Your data, explained
This page tells you what Recov knows about you, who can see it, and what you can do about it. It is written for you — not for your parents, and not for lawyers.
The short version
- Your journal is private. Nobody at your club can read what you write — not your coach, not your parent, not your welfare officer.
- Your coach sees your training — results, how sore you are, how you slept, and whether you are eating enough. Not your journal. Not your meal photos.
- Your parent sees less than your coach. Results, fuelling and injury reports. That is it.
- Other athletes see nothing. Ever. There are no leaderboards.
- You can say no. You can turn off your permission at any age, without asking anyone.
Who we are
Recov is an app your club uses to help you train, eat and recover well. Your club decides to use us. We build and run the app.
So two organisations are involved in your data: your club and us. If you want something changed or deleted, you can ask either one, and we will talk to each other about it.
What we know about you, and why
We only collect things for a reason. Here is each one.
Your name, email and date of birth
So we know who you are, and so we know whether you are under 18. Your date of birth is scrambled in our database. That means even someone who could look inside our systems would see nonsense instead of the real date.
Your club needs this to run the squad, and your parent or guardian agreed to it when your club invited you.
Your training — sessions, times, splits, weights, effort
So you and your coach can see how you are going, and so the app can spot if your training load jumps up too fast.
How you are recovering — resting heart rate, sleep, HRV, VO₂ max
You type these in yourself. Or, if you use the Recov phone app, it can read some of them from the health app on your phone or tablet (Apple Health on an iPhone or iPad, Health Connect on Android), so you do not have to type them. We call this wearable sync.
- It only happens if three things are on: a parent's permission (if you are 18 or over, you can give it yourself), the Sync this phone switch in the app, and your phone's own permission.
- What it reads: resting heart rate, how long you slept and VO₂ max. On Android it can also read heart-rate variability (HRV), if you allow it on your phone. It reads nothing else — not your location, and nothing about your periods.
- When: each time you open the app or go back to it, and sometimes in the background, when your phone allows it, no more than about once every 12 hours. Each time it looks back over the last 31 days, so the first time can bring in up to a month of numbers.
- Where it goes: only to Recov. We keep no watch, phone or app name with the numbers, and we never write anything into your health app.
- Who sees it: you and your coach. Not your parent and not your welfare officer, unless they are also one of your coaches.
- If this morning's resting heart rate, sleep or HRV is wrong, type the right one in. Your number stays, and the phone keeps filling in the rest. If you typed a number before the phone sent one, the phone's number is used instead. If any other number is wrong, like VO₂ max or a number from an earlier day, ask us to fix it (see "Talking to us").
- Only turn it on on your own phone. It reads whatever is in the health app on the phone or tablet where it is switched on, even if those numbers are someone else's. A family iPad's Health app can hold numbers from someone else's iPhone or Apple Watch.
- To stop it on Android, switch off Sync this phone, and nothing new is read. On an iPhone or iPad, the app cannot switch it off: turn off Recov's access in your phone's health app settings, and the health app then gives Recov no new numbers. Turning off the permission stops it too. None of this deletes the numbers it has already sent: they stay in your record, and your coach can still see them. They are part of your record, so if your whole record is ever deleted they go with it, but we cannot delete just these numbers on their own.
Where you are sore
You tap a body area, which side, and how much it bothers you from 1 to 5. There is no typing, just taps. It helps your coach spot a pattern before it turns into an injury.
Injuries
You or your coach can write up an injury — what it is, which side, and when it started.
Food
You can photograph a meal, or type what you ate. A computer program works out roughly whether you have eaten enough for the training you are doing. You get back something like "spot on" or "a bit under-fuelled".
It is never about calories or losing weight. It is about whether you have enough fuel to train and grow. If it ever feels like it is telling you to eat less, that is a bug, and we want you to tell us.
Your journal
How the session felt. What is on your mind. Anything you want.
This one is different
What you write in your journal is scrambled in our database, and no screen anywhere in Recov shows it to anyone but you. Not your coach. Not your parent. Not your welfare officer.
We built it that way on purpose. A journal only works if it is honest, and you cannot be honest if you are wondering who is reading.
Who can see what
This is the real table, not a simplified one.
| Thing | You | Your coach | Your parent | Welfare officer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Training results | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Resting heart rate, sleep | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Where you are sore | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Whether you are fuelled enough | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| What you said you ate | Yes | No | No | No |
| Your meal photos | Yes | No | No | No |
| Your journal | Yes | No | No | No |
| Injury reports | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Other athletes' data | No | — | — | — |
Your coach gets the result of the food check — "spot on", and the rough grams. They never see the photo, and they never see what you typed you ate.
