01 Jan ELITE Level RECOVERY for Girls Soccer Players During Showcases and Tournaments
Elite is earned.
If you want to true, elite level recovery you have to be disciplined with every facet of your training, nutrition, and soccer load management.
I only know a tiny fraction of young girls soccer players who are actually doing recovery right.
For others, they’re relying on quick fixes like icing, or worse yet, extreme hacks like cold plunges, cryotherapy, red light therapy, IV therapies, hyperbaric oxygen, over-supplementation, and more nonsense.
What really moves the needle in your recovery is not any hack or gimmick. It’s doing the foundational things that actually repair and rebuild muscle tissue as well as recharge your nervous system.
In my book Female Athlete High Performance, I share my pyramid of recovery, with the BASE being the most important:
Let’s start with the most important first that many girls royally screw up.
Sleep, Nutrition, and OFF DAYS
It’s simple: sleep repairs muscle damage due to growth hormone release. The most protein synthesis happens when you’re sleeping beauty. NREM sleep also refreshes the brain and resets the nervous system due to the slow brain wave activity. Teenage athletes who sleep 8 or more hours a night are the least likely to get injured because they’re energized for the next day of intense training and games.
Proper nutrition with protein, fats, and carbs at each meal, helps to BUILD and REPAIR muscle. If you aren’t building with proper nutrition, your muscles are more likely to stay weak, fatigue fast, and feel sore. Even worse, when you’re under-eating, you will be sluggish with explosive movements and your speed will wane.
When you’re on the road at a tournament, there are plenty of great options you can get on a chain restaurant menu, such as steak and potatoes, cheeseburger with a side salad, or various sandwiches with a side of veggies/fruit. Outback Steakhouse, Chili’s, Olive Garden, Longhorn, Texas Roadhouse, and even Starbucks all have meal options that include each macro nutrient: protein, fats, and carbs.
In addition to your meals, you must also have snacks on-hand for extra fuel and energy in between games.
Some of my favorite, nutrient dense snacks for on-the-road are featured in this podcast episode:
You also need TRUE OFF DAYS, meaning, not even a light skills session. Truly OFF. The only active recovery (the second base of the pyramid) I recommend is waling, foam rolling, or floor mobility work because these are all NON-IMPACT on the muscles, bones and joints.
Get these two bases of the pyramid right first. If you aren’t doing these, you are the furthest thing from elite there is.
And even more tragic, if you’re grinding 7 days a week, doing skills sessions on a Sunday the day after a game, while relying on cold plunges or icing your knees to solve your soreness, you will NOT get far in your recovery.
The root of your problem isn’t you’re cold plunge or ice deficient.
The root of your problem is you ARE DOING TOO MUCH, your muscles keep breaking down, and your nervous system is tapping out.
It’s funny because a lot of these recovery hacks are marketed as “optimal” or “elite” and you see concierge bio hack offices selling to parents of athletes that if they don’t do them they won’t ever recover well enough, or get rid of their pain.
These recovery bio hacks are the furthest from elite. They mask the root of your problem. They make you feel like you’re in control, but you’re not.
It’s superficial recovery that makes you feel good for a little, then the soreness and pain come roaring back because you’re really just over-trained, under-slept, malnourished, and dehydrated.
Do the foundations savagely well. Then maybe you can move to the itty bitty top of the recovery pyramid: recovery devices.
I don’t encourage athletes to use gadgets and gimmicks for recovery that much. This is because most are trash and don’t work.
However, after years of research on a company I know is ahead of the technology game, SimpliFaster, the only recovery device that I swear by to get a recovery boost is the Firefly Recovery Device because it stimulates blood flow to muscles (over 400%). We don’t want cold for recovery because cold restricts blood flow. We want the opposite, especially in between games.
I highly recommend Firefly for busy girls soccer players who need insanely fast recovery while on the road at a showcase, or during a wild two-game weekend. It helps to get lactate build-up out of the muscles and deliver oxygen/nutrients, and reduce soreness. (Get a pair HERE) <— all the cool kids are wearing it while driving to games ;-O
But please keep in mind, while using Firefly, you must be doing the foundational things right FIRST – proper nutrition, plenty of sleep, and having 1-2 full off days sprinkled into your training week.
Add the Firefly on top of this, and you have true elite recovery. You’re going to be feeling incredible year-round because you’re smart with your training load and what you put into your body. The FireFly is just the added edge to complement your recovery basics.
Elite recovery is being disciplined over and over again with the basics.
It means consistency over quick fixes.
It means habits over hacks.
Are you truly elite or are you fake elite?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Erica Mulholland is a former college 3x All-American soccer player and now Hall of Famer from Johns Hopkins University. She holds a Master of Science in Exercise Science and is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach, who has been helping female athletes of all sports with speed, agility, strength, power, and conditioning for 14 years. She works with youth female athletes who want to become stronger and faster, as well as ACL rehab for female athletes in the later stages (over 3 month mark post-surgery) who want to return to sport better than they were prior to injury.
Work with Erica in Tampa and Lutz Florida for speed, agility, and strength training, OR late stage ACL rehab (must be at minimum 3 months into physical therapy and post-surgery): BOOK ASSESSMENT HERE
Interested in REMOTE TRAINING for Female Athletes? BOOK A CONSULT HERE
Get Erica’s book FEMALE ATHLETE HIGH PERFORMANCE
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