Are You Under-Recovering? Signs You’re Not Bouncing Back and How to Fix It

Harrison Armitage
May 26
5 min read

Most Amateur Athletes will focus on their training plans; the mileage, strength cycles, and overall programming but can often forget to track what's arguably more important, recovery.

Under-recovery is not the same as overtraining. You don't have to be a pro athlete or run 100 miles a week to find yourself regularly fatigued, underperforming, or getting sick more than usual. Recovery debt accumulates subtly and can derail months of work.

This article explores recovery debt, the key biomarkers that can help identify it, and how modern wearable technology can provide insights, making high-performance recovery strategies accessible to Amateur Athletes.

What Is Recovery Debt?

Recovery debt happens when your body isn’t able to fully rebound from the physical and psychological stress of training. Unlike overtraining syndrome (which is rare and typically reserved for elite athletes), recovery debt builds up when repeated insufficient rest, low energy intake, or poor sleep habits prevent full physiological recovery.

Over time, this can cause:

Decreased performance
Mood swings or mental burnout
Impaired immunity
Disruption of hormonal cycles (e.g., irregular periods or low libido)

Meeusen et al. (2013) speaks on a spectrum of training stress, where doing a bit more than usual (functional overreaching) can help you improve. Although, if you don’t recover enough, it becomes non-functional overreaching, which negatively impacts your performance. If ignored, this can lead to overtraining syndrome, a serious and long-term drop in your ability to perform.

Key Biomarkers of Under-Recovery

1. Resting Heart Rate (RHR)

Why: Your resting heart rate (RHR) is a simple but powerful indicator of cardiovascular and nervous system stress. An elevated RHR may reflect that your body is still in a sympathetic (fight-or-flight) state and hasn’t shifted into recovery mode.
Science: Bellenger et al. (2016) found that consistent monitoring of RHR can help detect signs of fatigue and under-recovery in endurance athletes.
Tracking: WHOOP, Oura Ring, Garmin, Apple Watch, Fitbit
Interpretation: Fitness trackers will give you a nightly average reading usually but you can do it yourself by holding your pulse and counting the numbers of beats in a minute minute. Take your RHR at the same time each morning. A consistent rise of more than 5 beats per minute above your baseline for several days may indicate that recovery strategies need adjustment.

2. Heart Rate Variability (HRV)

Why: HRV measures the variation in time between heartbeats and reflects the balance between your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. Higher HRV generally indicates better recovery and adaptability to stress.
Science: Plews et al. (2013) demonstrated that HRV is a sensitive marker for recovery status and can guide training load adjustments in real-time.
Tracking: WHOOP, Oura Ring, Polar H10, Elite HRV, Garmin
Interpretation: Rather than looking at a single number, monitor trends over time. A downward trend over several days, especially if paired with poor sleep or percfieved low mood, can indicate recovery debt.

3. Sleep Quantity and Quality

Why: Sleep is when your body repairs tissue, consolidates memory, balances hormones, and recharges your nervous system. Poor sleep directly reduces physical performance, reaction time, and motivation.
Science: Research shows that athletes getting fewer than 6 hours of sleep show significantly impaired cognitive and athletic performance (Fullagar et al., 2015).
Tracking: Oura Ring, WHOOP, Garmin, Fitbit, Apple Watch
Interpretation: Aim for at least 7.5-9 hours per night, with 20-25% in REM sleep and 15–20% in deep sleep. Repeated nights of reduced deep sleep (<1 hour) or frequent waking episodes can signal under-recovery.

4. Perceived Fatigue & Soreness

Why it matters: Whilst subjective, our perception of how tired, sore, or mentally foggy you feel is a valuable and validated indicator. When tracked consistently, it helps detect overreaching before performance drops.
Science says: Kellmann et al. (2018) emphasised the reliability of subjective assessments in combination with objective data to monitor recovery.
Track with: WHOOP journal entries, TrainingPeaks wellness metrics, or even simple morning check-ins written in your daily journal (1–5 scale for fatigue, soreness, mood).
Interpretation: Watch for increases in fatigue and soreness ratings paired with low motivation, reduced enthusiasm for training, or irritability.

