Active recovery affects the recovery of the corticospinal system but not of muscle contractile properties

Purpose Active recovery is often used by athletes after strenuous exercise or competition but its underlying mechanisms are not well understood. We hypothesized that active recovery speeds-up recovery processes within the muscle and the central nervous system (CNS). Methods We assessed muscular and CNS recovery by measuring the voluntary activation (VA) in the vastus lateralis muscle with transcranial magnetic stimulation (VA TMS ) and peripheral nerve stimulation (VA PNS ) during maximal voluntary contractions (MVC) of the knee extensors in 11 subjects. Measurements were performed before and after a fatiguing cycling time-trial, after an active and a passive recovery treatment and after another fatiguing task (1 min MVC). The measurements were performed a second time 24 h after the time-trial. Results We observed a time × group interaction effect for VA TMS (p = 0.013). Post-hoc corrected T-tests demonstrated an increased VA TMS after active recovery when measured after the 1 min MVC performed 24 h after the time-trial (mean ± SD; 95.2 ± 4.1% vs. 89.2 ± 6.6%, p = 0.026). No significant effects were observed for all other variables. Conclusions Active recovery increased aspects of central, rather than muscle recovery. However, no effect on MVC was seen, implying that even if active recovery speeds up CNS recovery, without affecting the recovery of muscle contractile properties, this doesn´t translate into increases in overall performance.