbers — not just gut feelings — can make all the difference in your progress and performance.

I can practically hear you wondering, “Shouldn’t your body intuitively know when you need rest? Why do you need a device to tell you?”

The truth is that you should always listen to your body first.

But empirical metrics collected over time can help you recognize patterns and trends you might otherwise miss. With time and practice, this can help make those intuitive judgment calls even more accurate.

While technology can help, all the tracking and smart devices in the world won’t matter if you’re missing the number one pillar of recovery: Sleep.

Improve Sleep Hygiene

Sleep is the ultimate natural recovery modality. It’s when your body does its deepest and most critical repair. Muscle tissue rebuilds, hormones rebalance, and your nervous system gets the reset it needs.

Without enough quality sleep, even the best training plan will eventually break you down rather than build you up.

Here's why sleep quality matters:

• Muscle repair & growth: Growth hormone production peaks during deep sleep, which is essential for muscle recovery.

  
  

• Injury prevention: Poor sleep can impair coordination and reaction time, increasing your injury risk.

  
  

• Performance & focus: Lack of sleep can reduce strength, endurance, and mental sharpness.

So, what is sleep hygiene?

Sleep hygiene refers to the environmental factors, habits, and behaviors we can manipulate to improve sleep quality and quantity. Simply put, when trying to improve sleep hygiene, we’re striving to create the ideal conditions for high-quality, restorative sleep.

Of course, that’s easier said than done. And it’ll take more than just going to bed earlier.

Here are five simple but effective tips for improving sleep hygiene starting tonight:

5 Tips for Better Sleep Hygiene

1. Set a consistent sleep schedule. Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, even on weekends.

   
   

2. Create a wind-down routine. Dim the lights, avoid bright screens (I use blue light glasses if I can’t avoid my screens), and do something calming (stretching, reading, light breathwork) for 30-60 minutes before bed.

   
   

3. Optimize your sleep environment. Cool, dark, and quiet is best. Blackout curtains and white noise machines can help.

   
   

4. Watch caffeine & alcohol intake. Caffeine can disrupt sleep up to 8 hours after consumption, and alcohol fragments sleep cycles.

   
   

5. Train earlier if possible. Late-night workouts, no matter how intense, can spike adrenaline and body temperature, making it harder to wind down and fall asleep.

If you can improve just one thing about your recovery today, make it your sleep hygiene.

Because no matter how advanced your training is, or how fancy your tracking devices are, the real gains happen while you're asleep.

Putting It All Together

If you want to perform at your best, you must give your body the recovery it deserves. These tips are a great starting point. But they aren’t the only solutions available to you.

Beyond changing your mindset, prioritizing rest, and improving your sleep, there are other ways to support your body’s repair process so you can bounce back faster — and come back stronger.

Supplementation, hydration, nutrition, and mind-body relaxation techniques, like meditation and breathwork, can have huge benefits for optimizing recovery.

When it comes to supplementation for rest and recovery, magnesium is a great choice. But it’s critical that you use the right form.

Lately, I’ve been taking a serving of Mag R&R™ Instant Drink Mix before bed. It delivers 200 mg of magnesium glycinate, one of the most bioavailable and best-tolerated forms of magnesium available, in every serving.

Here’s what I’ve noticed since I started using it:

• I wake up feeling refreshed every morning

  
  

• My fitness trackers consistently show that my overnight recovery is “in the green” (meaning very good)

  
  

• And I look forward to my nightly wind-down routine even more now that it includes Mag R&R™ Instant Drink Mix. It’s a tasty treat (it’s naturally sweetened and sugar-free) that I know is optimizing my nighttime recovery — and I can feel the difference.

If that sounds good to you, I encourage you to try it for yourself, 100% risk-free, for 90 days.

When you combine it with the tips in this blog, I believe you’ll be on the path to optimal recovery and better performance.

Click the button below to learn more about Mag R&R™ Instant Drink Mix.