Recovery in water polo : how much do we have to know? A systematic review

Water polo (WP) is a high-intensity intermittent aquatic sport, with a predominance of swimming skills and nonswimming activities and in-complete recovery periods. Consequently, recovery after exercise is a fundamental part of sports performance. The main purpose of this sys-tematic review was to evaluate the effects of different recovery strate-gies in WP performance. The studies were found by searching in the databases of PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus. Methodological quality and risk of bias were assessed in accordance with the Cochrane Collaboration Guidelines samples. A summary of results including five studies was followed. The results show that supplementation with cherry juice before training does not imply improvements in recovery; the full-body photobiomodulation therapy reduces muscle damage; re-ducing training load during the season increased the natural logarithm of the root mean square of successive differences and perceived state of recovery, and the heart rate variability stabilizes and could progres-sively increase at the end of a tournament; and when an increase in in-ternal training load is less than 60%–70% autonomic cardiac disturbanc-es during preseason training do not occur. Recovery in WP is a very lim-ited field of study that needs future research in active recovery, hydro-therapy, massage, rest and sleep to help coaches formulate recommen-dations.