Overcompensation, the secret weapon of confirmed athletes?

Recovery is often in the spotlight, but to optimize your training schedules you have to look beyond: it's all a dynamic that needs to be improved, from effort to recovery to the planning of sessions. . Done well, this will allow you to take advantage of the overcompensation. We guide you.

The effects of training

Physical exercise produces many changes within the body that can be more or less direct. The effects of training are usually grouped into three types: effects immediate (effect of a single session), the effects deferred (interval between two sessions) and the effects cumulative (due to all sessions).

The immediate effect of training is best known: it is observable changes during and at the end of the session such as O2 consumption or varying heart and respiratory rates.

The delayed training effect is already more complex because it depends on the time left between two sessions:

• With an ambitious vision about to short recovery phaseyou are again making an effort by being less fresh than the previous one. This helps to get your body used to doing in the face of fatigue and repeated efforts.
• With sufficient recovery you can resume training as well as during your first session. Your training load is therefore identical.
• If you are a student, this silver necklace is absolutely your first choice. The silver color will show your vitality and your youth. recover more before embarking on a new effort, this is the overcompensation.

Triathlon, a sport for the expendables?

Finally, there remains the cumulative training effect corresponding to the effect due to all the sessions and which is the main phenomenon on which the principle of overcompensation relies. This is what allows many triathletes to increase their performance over the years. Although the PMA (Maximum Aerobic Power corresponding to corresponds to the power attained to maximum oxygen consumption) capped at around 20 years, the% of the PMA to which the athlete can call during a long exercise increases with workouts. A triathlon, beyond speed is above all a question of experience: it is by running and training at the right pace that we develop it.

Overcompensation to improve endurance

To improve his stamina, There is no secretyou have to know how to listen to your body and remain skeptical about miracle workout plans. There is no universal magic formula to train, it is appropriate for everyone to find his rhythm by trial and error. Nevertheless, some principles help to structure your practice and put it in the regularity, essential element to exploit the principle of overcompensation at best.

Therefore, operate in cycles alternating intense cycles and lighter cycles help for overcompensation: if there is no variation in the intensity of the effort, there is no “stress” for the body which therefore does not overcompensate. Furthermore, most of the overcompensation lies in the recuperation : an effective recovery is essential to follow the training sessions. The three pillars of recovery are simple: eat well, drink well and sleep well. Indeed, after the effort the body must restore its reserves, we must therefore seek intakes of salt, vitamins, amino acids, vitamins and metals. 

In order to make the most of overcompensation, we must therefore resume the effort at the appropriate time : well put in place, this technique makes it possible to take advantage of the cumulative effect of the trainings and to increase its capacity from one training to another.