Strength and Conditioning
Beginners Guide to Tapering

Category: Sports Performance | Specialism: Strength and Conditioning

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Tapering is an important part of competition success. It allows the athlete time to recover and adapt from their training schedule and is an essential part of periodisation.

Tapering

Tapering is an important part of competition success. It allows the athlete time to recover and adapt from their training schedule and is an essential part of periodisation.

Tapering requires an overall reduction in the volume of training, whilst maintaining intensity.

In endurance sports such as swimming and running, the reduction in volume can easily be monitored. Up to 50% of the volume should be reduced.

Intensity of the workout should be maintained. For example, instead of having 5 sessions totalling 60 miles, it is better to have 5 sessions totalling 30 miles, but running at race pace, or slightly faster.

This will allow the body time to refuel properly, whilst maintaining the neuro - physiological race specific intensity.

Depending on the time between events, and the level of training achieved, a taper of up two weeks is ideal. Athletes competing on a weekly basis will obviously not be able to do this, but a reduction in volume of training in the 48 hours preceding competition will allow a mini taper to take place.

Tapering can take the place of a gradual reduction in volume or in steps. Both methods have proven to be successful. A gradual reduction would allow volume to be reduced to nil the day before competition in incremental steps, say 5% per day. A step reduction would entail a sever reduction in training of 25% at the beginning of week 1 of the taper, and a further 25% at the beginning of week 2, for example.

Volume reduction can take place in several ways – a reduction in workouts, sets or reps. The key is to maintain the intensity of the remaining work.

For athletes competing in more tactical or technical events such as team sports or diving, the taper should focus on repetition of the tactics and techniques required in the competition. For example, greater use of mental rehearsal of routines, practicing team drills and set pieces such as free throws, line outs and penalties.

The emphasis is on quality not quantity of work, and preparing the body and mind for competition.

Diet should remain constant, ensuring an adequate supply of energy for competition, as well as being well hydrated.

Enhancing Sports Performance
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Tags: periodisation, strength and conditioning, tapering

Posted Tue Oct 6 2009 9:21 PM in

by JRMarshall | Permalink | Comments(1) Share this article:

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Thanks James. Interesting to note the suggestion of a 2 week taper. There's been quite a lot of debate in swimming about taper length, and whether we taper enough. It's been noticed that swimmers are often going on from major championships to follow-on events, without picking their training back up and swimming fast - rather tahn feeling like they might fall off some kind of cliff. It was certainly a huge insight to me last year that I had about 6 weeks left to Nationals, was swimming 3 times a week, wasn't keeping up my weights and rather than trying to get 4 good weeks in of fitness work turned my attention compeletely to race pace work (100m) and swam really well. When I was doing 20 hours a week in the pool as a teenager I would have been paranoid about losing overall fitness! It was also interesting to hear one the the 'big' US coaches recently describe the most effective taper they had seen as being a 9 week process...

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Rob Robson
Co-founder, iStadia.com