Good. These adaptations theories are still being fleshed out but some of the explanations I think lead beginners or others to think that they need to go right to loading on a 4 week or 6 week basis in this will result in greater "fitness". So it's either your using 'single factor' and 'riding the supercompensation wave' and that's inferior or your using 'dual factor' and loading for weeks and that's superior. Nobody comes out and says that, it's just the implied message.
If your at HIT fellow. Then your riding that wave. If you'e not waiting around for so called full recovery to take place but you're stucturing you program in a way to manage fatigue, guess what, you're using two factor theory. What changes is the time frame.
You can't say two different adaptaion models or both correct in every way. Either dual factor is the way it works or General Adaptation or Supercompensation is the way. Their may be aspects of any theory that are correct and a later theory may expand on those things. But what it really comes down to is this...if your are "timing" your workouts to adhere to the supercompensation wave, your programming sucks.
A period of fatigue may be a couple of days. It may be a week. Or it may be a peoriod of several weeks. But it's all the same. What people have gotten mixed up is this confusing what is basically a way of periodizing for advanced lifters and saying that represents the application of a theory where other programs for less advanced lifters do not.
I am NOT saying I understand all this. I don't even know that I need to. There have been some good explanations in terms of the theory and it's application to advanced programming, but it still hasn't been fully "explained" in all it's implications to my satisfaction. I like Kelly Baggets simple explanation the best but even then what he is really explaining is long periods of fatigueing, overloading, or overreaching (whatever you want to call it) and then recovery and and peaking. That is a manisfestation of the theory but not the theory itself.
In any case, Medium, you need to look for a beginner's program.
You don't need to worry about whether it's single factor or dual factor at this point. There are programs all laid out for various stages of training. But basically if you can hit PR's for long periods of time on a shorter 'cycle' then I say do that.
My friend, 0311, once referred to 'single factor' as "perpetual 5x5 loading". For me doing various permutations of intermediate (so-called single factor) 5x5's there were times when I was basically building up for three weeks and then progressing forward for up to 7 weeks, hitting new weekly PR's for a substantial percentage of that time!....no perpetual loading in that at all. Basically I was "loading" for a week and displaying those fitness gains every week rather than every month. I had no need to load for a longer period of time.
0311 posted this before but I don't think many people are actually reading through it:
Madcow's Writeups
Everybody REALLY REALLY needs to read though this to get a general overview of all this. Not just the programs. ALL of it.