The Importance of Recovery for Physical and Mental Health

This book offers a thorough and accessible look into the importance of recovery in both staying healthy and performing well, and highlights the detrimental effects of underrecovery on physical and mental health. Internationally renowned experts from psychology, physiology, sport medicine, health, and sport science offer interdisciplinary analysis of the effects of underrecovery as well as the use of applied intervention and prevention strategies.

Over the last few decades, research in sports has provided numerous studies showing the importance of addressing recovery to find recovery-stress balance and build resources that help prevent illness and promote healthy living and well-being. Each chapter of this volume discusses a specific area of recovery, providing a collection of useful and practical lessons athletes and non-athletes can take forward in their training and beyond. Focusing on both research and applied counseling techniques to discuss recovery as an underestimated factor in physical and mental health, the book aims to enlighten readers on ways to incorporate recovery into their everyday lives to reduce stress and prevent injury.

The book is written for the scientific community, applied health scientists, students, and interested readers. It draws on experiences and scientific findings from the field of sport to make them usable for an expanded understanding of recovery in the field of health and related areas such as the workplace.

"Written specifically for those working within or studying sport science, sport medicine, psychology and allied health sciences, this book offers a uniquely rich insight into the concepts, research and implications of recovery and underrecovery for mental and physical health in sport. Importantly, it addresses matters of recovery for health across the lifespan with a focus on youth athletes, elite and adult athletes as well as masters athletes in the context of active ageing. For those practitioners working with such populations, we gain invaluable perspectives, strategies and practical recommendations related to resilience, sleep, the immune system, physical activity, long COVID, school/youth sport environments and many more?.Critically, these insights help us in our own day to day activities to maintain a high quality of life!"

Chris Harwood, PhD, Professor of Sport Psychology, Loughborough University, UK