You can never see another athlete's data, and they can never see yours. That is not a setting someone could switch on by mistake. It is built into the app so deeply that a new screen cannot break it by accident.
Things we never do
- We never track where you are. No location, ever.
- We never sell your data. Not to anyone, for anything.
- We never use it for adverts, and there are no adverts in Recov.
- We do not read your contacts, your other photos, or what else you do on your phone. The one exception is your phone's health app, and only if wearable sync is on.
- We do not use tracking or analytics tools that watch how you use the app.
- We do not keep your IP address.
- Photos can carry a hidden tag saying where they were taken. We strip that off the moment your photo reaches us — before we store it, and before it goes anywhere else. We never keep it.
Other companies that see some of it
We use a few other companies' computers to make parts of Recov work. Here is exactly what goes where.
| Who | What they get |
|---|---|
| Anthropic | Your meal photos, and anything you type about what you ate. A program looks at them and works out the fuelling verdict. Your hand is often in the photo, because it is used to judge portion size. |
| Anthropic | Nothing about you. Coaches use it to build training plans, and no names or IDs are sent. But whatever a coach types goes across, so if a coach types your name into a plan, that goes too. Coaches are told not to. |
| Resend | Sends our emails. They get an email address. Our emails never contain your name or anything about your training. |
| Railway and Amazon | Run our servers, and hold the keys that scramble your data. |
Apple and Google make the health apps on phones, but they are not on this list. The health app is read on your phone or tablet itself, and wearable sync sends none of the numbers it reads to Apple or Google.
Where in the world this happens
Some of those companies work all over the world, so your data may be handled outside the UK. When that happens, we use the legal contracts that make the company protect your data to UK standards wherever it is.
How long we keep things
Different things for different lengths of time. The full list is here.
The short version: we keep your training and wellbeing records while you are an athlete at your club, and we delete them soon after you leave. Some records we have to keep for longer — an injury report, for example, because someone might need it years later if you were hurt.
If you ask us to delete your data, we do it and we tell you when it is done. That takes up to a month.
What you can ask for
These are your legal rights. They are yours, not your parents' — although if you are younger, your parent may help you use them.
- See everything we hold about you. Most of it is already in the app. Ask us for the rest.
- Fix anything that is wrong.
- Ask us to delete it.
- Turn off your permission. You can withdraw consent at any age, on your own, without your parent. Only they can switch it back on while you are under 18.
- Get a copy to take somewhere else.
- Object — tell us to stop doing something, and we have to have a proper reason to carry on.
We have to reply within a month. Here is how to ask.
Things Recov does not do
It is just as important to know what the app is not doing for you.
- Recov does not watch out for you. It does not read your journal or your mood answers to spot that you are having a bad month and tell an adult.
- Recov will not pass a message to your welfare officer for you. If you need to talk to someone, use whatever way your club already has — and please do.
- Recov does not link to your watch or any fitness account. The only health numbers it can read come from the health app on a phone or tablet where wearable sync is switched on.
We would rather you knew this than assumed the app was looking after you when it is not.
When you turn 18
While you are under 18, your parent or guardian gives the permissions that need one. When you turn 18, that becomes your decision.
- The permissions your parent or guardian gave keep working for 30 days after your 18th birthday, so nothing stops on the day.
- During those 30 days, and after, Recov asks you in the app to give your own permission.
- If you have not given your own by day 30, what depends on those permissions pauses. A pause does not delete anything you have saved, and you can still see it. You can switch the permissions back on yourself, whenever you like.
- Recov does not send your parent or guardian a message when this happens. While they still have access, they may notice that some of what they could see is no longer available to them.
If you are not happy
Tell us first and we will try to fix it. If we do not, or you would rather not come to us, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). They are the UK regulator whose job is protecting your data rights.
They take complaints from young people directly. You do not need a parent to do it for you, it is free, and you can find how to reach them at ico.org.uk.
Talking to us
Ask your coach or your club welfare officer to put you in touch, or ask us directly — the rights page says how.
What changed in version 1.1 (10 October 2026). We added wearable sync: the part about how you are recovering, "Things we never do", "Other companies" and "Things Recov does not do". The rest was last fully checked on 8 September 2026.
Version 1.1 · Effective 10 October 2026 · Last reviewed 8 September 2026 · Audience: athletes under 18