Supercompensation is a term in exercise science the refers to the body’s successful adjustment to a previously challenging level of stress:
It should be noted that this curve is not necessarily to scale. When we are young – assuming our trauma is low, the supercompensation time period is compressed, and the peak is higher. This makes training and exercising fun.
The more trauma we have to heal, the longer the supercompensation portion of the curve takes to develop, and the lower the resulting peak. This is decidedly not fun. And it is the only way out of this cycle.
Across 13 years, I’ve written almost 500 versions of this program working an average of 11 hours a day 7 days a week. I began the process by losing my own vitality: at one time I did not train more often than every 10 days because of chronic pain. I began unlearning 22 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars of experience because, though it made me professionally successful up to that point, it no longer served me.
I sacrificed a successful personal training company to co-found a business whose mission was to end non-contact injury in sport. In 2021, I was ousted from the company because I took extreme ownership of my responsibilities.
I liquidated my savings to begin to build a facility. I spent a summer in agony on my knees – which were highly traumatized – building a deck to shield my facility from the torrential rains of the spring. Later on, I sold a house to continue to fund my mission. I went broke.
At that time I was a 51-year old master coach with over 11 National Championships in my resumé, a World Series, and an Olympics. I went to work in a hardware store where I earned $15.00 per hour so that I could continue to self-fund Primal Rotational Patterns. The most valuable skill I had when I started that job was my willingness to mop the floor and scrub the toilet. I passed out daily during lunch breaks and after work because standing all day was so arduous for me at that time.
Everyone fails. Recommitting to employment and getting back to work makes failure the crucible of success.
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.
– T.S. Eliot