In this episode Andrew and Shona discuss:

0:10 Shona’s definition of recovery, training is important but you need to recover and the research into mental recovery that led to Shona’s work at the AIS.

6:30 How to make physical and mental recovery sound normal to the average person, there’s a lot of magic in the mental side of recovery and crossing mental and physical recovery.

11:00 How Shona measures recovery, is wearable tech all that useful in recovery and knowing all your stats isn’t always the best thing for some people.

16:20 Sleep is the most important factor in recovery, every athlete is different in how much knowledge you can load them up with in the pre-season and Shona’s example of how this had played out with a team she worked with.

25:30 The strong link between learning and sleep, Simone Biles taking time off and coming back even stronger and the shorter off seasons players have compared to a few years ago.

33:10 Some examples of how you can add some recovery to your life, Shona’s role in starting up the recovery centre at the AIS and the concept of a recovery rocket alongside the recovery points system.

44:05 Coaches need some recovery for themselves, being tired and fatigued changes everything about your mood and some of the external factors such as family that can impact recovery.

52:00 Getting exercise in the time that works for you, walking to get your brain going and we don’t understand the effects screen time has on us.

56:40 Video games aren’t recovery, the growing use of VR in recovery and using AI along with VR to assist imagery.

1:03:15 How Andrew gets people to change their behaviours and where you can find Shona.

Listen to the Real Science of Sport episode mentioned: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-real-science-of-sport-podcast/id1461719225?i=1000712107079
Read the Recovery Umbrella article: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34941807/
View the Recovery Rocket:https://performanceintelligence.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/recovery-rocket-1.png

https://performanceintelligence.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/recovery-rocket-2.png

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