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The 72 hours: what the markers actually do
In judo athletes, creatine kinase was back to baseline by 48 hours. In one study of professional rugby players, around half had not recovered their jump power at 60. Both findings are real, and the gap between them is the whole point.
Recovery runs on several clocks at different speeds, and the one you can feel is rarely the one that matters most.
What was measured, and where
A 2025 study followed 13 junior judo athletes through competition, taking creatine kinase and countermovement jump 24 hours before, 24 hours after and 48 hours after.
Creatine kinase rose significantly at 24 hours and was back at baseline by 48. Jump performance, meanwhile, stayed stable across every timepoint.
The authors read that as two different recovery pathways: structural damage on one clock, neuromuscular function on another.
Set that alongside what has been found in other contact sports.
| Finding | Timepoint |
|---|---|
| Judo: creatine kinase back to baseline | 48 h |
| Simulated jiu jitsu, athletes with disabilities: full recovery | within 72 h |
| Rugby: around half of players had not recovered jump power | 60 h |
| Glycogen restoration and CK normalisation, various sports | often >72 h |
Why the rugby number is the one to keep
Around half had not returned to their pre-match jump power at 60 hours. Not a few outliers. Half the squad, in that study.
Which tells you the averages published in these studies describe a group and not a person. Two fighters can come out of the same card, do the same things afterwards, and be in genuinely different condition on Tuesday.
A blood marker returning to normal is not permission. Your muscle chemistry can look fine while the thing that actually produces power has not come back. If you are going to use one signal to decide, use output rather than how you feel or what a number says.
The 3 days, one at a time
Day one. Fluid still, because the deficit from the cut and the fight is rarely closed on the night. Carbohydrate in quantity. Protein spread across the day rather than concentrated. Nothing resembling training.
Day two. This is the low point in how a fighter feels and it is normal. Appetite is usually large by now, which is useful, and it is the point at which most people begin eating without any structure at all. That is where the overshoot starts: a case study tracked a professional mixed martial artist to 4.2% above his pre-camp baseline within 2 weeks of competing.
Day three. Movement, not training. In soccer players, an active recovery session at 48 hours produced better restoration of both muscle soreness and creatine kinase than a sport-specific training session at the same point. Walking, easy cycling, mobility.
Nothing that produces more damage.
Food across the 3 days
Simpler than most people make it, and the errors are always in the same direction.
Enough energy, which after a camp usually means more than feels reasonable. Eight weeks of deficit have left a real debt, and glycogen restoration alone can take longer than 72 hours.
Protein through the day, not in one dose. Repair is running for days and the tissue is being rebuilt continuously.
Fluid, still. The habit of monitoring it stops the moment the fight ends, and the deficit does not.
Whatever you want, within that. A fighter who has eaten to a plan for 8 weeks needs to eat like a person for a few days, and I would not fight anyone about it.
The structure I care about is that the energy is adequate and the fluid keeps going in.
What I would not do
Not train because you feel fine on day two. Feeling fine at 48 hours is exactly what the rugby data says is unreliable.
Not weigh yourself daily. The number will climb and it is supposed to. Watching it climb produces one of two bad reactions, and both of them are worse than not knowing.
Not stack recovery interventions. Ice, compression and the rest have their own literature and their own arguments. None of them substitutes for food, fluid and sleep, and a fighter doing all three badly is not helped by a fourth thing.
Not treat this as the whole of it. Seventy-two hours restores the acute damage. What happens over the following weeks is a different question, and it is the one that decides the next camp.
One honest limitation
Almost everything above comes from judo, jiu jitsu, rugby and soccer. The judo study had 13 athletes and they were juniors.
Nobody has run this properly in professional boxing, and until somebody does, we are reading across from sports that share some of the demand and none of the weight cut.
Treat the numbers as a shape rather than a schedule.
Two complete sample documents are free to read before you buy anything.
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Oleksandr Foka is a sports nutritionist with over a decade in professional sport. He wrestled freestyle from the age of 4 until he was 22, competing as a medallist and champion at Ukrainian and international level, and has worked with amateur boxers since 2017, including champions and medallists at world championships. He has worked in world title camps in boxing with Oleksandr Usyk, Oleksandr Gvozdyk, Denys Berinchyk, Vladyslav Sirenko, Murodjon Ahmadaliev, Israil Madrimov, Sergiy Bogachuk, Sabirzhan Akkalykov and Abylaikhan Zhussupov, and with the Kazakhstan national boxing team and with Kazakhstan judo athletes, and currently works on the WTA tour.
Oleksandr Foka — sports nutritionist. Questions: fokaoleksandr@gmail.com
Educational content, not medical treatment. For adults 18+. Recovery timelines vary enormously between individuals. Any fighter with a suspected concussion or any injury requiring assessment must follow medical advice, and that takes priority over any return-to-training timeline described here.