Introduction: Soccer players have to do hard training and also sever match during a weeks, hence, applying an efficient recovery strategy (RS) seems to be critical in order to fatigue avoiding and decrease the possibly of injury. Methodology: In this study, effects of three common RS including passive recovery, massage and cold water immersion has been investigated on muscle performance of young soccer players. 30 soccer players randomly assigned to one of the Passive recover (P, N=10), Massage (M, N=10) and cold water immersion (CWI, n=10) groups. Muscle performance tests including, 20 m sprint, 40 m sprint, agility, sargent jump and running repeated sprint (RSR) was done before and after an exhaustive stimulated soccer match following with one of the RS. The simulated soccer test lasted for 90 minutes, including a soccer agility test, and repetitive walking and running to fatigue. In order to analyze data, after confirmation normality and variance homogeneity, for normal data ANOVA statistical method and otherwise Kruskal–Wallis statistical test were used. The significance level of statistical analysis of the present study was considered as p≤0.05. All statistical tests were performed using SPSS software version 22. Results: The result showed that CWI improved 40 m sprint and soccer agility records however, no significant changes found for 20 m sprint, sargent jump test and RSR post-test records compared to pretest. M and P both negatively affect RSR and also soccer agility and 20 m sprint respectively. Discussion: In conclusion, based on our result, it seems that CWI is more efficient recover strategy on muscle performance of young soccer players in compare to P and M recovery method.

Keywords