Every trainer should use this concept with individual tactics
Supercompensation is the body adapting to a stimulus and adapting to a higher level than it was before the stimulus. As you can see in the graph if you start with the next stimulus too early then you’re not adapted yet and you will perform worse than your initial level. That’s why it’s so important to give yourself the time to recover properly after a stimulus. Supercompensation is mostly used for physical parameters. Because you want your players to be in optimal physical form. If your players are supercompensation negative (figure b) then performance will decline and the risk for injuries will increase. But that supercompensation is mostly used in physical training, doesn’t mean that this concept is not relevant for individual tactics. In this article, we will explain how supercompensation in individual tactics works.
With individual tactics the supercompensation mostly happens in the brain, this makes it more complex than physical supercompensation. Physical parameters are easier to measure, you lift more, you run faster, or even as basic that your muscles get bigger. But with individual tactics and supercompensation in the brain, this is way harder to measure. Yes, your brain can handle more and gets faster but these are things that are difficult to measure. The tests you have to do to measure these are long and a football player doesn’t want to spend his time on this. So as a coach this is sometimes difficult to see, but with experience, you will spot when a player has had the supercompensation with individual tactics.
But how can you achieve supercompensation with individual tactics for a football player? It all starts with the stimulus. At Tactalyse the stimulus is given through video, we discuss certain game situations through several video clips, the player has to take initiative in explaining what’s good, what can be improved, and how it should be improved (want to know why we do it this way, read our article about football players and learning. This is the first stimulus in the process of supercompensation for an individual tactic for the brain, you often see players getting tired after a long video session because they have to watch, analyze and reflect on the individual tactic. After video analysis players will go out on the field and try the things we’ve discussed, some things they will pick up fast, but some things that are deep in the roots of their habits will take a long time to change and/or improve. So the second stimulus is the actual training with the new acquired knowledge through Tactalyse. The player will actively think about the new knowledge he has about the individual tactic. This will give him extra fatigue because this is something that the brain and body are not used to. Some players will adapt very fast to these new stimuli, because their cognitive ability is better than other players, so these players will recover faster from cognitive stimuli than other players. Therefore they will learn the individual tactic faster. Some players never get the chance to recover the baseline (see the graph above) and will perform worse than before, you then have a player that is under recovered and has decision fatigue (we explained this in the previous article). That’s why it’s so important to look at the small cues you get as a coach from a player. At Tactalyse we try to have small talk about the player’s well-being, how training went, and even about the schedule of the player. If a player has a lot of matches, we might keep it simple and focus on fine-tuning the familiar game situations instead of introducing new concepts, because he already gets a lot of stimuli and no possibility to recover fully. If a player has some days off, we can dive a little deeper into an individual tactic, because there’s enough time to fully recover and enter into the super compensation stage. But the most important thing is still the video. We watch if a player gets better in comparison to baseline performance. Sometimes a player started by doing an individual tactic right 5 out of 10 times, but the 5 times he didn’t do it right it had no negative consequences, after several weeks the player is doing the individual tactic right 8 out of 10 weeks, this means that supercompensation has occurred for this individual tactic because the new baseline is 8 out of 10 times, but the 2 times he did it wrong, one of them had negative consequences. The player might be down and feel that it’s not working, but at Tactalyse we show him that he has improved significantly and that he is on the right path.
As you see there’s a lot to think about with super compensation for individual tactics. It’s not as easy to measure as physical super compensation. Nonetheless is super compensation in individual tactics an important factor to think about when teaching players individual tactics.
Summary
Supercompensation is the body adapting to a stimulus and adapting to a higher level than it was before the stimulus. Supercompensation is mostly used for physical parameters. Because you want your players to be in optimal physical form. But that supercompensation is mostly used in physical training, doesn’t mean that this concept is not relevant for individual tactics.
With individual tactics the supercompensation mostly happens in the brain, this makes it more complex than physical supercompensation. Physical parameters are easier to measure. But with individual tactics and supercompensation in the brain, this is way harder to measure. As a coach this is sometimes difficult to see, but with experience, you will spot when a player has had the supercompensation with individual tactics.
How can you achieve supercompensation with individual tactics for a football player? It all starts with the stimulus. At Tactalyse the stimulus is given through video, we discuss certain game situations through several video clips. This is the first stimulus in the process of supercompensation for an individual tactic for the brain. After video analysis players will go out on the field and try the things we’ve discussed. So the second stimulus is the actual training with the new acquired knowledge through Tactalyse. Some players will adapt very fast to these new stimuli, because their cognitive ability is better than other players, so these players will recover faster from cognitive stimuli than other players. Some players never get the chance to recover the baseline (see the graph above) and will perform worse than before. That’s why it’s so important to look at the small cues you get as a coach from a player.
As you see there’s a lot to think about with super compensation for individual tactics. It’s not as easy to measure as physical super compensation. Nonetheless is super compensation in individual tactics an important factor to think about when teaching players individual tactics.
