Active versus passive recovery and post-exercise fatigue in athletes: a systematic review of physiological and performance outcomes

  • Juanda Putra 
    Universitas Negeri Padang
    Indonesia

Abstract

Exercise-induced fatigue constrains training quality and competitive output, and the congested schedules that characterise contemporary sport leave increasingly narrow windows in which athletes must restore homeostasis, yet practitioners continue to prescribe active recovery on the basis of contested evidence. This systematic literature review synthesises comparative experimental evidence on how active recovery influences physiological fatigue markers and the restoration of physical performance in athletes and physically active adults. The review followed the PRISMA 2020 framework. A Boolean search combining active recovery terminology, fatigue descriptors and athletic population terms was executed in Scopus using TITLE-ABS-KEY field codes and restricted to English-language journal articles published between 2021 and 2025, returning 470 records. After removal of 16 duplicates, 454 records were screened, 139 full texts were assessed, and 17 studies satisfied the eligibility criteria. Methodological quality was appraised with the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool 2018, and findings were integrated through thematic synthesis. Two findings dominate the corpus: active recovery accelerates blood lactate clearance more reliably than passive rest, whereas its advantage for neuromuscular performance restoration is small, inconsistent and frequently indistinguishable from stretching, immersion or passive control. Theoretically, the results decouple metabolite clearance from functional recovery; practically, they support individualised, dose-controlled prescription. Future work should prioritise longitudinal designs, standardised dosing and responder-level analysis.

Keywords
  • Active recovery
  • Recovery strategies
  • Exercise-induced fatigue
  • Muscle fatigue
  • Athletes
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