Recovery Debt and Energy Availability

Low energy availability (LEA) is when there isn't enough dietary energy left after training to support normal body function. This doesn't just affect elite athletes. With other work demands, Amateur Athletes may be more likely to unintentiopnally slack on nutrition, leading to missing the signs, especially if they're not tracking their caloric intake relative to their output.

According to Heikura et al. (2022), markers of LEA in endurance athletes include:

Decreased resting metabolic rate
Lower leptin levels
Disrupted thyroid function

Energy availability can be roughly estimated by tracking calorie intake and exercise expenditure. Apps like MyFitnessPal, paired with wearables, make this easier for everyday athletes.

Practical Recovery Strategies

1. Eat Enough. Especially Around Training

Prioritise carbohydrates and protein pre- and post-training.
Don’t skip meals or train fasted regularly unless guided by a professional.

2. Respect Rest Days

Use them for active recovery (light walks, mobility work, contrast therapy).
Resist the urge to "make up" missed workouts.

3. Sleep Like It Matters

Aim for 7.5 - 9 hours/night.
It won’t always be perfect but aim for maximal rest, have the intent, then do the best you can around life.
Establish a wind-down routine and sleep schedule.

4. Track and Adjust

Use wearables to spot trends (RHR, HRV, sleep) - affordable options are on the market, whilst possibly less accurate, they will still offer a rough guide useful data.
Monitor subjective fatigue and mood.

5. Create a Recovery-Friendly Environment

Avoid constant high-stress states (commuting, screens late at night, etc.)
Build in time to decompress mentally

Final Thoughts

You don’t need to train like a pro to recover like one. Tools like HRV monitors, sleep trackers, and self-awareness practices give you access to powerful data that can help you adapt and grow. Under-recovery is common among time-strapped Amateur Athletes but it's fixable.

If you're always tired, underperforming, or struggling to bounce back, it's not weakness. It might just be recovery debt.

What we do as Amateur Athletes

“I have had my fair share of periods with poor recovery, at nobodys fault bar my own. In tackling this Whoop has been an invaluable investment for me. I have always struggled to prioritise sleep, and whilst still far from perfect, Whoop has helped me in improving it considerably. The data I get from it is never ‘controlling’ of my training, recovery or general habits, but it does provide a useful guide to see how my body has recovered, slept, and the amount of load I have put through it. They can be a significant investment, but I’ll always recommend fitness trackers to like-minded Amateur Athletes” - Harrison

References

Bellenger, C. R., Fuller, J. T., Thomson, R. L., Davison, K., Robertson, E. Y., & Buckley, J. D. (2016). Monitoring athletic training status through autonomic heart rate regulation: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Sports Medicine, 46(10), 1461–1486. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-016-0484-2
Fullagar, H. H. K., Skorski, S., Duffield, R., Hammes, D., Coutts, A. J., & Meyer, T. (2015). Sleep and athletic performance: the effects of sleep loss on exercise performance, and physiological and cognitive responses to exercise. Sports Medicine, 45(2), 161–186. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-014-0260-0
Heikura, I. A., Uusitalo, A. L. T., Stellingwerff, T., Bergland, D., Mero, A. A., & Burke, L. M. (2022). Low Energy Availability Is Difficult to Assess but Outcomes Have Large Impact on Bone Injury Rates in Elite Distance Athletes. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, 32(2), 93–100. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29252050/
Kellmann, M., Bertollo, M., Bosquet, L., Brink, M., Coutts, A. J., Duffield, R., ... & Beckmann, J. (2018). Recovery and performance in sport: Consensus statement. International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 13(2), 240–245. https://doi.org/10.1123/ijspp.2017-0759
Meeusen, R., Duclos, M., Foster, C., Fry, A., Gleeson, M., Nieman, D., ... & Urhausen, A. (2013). Prevention, diagnosis and treatment of the overtraining syndrome: joint consensus statement of the European College of Sport Science and the American College of Sports Medicine. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 45(1), 186–205. https://doi.org/10.1249/MSS.0b013e318279a10a
Plews, D. J., Laursen, P. B., Stanley, J., Kilding, A. E., & Buchheit, M. (2013). Training adaptation and heart rate variability in elite endurance athletes: opening the door to effective monitoring. Sports Medicine, 43(9), 773–781. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-013-0071-8