Supercompensation
 The process of improving performance passes through a fundamental course, from training (administration of an element of organic stress), which leads to improving performance (organic adaptation to the induced stress).
This procedure is developed as follows: administration of stress, alteration of balance, adaptation and compensation, reaching a higher level of functioning: supercompensation.
The time between the various training sessions is an extremely important parameter, able to heavily influence the mechanism of supercompensation. After training in a certain volume or intensity, the organism puts systems to work that compensate for the energy unbalance (supply of glycogen and phosphates) induced by the stress from training, that is by the alteration of the functional balance.
This compensation system is not limited to recovering spent energy, therefore to restoring the starting condition, but it increases the latter in order to best prevent possible new stimuli. When faced with stimuli from training, this leads to a corporeal adaptation that puts the organism in a better position from an athletic point of view.
It is clear that, compensating and supercompensating requires a certain period of time. The length of which depends on the stimulus given and the starting point of the athlete. More trained subjects tend to compensate (recuperate) earlier, particularly strong training input require longer periods of time.
Training sessions that are too close to each other, carried out before the recovery phase has finished (compensation), lead to overtraining, therefore to an inadequate situation, that is manifested by a drop in performance destined to worsen continuously if the recovery times are not adequately corrected.
Training that is too spread out over time, that is carried out when the effects from the previous training have run out, do not lead to significant improvement, relegating the individual to a substantially stationary situation.
A functional improvement, therefore the optimization of training, occurs only when the training sequence is applied at the peak of each supercompensation phase of the previous training. A correct management of the work inevitably passes from the correct determination of the recovery times.
Weigert (the German pathologist who was the first to observe the effects of supercompensation) defines this process in these terms: "The subsequent effects of great stress are not only limited to recovering the energy potential spent, but lead to its increase, that is its recovery that exceeds the quantity of the initial level".
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