Whether you’re training to get stronger, gain muscle, become better at your sport, or look good at the beach, there is a common denominator—supercompensation. I could probably write an entire book on the law of supercompensation, but I’m not one for lengthy scientific literature, so I’ll keep this simple in order to introduce this theory to novices and remind the veterans of something we often lose sight of.
Supercompensation (for our purposes) is basically the process of stressing the body through exercise and allowing it to recover appropriately so it will become stronger, bigger, and faster. This is achieved through a four-step process. The chart below illustrates these steps.
The initial stage refers to your current level of fitness. The second stage is the “training” phase (i.e. what you’re doing or not doing in the gym). The body interprets training as a catabolic stress and always fights to maintain a homeostatic balance. As a result, it works to repair the damage caused by training (third phase is recovery). Once the body has adequately recovered, we enter the fourth and final stage, which is where we want to be. The fourth stage of supercompensation is when your body hasn’t only recovered from the training stress that was placed on it but has come back even stronger, bigger, and faster in preparation for future demands.
On paper, this seems very easy to achieve and it might be for the novice (we all remember when we first started to train and gained 20 lbs and put 50 lbs on our bench) because the body will initially respond to any training stress it is placed under. But once you have surpassed that initial gain, that’s when proper programming and recovery come into play.
Training frequency, volume, and intensity are all factors that play into this process. Not only does the musculoskeletal system have to recover and repair, but the endocrine system and the central nervous system must repair themselves as well. If you train too intensely, your body will stay in a catabolic state and you won’t be able to sufficiently reach supercompensation. However, if you aren’t training with enough intensity (minimal weight) or you aren’t training frequently enough, you will no longer stimulate your body to produce further gains. There is a fine line between greatness and failure.
You might be thinking, “Fine, I will just work on my recovery.” That’s a great idea, but it won’t cure poor programming. Adequate rest (enough sleep and time between training days), proper diet (healthy food choices and a sufficient quantity of food), hydration, soft tissue work (foam rolling), stretching (dynamic and static), contrast showers (this is a highly debated topic), and GPP work are all means of improving recovery and pushing from the third phase to supercompensation.
Whatever your training goals may be, they can’t be optimally achieved without reaching supercompensation. If we just go through the motions in the gym or constantly beat ourselves down with the “more is better” philosophy, we will never reach the goals we’re hoping to achieve. As professional natural bodybuilder and raw powerlifter Dr. Layne Norton has said, “Many people get results in spite of what they do not because what they do is optimal.” Focus on supercompensation when planning your next training cycle.
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Steve Reid is a certified strength and conditioning specialist, physical education teacher, and basketball, soccer, and football coach. He has worked in the fitness industry for nearly a decade and has trained in many strength disciplines including powerlifting, Strongman, and bodybuilding. He strives to share his experience and knowledge with others so they can reach their goals and learn from his experience without having to go through the same struggles and mistakes. For questions, please contact Steve at 
Great Reminder! A lot of times the hardest part is getting your clients and athletes to understand the importance of recovery, because they always think they need to be working hard to achieve their goals. Great post and great reminder!
I beleive in everything you stated, recovery being key along with supercompensation; I have a question to all- What about the way John Broz advocates training. His ideas and comparisons are interesting. Anyone else have thoughts on this type of training?
@Ron- Read this article http://averagebroz.com/ABG/Q_%26_A/Entries/2010/5/28_Central_nervous_system.html
@ Ron- From what I understand about the Broz training method, it’s not as harsh as it really sounds. They don’t max out on deadlift hardly ever; which helps recovery on CNS along with the muslces. They work a lot of DE work with deadlifts when they do deadlift. They max on squats and olypmic lifts, but recovery from olympic lifts is much quicker compared to ME on a main lift. They also only do those exercises, no assistance work. They basically compensate assistance work with a second workout it seems. Lastly, and maybe even most importantly, most of the people he trains are professional lifters; meaning all they have to do between workouts is eat, rest, take ice baths, get massages, etc. Here’s a link from our website where my boss, Jason Nunn, wrote a blog post on that specific topic:
http://www.nunnsperformancetraining.com/2011/07/the-john-broz-method/
Good article. A lot of people overlook recovery time and wonder why they hit plateaus or their workouts have declined over time.
RON- I’ve been doing Chaos & Pain (CnP) training for about 4 months. It’s kind of “Bulgarian Weightlifters” high frequency program for strength and size.
IMO-HFT is the best option to train IF you have up to 9-11h of sleep,no stress in life and can consume a lot of protein.
There is no option to overtrain with conditions i’ve mentioned,but we rarely have them.
Wow. Just like a lot of articles on this site, this was like reading the introduction to what could have been a good article. Would have been nice to see the authors recommendations on how to gauge your recovery time. How to understand if you’re still in recovery or how far into supercompensation you are.
This was some of the science behind the westside-method or conjugated periodzation. Using that block of time when your body is experiencing supercompensation. Max effort training followed by dynamic training 72 hours later. Training status, I think has a lot to do with when lifters will experience supercompensation. If your a beginner then your body probably isn’t experiencing DOMS or delayed onset muscle soreness. I think that DOMS is a good indicator of training status or Your body’s ability to handle and recover from a stress and the readiness it would be to handle another. Designing your program around this would benefit a advanced lifter more then a beginner.
Testing your morning heart rate and grip sttrength on a daily basis is a great way to gauge if you have recovered enough or if you are starting to creep into overtraining.
Great article. I’m going to print this article out and give it to some of my high school athletes/clients.
Great concept but if someone could figure out the ideal amount of time for recovery, training volume etc, they could become a fortune.