Supercompensation: Gaining fitness through rest

Rest? Heck, I'm not scared to rest! Rest feels good! So why don't I do it more when I should? You know you don't either! You know you feel like if you just keep training harder, especially when you feel tired, you will miraculously become a rock star athlete! Well... it just doesn't quite work that way. (Trust me, I'm knocking on my own noggin about this!) Most of us want to keep making physical gains with strength, speed, and/or endurance, but we tend to plateau and training harder doesn't bring the desired results unless... we train smarter NOT just harder. This doesn't mean taking the easy road, it means push hard when the time is right and allow the body to build rather than drive it into the ground!

I came across this article, Supercompensation, and loved the explanation and graphs that make it easy to understand supercompensation -  the post training period during which the trained function/parameter has a higher performance capacity than it did prior to the training period. Because the body is an adjustable organism, it will feel the need to adjust itself to a higher level of fitness in anticipation of the next workout session. This applies to beginners to elite athletes. It is important to educate yourself in what you are doing to maximize your best results. You can't lose your weak if you are in a constant state of fatigue, allow your body to find its strong!
(I can't get the dark background off the graphs below for some reason. So, just click on the article to view if needed.)

Exercise does not make you fit, it's the rest that follows exercise that makes you fit. The importance of rest is often overlooked. This is how a single bout of training impacts your fitness:

1 Adequate Rest
Ideally, you will get sufficient rest so that you recover from the training stress and get the maximum benefit. This would mean starting the next training session near the peak of supercompensation, as shown below.

2 Insufficient rest resulting in stagnation
Without sufficient rest, you may start your next training at the end of the period marked ‘Recovery’. This means that you have not benefited from the training, just barely recovered from it. This can carry on indefinitely, with no improvement in fitness.

3 Overtraining

Without sufficient rest to recover from the training stress, the fitness level starts to decline, with each training bout further reducing fitness. Sadly, the response to this is often to increase the training stress, creating a positive feedback cycle.

4 Intensity and Supercompensation
Different intensities produce different levels of fatigue and resulting supercompensation. In the diagram below, the blue line shows insufficient intensity, producing only a small amount of supercompensation. The orange line is too intense, requiring so long to recover that little supercompensation occurs. The red line shows far too much intensity, resulting in an inability to supercompensate. The black line shows an intensity level resulting in injury rather than supercompensation. Thus it is important to work out the right level of intensity to produce the required level of supercompensation. This is a 'Goldilocks' situation, where too much or too little intensity produces a negative outcome. For each individual, there is an optimum level of exercise and recovery that produces the best supercompensation. The most common problem in highly motivated athletes is when they are working too hard with too little rest, they understand that they are not improving, but they adjust the wrong way and try to work harder. Exercise is not a situation where 'more is better'.


References:
http://fellrnr.com/wiki/Supercompensation_and_Why_exercise_does_not_make_you_fit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercompensation