There’s been a good thread going on over on the Science of Sport Discourse channel, all about tapering, how to, when to, etc. I’ve come to see tapering as being so individual & so key that I am really curious about how to plan a taper.
Ever since the thread has been up I’ve been trying to recall a podcast I listened to, with a really knowledgable guy talking about the taper. It’s been nagging away at me & I finally remembered where I’d found it and who it was – Inigo Mujika. This then led me to go down a bit of a rabbit hole about tapering, as it’s fascinating and something I really want to have a better understanding of.
I found the initial podcast (here: The Performance Podcast Tapering for the Endurance Athletes’. Inigo Mujika Jan 2021 https://open.spotify.com/episode/7y5HU99W54oM9mtDshJrRv?si=35261a6ae7bd435a) which I re-listened to.
I also found this podcast with Jason Koop, which I was interested from a personal point of view:
Tapering for Ultra Running with Inigo Mujika July 2021
https://open.spotify.com/episode/13kk0ptkv5guHxtnyNBN3H?si=14ab305ec3f74029
And made some notes of key points that Inigo made – which are below as an outline to Mujika’s findings:
Reduce volume, maintain frequency & intensity as a general rule.
How an athlete adapts impacts above, so the taper needs to recognise this. A good coach will listen to an athlete, have awareness of adaptations and know how to plan a taper to use the athletes training patterns into account.
The point of a taper is to remove fatigue and uncover adaptations that are there.
Reduce 40-60% of typical 4 weeks pre taper & more aggressively wk 1 of taper. So from 100k down to 60, then 40% of total volume.
Progressive exponential reduction seems to be better than step change (ie drop from 10k to 6k every day)
Precision unnecessary – ball park % key.
Generally 2 weeks taper period.
It is not the event that determines the taper, it is the athlete, to is their own physiology.
Average value of 3% improvement on performance from where you were entering the taper.
As opposed to just rest you are avoiding detraining & expressing adaptations. More likely to underperform if you simply stop training as some adaptations are quickly lost.
Look at level of fatigue of athlete coming into taper – how does this affect how the taper works and what tapering strategy is needed. Research in if 2 athletes come in with different levels of fatigue, give both the same taper but the more fatigued give more recovery modalities (massage / compression boots)
When it goes wrong:
Main way of getting wrong, being too afraid of reducing enough (in terms of volume).
Sometimes if a performance doesn’t work out the taper is blamed, when it could be the physiological approach to the race. You are physiologically ready from the taper, but not mentally prepared as you thought.
Doing new things in training that you never do. The taper should be a rationale, natural evolution of what you do normally.
Trust in the process and what you are doing. You have been training for months, one day / one session does not inform months of what you have already done before hand. Avoid getting drawn into the minutiae of day to day sessions to look for trends that are meaningless.
You will have more energy & time due to reduced time spent on training – if you have accumulated enough fatigue that justifies a taper. If you are not training enough then you don’t need a taper (ie 3 hours a week) you need to train.
I found this paper (which is a more detailed version of the 2011 paper referenced):
https://insep.hal.science//hal-01809506
Which is a great read.
