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From Fellrnr.com, Running tips
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* '''Hard/easy days'''. It's been suggested that the biggest problem that recreational athletes have is that they train too hard on the easy days. This additional exercise on what should be rest and recovery days reduces the body's ability to Supercompensation. In turn this tends to reduce the intensity that can be achieved on the hard training days. A good training program will have hard training sessions that damage the body just enough to promote Supercompensation, and rest days that provide the opportunity to recover.
* '''Training Monotony'''. Probably the most overlooked training metric is that of [[Training Monotony]]. This metric is not about boredom, but a way of measuring how similar each day's training stress is. Training monotony can be calculated from your daily mileage or duration using a spreadsheet, or via my [[SportTracks Dailymile Plugin]]. I have a simple online calculator on the [[Training Monotony]] page.
While Supercompensation is a useful model, the reality is a lot more complex. There are many [[Endurance Adaptations]] that occur as a response to training, and they may occur in response to different types of training stress and have varying timeframes for the Supercompensation to occur. In addition, other life stresses can contribute to [[Overtraining Syndrome]], which should probably be called "training induced clinical depression" as the term "overtraining" incorrectly implies excessive training is the problem. However, it's unclear how these life stresses might impact Supercompensation.
=Modeling Supercompensation =
The graph below looks at how fitness changes over time in response to a single bout of exercise. You can see that the exercise initially reduces fitness, and that rest time is required to gain the benefits.
