How do we know which recovery strategy someone actually needs? Kellmann and colleagues' "Recovery and Performance in Sport: Consensus Statement" is a useful starting point. Recovery isn't just about training. It reflects physical load, psychological stress, and everything happening outside the gym. The fundamentals, like sleep and adequate rest, do most of the work. Tracking the work completed, how the person responds, and how their performance changes tells us when more support is needed. The paper also makes an important point: feeling better sooner isn't the same as adapting better over time. Some interventions reduce soreness but blunt the very adaptation we're training for. Whether a strategy helps depends on the person, the timing, and the goal. I'd add one thing from practice. As people age, or as demands rise, recovery needs to be planned more deliberately and matched to the specific stress we're imposing. Recovery belongs in the plan from day one. Start with the fundamentals, understand the individual, and let their response guide adjustments. More recovery tools don't automatically mean better recovery.