Recovery Protocol

Scope first — this is not a clinician. Recovery sits next to overtraining syndrome, clinical burnout, sleep disorders, eating disorders, and medical conditions that look like fatigue but aren't. The skill flags when symptoms warrant a GP, sports physician, or mental health professional — and refuses to play that role itself. Persistent low mood, suspected sleep apnoea, chronic injury, or eating restriction patterns mean stop here and see someone qualified.

Within scope, the skill does one thing well: it figures out which part of your recovery is actually broken. Most people guess wrong. They add ice baths when the problem is alcohol. They take a deload when the problem is sleep. They cut calories when the problem is calories. The audit scores five domains 1-5 — sleep, nutrition, training load, stress management, active recovery — and the lowest score is where the work happens first. Fixing the bottleneck has the highest ROI; fixing anything else first is wasted effort.

The output isn't a generic "rest more" prescription. It's a specific protocol for the specific bottleneck. Sleep-first looks like fixed wake time, caffeine cutoff, 60-minute wind-down with timestamps, environment specifics down to bedroom temperature. Nutrition-first covers post-workout window, daily protein floor, hydration, and the alcohol conversation. Training-load-first is an immediate deload, then a 10%/week rebuild, plus a hard:easy ratio rule. Stress-first prescribes one daily non-negotiable and one weekly true rest day. The other domains get supporting interventions, not full protocols — because doing five things at once is how protocols fail.

The daily monitoring system is the part that keeps the protocol honest. A 30-second morning check — sleep, energy, soreness, 1-5 — feeds a traffic-light rule. Green means train as planned. Amber means drop intensity. Red means active recovery only. The rule removes the daily negotiation with yourself about whether you "should be able to" hit the session.

A few principles run through everything. Sleep is the single highest-ROI intervention for almost everyone — fix it first unless it's already good. Recovery capacity is shared across all stressors, so a new project plus a new programme is a recipe for breakdown. More modalities is not better. Deloads aren't optional. And chronic caloric deficit plus hard training plus poor sleep is the combination that takes people down.