What Motivates Athletes to Recover? A Qualitative Exploration of Perceptions, Behaviours, and Barriers to Recovery Engagement

High-performance athletes navigate a delicate balance between stress and recovery to optimize performance and mitigate risks of injury and burnout. This qualitative study investigated the athletes’ perceptions, motivations, and behaviors toward recovery, and factors influencing recovery engagement. Guided by a critical realist ontology, semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine coaches and eight athletes from national to world-class levels across various sports. Data were subsequently analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Three main themes were developed: Factors Shaping Recovery, Maintaining Motivation and Adherence, and Barriers to Recovery Engagement. The findings reveal that athletes and coaches differed in their understanding of the purpose of recovery; athletes primarily viewed recovery as a means to prevent injury and reduce fatigue, while coaches emphasized its role in enhancing performance. Recovery strategies were more consistently followed when they were convenient and satisfying, but a lack of education concerning recovery, disrupted routines, and sleep restrictions frequently hindered effective recovery. These results affirm the need for future research to target educational programs to enhance recovery knowledge, integrate recovery routines into training schedules, and foster supportive coach-athlete relationships to ensure consistent and effective recovery strategies.