Hi I am looking for help. I want to know how masters swimmers plan out their Taper before competition. How long is it ? How much do you reduce the distance and intensity of your workouts ?
How effective has it been? Do you Taper at all?
I have found through my own swimming that the Taper for masters swimmers is not the same as for elite swimmers. I don't think that we need the same taper as we are not doing 50,000 + meters a week ! All of the research out there is written for elite swimmers. If anyone knows of an article dealing with taper for masters swimmers then please tell me.
I am thinking of writing a paper on this if I can get enough info. If you could say how you plan your Taper, what your weekly volumes are and the events you swim then I would be eternally thankfull.
The right taper can be individual too. I know from both coaching and my own swimming career that some people do well on tapers and some don't. My coach finally figured out I never did well on tapers...he stopped tapering me and a few others and we did much better at important meets.
I tend to agree with those that say many Masters swimmers are not doing enough yardage to do a real taper....the ones for whom taper is most effective are probably swimming a quality workout 5 days a week.
Thanks everybody for your feedback. My own experience of Tapering has been hard to evaluate. My problem is that i have two periods of the year when Allergies & Asthma interfere with my performance.
The first allergy season starts last week of January and ends in late June. I have strong reactions to Tree Pollen. As I swim every other day, I can judge the effect. I will go from easily doing 90 min swims of 3,200m to 3,500m , depending on what stroke or how much sprint/distance is in the mix in the 1st few weeks of January. To the next week struggling to get through 1500m. Then I am tired, asthmatic and dragging myself around for the next 5 months. I have had shots, a good asthma management program and take anti-histamines but the Lethargy is still there.
Unfortunately most of the best swim meets take place in these months.
My 2nd allergy season starts in October, when the Heating system goes on and lasts until early December. The other good swim meets are in this period.
So, I really have a good 3 mth season from July to September. In this time I have tons of energy and swim my best times. However, there are few Swim meets in these months.
So it is hard for me to evaluate the best Taper from my own experience as in my allergy season even a week of complete rest gives me no "Bounce" or "up-tick". For advising my Masters group on this I am looking to see how other Master swimmers taper.
Two good bits of info on how to evaluate the Taper that I have gleaned are:
1- Test the height of your Vertical jump against a wall. This will be less during hard training and at its maximum at the end of your taper. I think that this comes from Wayne MacAuley, on his breaststroke site - www.breaststrokeinfo.com.
2- Test times on 25m sprints every 4-6 swims. The times should be at maximum just before your event.
I feel that if a swimmer is doing less than 15,000m a week then only a 3 or 4 day tapering off is needed. I can't prove this tho. I have thoroughly reviewed the info in the latest editions of "Swimming Fastest" by Magaschilo and "Breakthrough swimming" by Colwin but they are concerned with the experience of Elite, high training volume swimmers, so are not a great help with masters.
I found that tapering more than a few days does not work for me.
I swim about 12,000 yards a week and do a lot of sprinting.
I tapered for nationals about 1.5 weeks and did a little faster than non-tapered performances.
I tapered 3 days for regionals and that was the first time I had the real time-drop tapering effect I heard about.
I think experimentation is necessary to find your correct tapering period.
I'd take a stab at a 1 week taper for your big meet.
At 12,000 yards a week I see 6 or so hours of training per week.
On the triathlon side of the world (where I live) we'd say someone training 6 hours a week needs very little taper, 3 to 5 days.
But having those 6 hours all in one sport probably means 1 week is a good starting point.
Best of Luck
I'd take a stab at a 1 week taper for your big meet.
At 12,000 yards a week I see 6 or so hours of training per week.
On the triathlon side of the world (where I live) we'd say someone training 6 hours a week needs very little taper, 3 to 5 days.
But having those 6 hours all in one sport probably means 1 week is a good starting point.
Best of Luck
Gareth,
This is an old thread, but for what its worth
You responded to a 14-year-old thread with a 9-year-old article.
I like to think putting that link here has been on your to-do list since 2008 and you just got around to it tonight.
I was surprised to get a response so many years later. Funny for me looking back at myself as a 40 year old. I am now at 53 much healthier, with only a short 5 week allergy season in the spring to contend with. I am also swimming with the superb Okanagan Masters Swim Club in Kelowna, Canada. We have the advantage of over 120 swimmers, morning long course and evening short course sessions and 7 very good coaches.
This year, I am actually beating my personal best times from 2003 by around 5%.
I was surprised to get a response so many years later. Funny for me looking back at myself as a 40 year old. I am now at 53 much healthier, with only a short 5 week allergy season in the spring to contend with. I am also swimming with the superb Okanagan Masters Swim Club in Kelowna, Canada. We have the advantage of over 120 swimmers, morning long course and evening short course sessions and 7 very good coaches.
This year, I am actually beating my personal best times from 2003 by around 5%.
Well, its weird to see something I wrote years ago too. I did only 5 meets from 2002 to march 2004 and dropped out with some lap swimming on and off to 2006. I can't swim as fast in years as I did in meters in 2003 but I going to be 60 years old.
