Understanding how and why different training protocols work is of the utmost importance to sport and exercise scientists. Often, we know that a training programme or exercise works, but still don’t know why.

Understanding the reasons behind the results is helpful when trying to adapt an exercise or training programme to different people because we know what to keep the same and what can change for the individual, relative to their goals.

Supercompensation Example

Person A wants to perform a squat programme to grow their glutes but has an upper body injury that makes holding any weight on the shoulders difficult.

A reason the squat is good for building the glutes - it works the glutes through a large eccentric range of motion.

Reasonable Adjustment - Swapping the Barbell Back Squat for a plyo box step up, which also works the glutes through a large eccentric range of motion, but without the need for a heavy weight on the shoulders. If you want to add some weight, you could hold a Power Bag in a Zercher position.

Supercompensation and General Adaptation Syndrome Theory

Supercompensation is a popular component of the Hans Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome Theory (GAS), generalised to sport and exercise physiology to try to explain how we adapt to training. 

The theory proposes that there are three main phases that lead to adaptation in strength training -

Alarm Phase - A short term sensation of fatigue or decrease in performance due to a training session.

Resistance Phase - A reaction to the alarm phase in which the body adapts to the stressor by surpassing your previous state of homeostasis to create a new level of homeostasis, often termed supercompensation.

Overtraining Phase - This phase occurs if the stressor/initial training session is too much so that the alarm phase lasts so long that the resistance phase can only return your fitness levels back to your pre-training session state, or even worse, a state of detraining.

GAS theory is not without its limitations or critics, but the central theme of its application to exercise physiology is about balancing training appropriately so as not to under or overtrain, which is a very important part of training, as thus could still be practically applied.

How To Get Rest During Your Gym Training

Use Deload Weeks - Regular deloads are a great way to ensure a level of forced and organised rest on a regular basis if you find yourself feeling overworked during the later stages of your training programmes. You can deload in lots of different ways, but a way that we like is to maintain intensity from your working weeks, but with half the volume. For example, if you bench press with 5kg Plates for 8 reps on your working week, you would do 5kg Weight Plates for 4 reps on your deload week.

2:1 Or 3:1 Session To Rest Ratio - 2:1 or 3:1 session to rest ratio - rest days throughout every training week are helpful for managing fatigue but keen gym goers often don’t have nearly enough of them. Try sticking to a 2:1 or 3:1 session:rest day ratio.

RPE - on an in-session basis, it is also important to manage training. To stop yourself from overtraining, but still working sufficiently hard, aim to keep the majority of your sessions and exercises around 8/10 difficulty.

Whether new to strength training or a seasoned gym goer, making sure that you work hard, but not too hard. Aim for the ‘goldilocks zone’ with your training. You may find you enjoy your training even more when you see the results that follow!

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Tags: Misc > Lifestyle