Weigner's Law or supercompensation

Weigner's Law or principle of supercompensation

When we do physical exercise or any type of continuous and repeated efforts over time, our body undergoes a series of adaptations that will produce an improvement in our strength and performance. It is the way in which you will prepare to face similar or greater efforts in the future while minimizing possible damage.

This process is not instantaneous, it requires a repair and regeneration time. When applying a stimulus, effort or workload we will suffer an initial decrease in our performance or effort capacity as a consequence of the tiredness and fatigue of our muscle fibers. After the rest, essential in any training plan, there will be a recovery process that will not only return us to the level of performance prior to the exercise, but will also increase it. If the effort is not repeated, the level of performance will drop again since our body will always tend to save energy.

Graphically we could represent it as follows:
 

Obviously, a specific effort will not be enough for any improvement to take place and it will be necessary to repeat the efforts (training) so that the state of fitness acquired is not only not lost but also improved. In short, the accumulation of stimuli is necessary to achieve performance improvement.
The principle of supercompensation or Weigner's law shows us how our physical condition would evolve with the accumulation of training.
 

On the other hand, the training must increase its intensity and/or duration so that there is no stagnation of evolution.

Another obvious conclusion in view of the graph is that rest and correct recovery are essential to obtain the desired results, allowing the body to repair damaged tissues and the necessary physical and metabolic adaptations.