After a competition, it’s common to find that some players are completely exhausted, while others claim they feel ready to train again the next day. As a coach or performance professional, this creates a familiar dilemma: What should you do with each athlete?

Without objective data, decisions are often made based on intuition, which can be risky, because not every athlete responds to competition in the same way, even if they all competed on the same day.

The reality of the day after

• Everyone competes on the same day.
• But not everyone responds the same way.
• And without objective data, we often treat everyone equally.

At ThermoHuman, we’ve developed a tool that allows you to quantify each athlete’s individual response after competition. Our software includes a specific post-competition analysis module that detects how the body reacts following intense effort.

In addition, our R&D department is researching how different recovery strategies influence athletic performance — helping coaches and practitioners make more informed decisions.

Three post-competition response patterns

Thermal body analysis after competition allows us to classify athletes into three main response patterns:

• Heated up
• Neutral
• Cooled down

This classification provides a clear physiological interpretation of how each athlete’s body is responding.

What does post-competition temperature tell you?

Hyperthermic Profile

• A positive sign of adaptation, as long as the temperature increase isn’t extreme.Research consistently shows that after intense physical effort (8 to 24 hours later), the body’s temperature tends to rise, closely linked to mechanical load.

Neutral Profile

• Represents normal homeostasis and a balanced recovery.The athlete’s body is maintaining equilibrium, indicating an adequate adaptive response.

Hypothermic Profile

• Suggests an altered system and excessive fatigue.Internal ThermoHuman research shows that when competitive demands exceed certain thresholds, the body may respond with reduced temperature, associated with central fatigue.

Each Profile Requires a Different Strategy

Thermal analysis now makes it possible to personalize recovery strategies according to each athlete’s physiological state:

• Heated (Hyperthermic) → active recovery and close monitoring.
• Neutral → maintain the usual recovery approach; during congested schedules, training can still be considered.
• Cooled (Hypothermic) → priority intervention focused on improving circulatory and metabolic function.

From Intuition to Data

With ThermoHuman’s Fatigue Module, you can see how each athlete’s body is responding today, without waiting for them to say, “I feel heavy.”

Thermography allows you to identify who needs what, and when, using objective data instead of subjective perception. Each recovery decision then becomes a strategic tool to optimize performance.