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The overcompensation principle is a survival trait built into your DNA. It is the body's way of adapting to stress. The scar is the byproduct of the body's frantic attempts to heal your wound as quickly and effectively as possible. The calluses on your hands are toughened skin, overcompensated to handle the continued onslaught of friction. There are other ways that the body overcompensates that are not so obvious, but understanding these processes is important for success.
While this segment is focused primarily on training, a quick side note about nutrition is in order. Overcompensation even happens with your metabolism based on the foods that you consume! The body is constantly trying to remain in a state of balance. This is called homeostasis. When you consume fewer calories than your body requires, the body responds by slowing your metabolism. This is in an effort to expend less energy and adapt to the lower caloric intake. It is this reason why low calorie diets are doomed to failure ... because they ultimately result in your metabolism slowing and can in fact make it harder to lose fat in the long run.
If you understand overcompensation, you can use it to your advantage. Instead of lowering your calories, you can employ a technique known as zigzagging them. If your goal, for example, is 1800 calories, instead of consuming exactly 1800 calories per day, you would consume 1600 one day and 2000 the next. Your average intake is the same, but by varying your daily intake, you prevent your metabolism from overcompensating and slowing down too much as the result.
In training, you want overcompensation to take place. This is how you will grow and develop stronger, bigger, leaner, faster muscles. Let's look at a few of the ways that your body will overcompensate as they relate to training.
Flexibility
Muscles must be stretched to improve flexibility. If overcompensation did not occur, you would always have the same level of flexibility. Fortunately, when you stretch your muscle, your body overcompensates by increasing the flexibility of this muscle. This is why consistent stretching sessions will improve your overall flexibility, because overcompensation allows the muscles to become increasingly more flexible.
The body is simply adapting to the stress of the muscle being stretched and responding by improving the flexibility to so it can better handle the stretch. Performing stretches in a controlled fashion will create a healthy insurance policy against those unexpected incidents that may force your muscles to stretch, such as a fall or collision.
Strength
Whether you are lifting a heavy weight or throwing a fast punch, your muscles are forced to exert power. Strength is really a function of neuromuscular efficiency. In other words, to gain strength, you don't necessarily need to gain muscle size - instead, you must train your body to use your muscle more effectively and efficiently.
Forcing the muscle to handle a heavy load or to accelerate rapidly doesn't just stress your physical systems, but your central nervous system (CNS) as well. The body overcompensates for this by improving the way it coordinates your muscular contractions. It becomes more efficient to expend less energy and subject the tissue to less damage, and the end result is improved strength.
Muscle Mass
Hypertrophy, or muscle growth, occurs as another response to training.
Jeremy Likness, Health Coach
