Muscle Recovery Is Part of Performance

How to Recover Better, Stay Strong, and Keep Doing What You Love

You schedule the tennis match, show up for pickleball, get to the gym, squeeze in the run, or head out for eighteen holes. We tend to pay attention to how hard we worked, how well we played, and whether we’re improving.

What we don’t always think about is what happens afterward.

For years, many of us have judged recovery by soreness. If you wake up the next morning and your legs feel pretty good, you assume you recovered. If getting out of the car requires a small negotiation with your quadriceps, maybe you overdid it.

But soreness only tells us part of the story.

Every match, workout, run, or long active day creates a demand your body has to respond to. Muscle tissue needs to repair. Fuel that was used needs to be replaced. Fluids and electrolytes lost through sweat need to be replenished. And your body needs enough time and resources to adapt to what you just asked it to do.

To stay in the game for the long haul, it’s worth getting as interested in recovery as you are in the workout.

1. Protein & Muscle Repair: Giving Your Body the Signal

As we get older, our muscles can become a little “hard of hearing,” a phenomenon researchers call anabolic resistance. Leucine is one of the essential amino acids found in protein, and it helps tell muscle, “We have the materials. It’s time to start building and repairing.” This matters when you spend your day in a protein desert. 

On a vegetarian diet, it can be particularly challenging to obtain sufficient leucine and other essential amino acids. Not because you can't get enough protein eating vegetarian, but because it's surprisingly easy to become what I jokingly call a 'carbetarian.' Oatmeal for breakfast, a salad for lunch, pasta or rice with vegetables for dinner. Plenty of healthy foods and plenty of calories, but when you evaluate for the amino acids available for muscle repair, they are frequently lacking.

Quick Fix: The Breakfast Protein Audit

If your morning starts with toast, oatmeal or coffee alone, that's a protein desert. Adding Greek yogurt, eggs, lox with that bagel, or a quality protein smoothie can turn a carbohydrate-heavy breakfast into a much better recovery meal.

2. Replace What You Actually Used

A hard 90-minute tennis match in Florida creates a very different recovery demand from a leisurely walk around the neighborhood. During longer or more intense activity, your body draws heavily on stored carbohydrate (glycogen) to fuel movement. At the same time, heavy sweating drains both fluid and key electrolytes like sodium.

Immediately after a long, hot session, a big meal may be the last thing you feel like eating, and there’s no reason to force it. Start by getting out of the heat, cooling down, and replacing fluids and electrolytes. Once your heart rate has settled and your appetite returns, focus on a balanced meal with quality protein for repair and carbohydrate to begin restoring the glycogen you used.

Quick Tip: Cool Down Before Heavy Food

Immediately off the court, your heart is working overtime to cool you down. Rehydrate with cold electrolyte fluids first, and wait until your core temperature settles before eating a full, solid meal.

3. Magnesium: Important, but It Doesn’t Get to Take Credit for Everything

Magnesium gets a lot of attention in the performance and healthy-aging world, and for good reason. It is involved in hundreds of biochemical reactions and contributes to muscle relaxation, energy metabolism, and nerve function.

However, magnesium has also become the internet's default answer for every muscle issue. The reality is more nuanced.  Some forms of magnesium are well absorbed and used throughout the body. Others, like oxide and sulfate, mostly stay in the gut and work as laxatives.

Here are a few examples:

·       Magnesium Oxide & Sulfate: Poorly absorbed in the gut and known for bowel motility ('nature’s laxative').

·       Magnesium Malate: Bound to malic acid, making it well absorbed and utilized by muscle cells to support energy production.

·       Magnesium Glycinate: Bound to glycine, highly absorbable and ideal for calming the nervous system, muscle tightness, and evening rest.

It is also important to recognize that acute mid-match muscle cramps are rarely a sudden magnesium deficiency. Cramping during long court matches in Florida heat is far more often driven by neuromuscular fatigue (tired muscles and nerves beginning to misfire), high sweat rates, and sodium deficits.

4. More Training Isn’t Always More Progress

When a court game plateaus or performance dips, the natural instinct for active adults is often to push harder: add another match, hit the gym an extra day, or double down on drills.

Sometimes more work is appropriate. But often, the issue isn’t that your body needs another training session. It’s that it hasn’t had enough time for muscle recovery from the work you’ve already done.

Recovery doesn’t mean sitting on the couch for two days. Easy walking, relaxed cycling, light swimming, or mobility work between demanding sessions can keep you moving without adding another hard training load.

Quick Tip: Be Thoughtful about Stacking Heavy Days

f you play a grueling two-hour court match on Saturday, avoid scheduling your heaviest strength workout or another high-stakes match on Sunday. A lighter recovery day in between gives your body more time to bounce back.

5. And Then There Are Peptides…

You can’t spend much time around sports medicine, athletic recovery, or healthy-aging circles today without hearing about peptide therapies. 

Peptides are short chains of amino acids that act as precise cellular signaling molecules in the body, directing processes like collagen synthesis, tissue repair, and growth hormone release. Some peptides are already used as pharmaceutical drugs. Others remain an evolving area of clinical interest. In practice, peptides such as BPC157 and thymosin derivatives show promise for supporting stubborn tendon recovery, joint strain, and connective tissue healing.

However, marketing in this space has moved much faster than the science and the regulatory landscape has become a wild west. Across Florida and online, unregulated peptide vials are being sold by personal trainers, aestheticians, and pop-up vendors claiming products come from a 'clean lab in Miami'. Buying compounds from an unverified source carries real risks: there may be no reliable quality control, no guarantee of what is in the vial, and little meaningful safety oversight.

Peptides are not a DIY hack or a substitute for proper nutrition, hydration, and training balance.  We believe there is a place for thoughtfully selected peptide therapies and have prescribed them in our practice for more than a decade. The good news?  The regulatory landscape continues to evolve, including recent FDA review of several peptides being considered for use in compounding. That's another reason these therapies belong in a medical conversation but not in the world of DIY peptide vials and internet protocols.

When appropriate, peptide therapy requires careful patient evaluation, attention to sourcing and quality, and supervision by a health care professional who knows your medical history.

6. Learn What Recovery Looks Like for You

There is no single wearable score or generic formula that defines whether an individual is fully recovered. What matters most is understanding your own personal baseline.

Pay attention to subtle clues that your recovery isn't keeping pace with your activity:

·       Declining Court Performance: Starting strong but fading noticeably earlier in matches or workouts you normally handle well.

·       Lingering Soreness & DOMS: Unusual muscle stiffness or Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness that persists well beyond 72 hours.

·       Feeling 'Flat': Lacking your usual explosive pop, stamina, or mental drive during warm-ups and initial movements.

·       Extended Readiness Time: Needing several days off to feel ready for a session that used to require only one day.

A single off day happens to everyone. But if workouts you once recovered from easily are consistently taking longer, that is worth paying attention to. Rather than automatically blaming age, ask what changed.

The Bottom Line

Recovery is not the time between workouts when nothing is happening. It is when your body repairs, refuels, and adapts. Protein, hydration, fuel, appropriate training load, and targeted supplement support all have a role.

If recovery is taking noticeably longer despite getting the fundamentals right, it's time for a more thorough evaluation. Our team at Radiantly Healthy MD can help you figure out what may be getting in the way and what your body needs to stay in the game.