Originally Posted by
rubiksoval
Supercompensation in terms of periodization does not occur in a workout, but in months of progressive increases that lead to overload, followed by a period of reduced stimulus to allow for complete recovery.
What you're talking about makes no sense for anyone that's actually training. You should be doing multiple hard workouts a week along with easy rides to continue to progress over longer amounts of time. Every year you build a little more.
The more you train, the more you can train, but a single workout does not do much of anything.
i'll admit im a bit confused by what you mean when you say doing 'a single workout'? What i meant was carrying on with the usual 5-6 days a week training plan but shuffling my training plan efforts to accommodate a supercompensation type approach.
From what ive read and the diagrams in this thread, supercompensation does also occur after even a single a big effort: you do your effort, your body recovers, then your body effectively fortifies itself against similar big efforts by rebuilding itself stronger than before, this temporary peak is the supercompensation zone. If you take advantage of this and time it right you can effectively ride those peaks and improve your performance quicker.
It seems logical that this gradual improvement would happen over a longer timeframe as you say, e.g a 4 week block then a week off, rinse and repeat. If you ride 5 or 6 days a week then factoring this into your training plan might prove more effective than an unstructured approach where youre simply slogging away every day & risk overtraining or not doing enough and undertraining.