What freedivers get wrong about recovery

Recovery used to be simple. Eat enough. Sleep enough. Don’t train stupid.

But somewhere along the way it became an entire industry. And now there’s a gadget or supplement for everything. Ice baths, infrared saunas, adaptogens, amino acid stacks, sleep trackers that track your trackers.

None of it is inherently bad. The problem is the order of operations. You can’t skip the foundation and buy your way to the penthouse.

What are you actually recovering from?

Ask yourself: what work did you do that needs recovery?

Deep dives stress your body in specific ways. Pressure changes compress your lungs and shift blood volume. Your cardiovascular system goes into survival mode-heart rate drops, peripheral vessels constrict. You’re depleting oxygen, building CO2, stressing your equalization, and demanding neurological control.

That’s what needs to recover. Not just tired muscles. Your cardiovascular system, your nervous system, your cellular metabolism.

The whole point of training is adaptation. You stress the body, then you let it adapt to that stress. That’s how you get better. When you immediately jump to supplements and interventions to “fix” everything and make yourself feel fresh again, you’re potentially removing the signal your body needs to adapt.

Don’t confuse feeling recovered with being recovered.

Heavy training block? You’re supposed to feel okay, not optimized. You just need to complete the work without injury or excessive fatigue. The adaptation happens later, after you back off. That’s the design.

Recovery needs to match where you are in the training cycle. (If you don’t have a structured cycle, see What Makes a Good Training Program.)

Tomorrow vs. next year

There’s a difference between “how do I bounce back for tomorrow?” and “how do I keep training for the next year?”

Need your legs back for a competition tomorrow? Sure. Ice bath, massage, whatever it takes. Don’t think about the future.

But if you’re trying to over-optimize recovery every single session, you might be robbing yourself of adaptation. Sometimes you’re supposed to feel depleted.

Doing HIIT knowing your breath-hold will suck because your resting heart rate is elevated? That can be intentional.

Pushing through a pool session with sore legs from yesterday’s strength work? That lactic burn will teach you something.

When advanced recovery actually helps

Look, there’s a place for the fancy stuff. Elite athletes training multiple sessions a day? Sure. Competition weekend where you need to perform back-to-back days? Absolutely. Recovery tech can help you squeeze out that extra percent.

But only after the basics are bulletproof. Advanced recovery tools should complement the foundation, not replace it. If you’re using compression boots to make up for four nights of bad sleep, you’re doing it backwards.

The question that matters

Here’s what you should be asking: How can I train consistently without sliding into overtraining or injury?

Not: What can I buy to train harder while recovering less?

Consistency over years beats heroic efforts over weeks. (See Keep Training (Even When You Don’t Feel Like It) for more on building that consistency.)

The non-negotiables

Sleep has to be rock solid. Not negotiable.

Space your workouts sufficiently. Stress, recover, adapt, repeat-that’s progressive training.

Eat enough real food to support your work. Not supplements to compensate for eating like garbage. Actual calories from actual food.

These three beat any recovery gadget.

Match your lifestyle to your goals

Real performance requires lifestyle adjustments. You can’t have a mismatch between what you want and how you live. If your sleep is chaotic, your nutrition is random, and you’re training whenever you feel like it, no amount of recovery tech will fix that.

We think buying power solves problems that consistency should handle. It doesn’t.

Tracking in Appneist helps you see patterns in how you’re spacing sessions, when fatigue shows up, what actually works for your recovery needs.

Recovery is simple. Sleep, space your sessions, eat enough.

Stop looking for the extra 2% when you haven’t nailed the basic 90%.