Tapering
Athletes often wonder exactly how they should ultimately prepare for competition. By this I mean, how do they train and prepare in the week or so preceding competition? In essence, the goal of tapering is simply to ensure that on the day you produce the best performance possible based on your current fitness level. In other words, nothing such as fatigue, injury, etc. should detract from performance.
There are many factors to consider and consequently many approaches. The approach and time frame taken is typically a function of how serious you are as an athlete and how serious the particular event is in your yearly calendar. The other big factor is diet and how much a factor this plays in your event. The larger the event the greater the focus on diet.
The science of tapering requires you to do a few things. Firstly, you must determine at what time period your training intensity no longer will focus on improving fitness at the expense of causing fatigue. For the most part this is about a two-week window. What I mean is that should you continue with high intensity workouts to less than 14 days of competition you may well be “fatigued” on competition day. Remember that during exercise the muscle undergoes a fair degree of micro-trauma. The degree of micro-trauma is a function of intensity and training status. The more trained you are the lower the micro-trauma as a result of a single exercise bout. Regardless, micro-trauma occurs with every exercise session as this is the stimulus for adaptation. Furthermore, energy stores within the muscle consistently are in demand with every contraction and require varying amounts of time to replenish. An additional interesting note is that muscle glycogen stores (carbohydrates) are used only by the muscle in which they are stored. Therefore, failure to provide the muscle with adequate time and diet for resynthesis (typically 24-48 hours) will compromise performance. This occurrence is strongly advocated in early over-training syndrome. This means that successive sessions using similar contractions place increased demand on the muscle energy stores.
Now back to micro-tears. These micro-tears, even though not always perceptible either by pain, tenderness, inflammation, etc., can take anywhere from two days to seven days to heal and restore. Therefore, intensity should be decreased at least one week in advance if not longer. This doesn’t mean a complete cessation but moreso a decrease in intensity that doesn’t place either excess fiber strain or energy store depletion on the muscle is appropriate.
The orientation of these final exercise sessions must be considered in tandem with the energy demands of a particular session and of the competition event. For most athletes this has implications for muscle glycogen stores. Since muscle glycogen stores take at least 48 hours for full repletion, any high intensity exercise should be avoided for at least four days prior to the competition. This model assumes a complete rest day the day before and the preceding three days. This also aligns nicely with the time frame for muscle micro-tear recovery.
What other factors should one consider? Aging extends the process of micro-trauma repair and resynthesis (everything gets slower as you get older!). This typically is detectable in athletes over 35-40 years. Therefore, your lower intensity workouts should probably commence at least 8-9 days out and perhaps take two days complete rest. If you are moving to a warmer environment the adaptation is 11-14 days and this complicates the process. Regardless, some of the sessions 11-14 days out should take place in the competitive temperature.
Thus, in preparation for tapering you need good planning. The taper phase should be included as part of your periodization planning. You must evaluate at what point an exercise session will no longer enhance fitness (or endurance or speed) by the competition date, or may in fact detract from it. At this point the tapering phase should be implemented. The goal should be to allow muscle recovery and energy replenishment and yet still be of sufficient intensity to make the athlete feel they are not losing any edge. High intensity reps can be performed as part of shorter sessions during the tapering phase. These are useful to continue to allow your athlete to “feel the work load” and will reinforce your athlete’s readiness.
