I searched the past threads to try and find some answers to my questions about prepping for a "taper" meet. We are an uncoached masters team and I have been writing most of the workouts throughout the year, but when it comes to tapering I am a bit lost as to how to put an appropriate workout together as we close in on our biggest meet of the year.
I realize that everybody tapers differently, but what I am looking for is just a general idea of what to do. We have been averaging 4000 yards 4x a week. I've read about the 100:75:50 ratio in terms of volume, but I also would like to understand what kind of workouts we should be doing. Volume wise we were going to do something like this:
4 weeks away from the meet - 3750
3 weeks away from the meet - 3500
2 weeks away from the meet - 3000
week before the meet - 2000
Any assistance (maybe an example) is appreciated.
Focus more on speed/race work as you cut the volume down. Shorter faster sets on slower intervals helps. Broken distance sets are also helpful. Another factor that goes into taper is what you are swimming at your "taper meet" or what type of venue (LCM, SCM, SCY) you will be competing in.
For instance, I am swimming in my Zone's Sectionals meet the first weekend of March. Being an Olympic year, despite training SCY all season, the meet is being conducted in LCM. My taper changes because I need to keep the yardage higher to be preapred for swimming "longer" races. Same thing goes for if you are primarily swimming distance events at your meet. a 500/1000/1650 swimmer will not want to drop the yardage as much as someone doing the 50s and 100s.
Taper is also a time, when you drop the yardage, to focus on the "little things". Shorter distances with longer rest means more time to think about what you are doing. I think taper practices mean increasing the mental effort put into practice as the distance effort decreases.
EDIT:
another example, sort of a sampling of a taper practice:
WARM UP: Warm up should start to mimic what want to do when you warm up at the meet. In college, when taper started, we wrote down what our ideal meet warm up was. We then had open warm up for most practices for the first 30-40 minutes where we did OUR warm up. You want to do what you need to do to swim fast. Work on getting the heart rate up quickly (working with less yardage per warm up) and being ready to race.
MAIN SETS: As I mentioned above, broken sets are great in taper season. examples would be a 200 freestyle broken, :15 at the 100, :05 at the 150. Or do the 100 on an interval, say 1:40, and the 50 on another interval, say :55. I also am a fan of what my college coach called "race rehearsal". The idea behind it is to do a dive swim, lets say a 100 fly, but you want to "feel" like you want to in the race. It isn't necessarily about the time (in fact most of the time he wouldnt time us) its about imagining you are in the race and making every stroke feel how you want it to feel, practicing what you do at the 80 meter mark when your stroke starts to fall apart.
WARM DOWN: Long and easy, maybe more than you usually do at the end of a practice.
Focus more on speed/race work as you cut the volume down. Shorter faster sets on slower intervals helps. Broken distance sets are also helpful. Another factor that goes into taper is what you are swimming at your "taper meet" or what type of venue (LCM, SCM, SCY) you will be competing in.
For instance, I am swimming in my Zone's Sectionals meet the first weekend of March. Being an Olympic year, despite training SCY all season, the meet is being conducted in LCM. My taper changes because I need to keep the yardage higher to be preapred for swimming "longer" races. Same thing goes for if you are primarily swimming distance events at your meet. a 500/1000/1650 swimmer will not want to drop the yardage as much as someone doing the 50s and 100s.
Taper is also a time, when you drop the yardage, to focus on the "little things". Shorter distances with longer rest means more time to think about what you are doing. I think taper practices mean increasing the mental effort put into practice as the distance effort decreases.
EDIT:
another example, sort of a sampling of a taper practice:
WARM UP: Warm up should start to mimic what want to do when you warm up at the meet. In college, when taper started, we wrote down what our ideal meet warm up was. We then had open warm up for most practices for the first 30-40 minutes where we did OUR warm up. You want to do what you need to do to swim fast. Work on getting the heart rate up quickly (working with less yardage per warm up) and being ready to race.
MAIN SETS: As I mentioned above, broken sets are great in taper season. examples would be a 200 freestyle broken, :15 at the 100, :05 at the 150. Or do the 100 on an interval, say 1:40, and the 50 on another interval, say :55. I also am a fan of what my college coach called "race rehearsal". The idea behind it is to do a dive swim, lets say a 100 fly, but you want to "feel" like you want to in the race. It isn't necessarily about the time (in fact most of the time he wouldnt time us) its about imagining you are in the race and making every stroke feel how you want it to feel, practicing what you do at the 80 meter mark when your stroke starts to fall apart.
WARM DOWN: Long and easy, maybe more than you usually do at the end of a practice.
