I was able to watch some of the swimming from the Olympics while attending the Long Course Nationals in Savannah - GREAT meet by the way- and although I was impressed by many of the swims, I couldn't help but wonder if the trials were held too close to the Games and as a result compromised the taper of the US swimmers?
The competition at the trials was fierce. Many world records were set. Many had the swim of their lives at trials (I was lucky enough to attend several sessions). But there was only one month after trials until the games. For that elite level it seems to me that many of the swimmers would be into a four week taper following the trials. But inorder to swim their best to make the team in Long Beach, they would have had to taper for trials. Look at Brendan Hansen with two world records or come from nowhere Katie Hoff.
My understanding is that if you hit your taper you can expect (about) a 2% drop in time. Did anyone do that in Athens? My question is why do we have trials so close to the Games? Seems to me we should have had trials two or three months before the Games.
Any comments?:)
I remember seeing Dennis Pursley on TV during the 1992 Olympic Trials which were held in early March of that year. He said that USA swimming would experiement with having an early trials in 1996 also and then make changes if they need to. The NCAA was not favor of the Trials during this time because it disrupt the college season and there Championships.
Also there were swimmers in the summer of 1996 that were swimming faster than Olympians that made the team. The one I remember was Misty Hyman and her time that year at summer nationals in the 200 Fly was faster than any American but she did not swim that fast during the High School season in March which was about 4 months ago from her fast swim. I beleive she when 2:10 and went 2:13 in March of that year when trials were held.
Phil, great first post and I do remember the detailed analysis that Swimming World did back in the Fall of 1997. Also in the June 2004 issue of Swimming World you did an article about the South African 400 Free Relay "Out Of Africa" and how they would become a threat to every country and go about 3:13.65. Nice prediction.
"This taper thing has always been too much art and not enough science."
I agree with you Breastroker. I have always compared the taper with shaving down for a big meet. It's primarily psychological, which can be just as effective as a physical benefit in many cases. I feel that it depends on the particular swimmer. I would be willing to bet that just as many records would been set with or without a taper, with or without hair. It's in your head man, it's in your HEAD!
Baahhh! It's in your head man, it's in your head!:D
Seriously though, excellent point, you must have a higher education to have them kind of brains huh? I ain;t never heard of no learnin about that kind of stuff.
appreciate the lesson, I stand corrected in regards to my stance on the taper being psychological, but I'm holding my ground on the shave vs unshaven issue.
ced357 only makes my point. The whole world of sports have known about Performances, Lactate Responses and Pre-competition Plasma Cortisol Concentrations yet so many swimmers fail to do their best times at the Olympics. The hardest thing in the world is to do your best performance on one day a year.
Yet there are athletes such as Amanda Beard who have learned to swim fast many many times a year. Mark Spitz could roll out of bed and break a world record any time he felt like it.
Swim magazine really did a great job predicting most of the winners and top three at this years Olympics.
As Yogi Berra might say-Shaving & tapering is 90% physical & 90% mental.Tapering does make significant physiologic changes that improve performance (see the section on taper in "SWIMMING FASTEST") Shaving clearly reduces drag. Both are also part of the ritual of preparing to swim fast. In my opinion it's a false dichotomy to try to separate them out in importance as they work synergistically.
One additional point to remember about the preparation for a big meet (or meets) is that it isn't just the decrease in volume/yardage that is part of the taper. It is also the increased focus on intensity in the weeks leading up to the meet, meaning more practice swimming at race pace and more work on the little things, like starts, turns, breakouts, etc.
All of these components fit into an intelligently-designed training schedule, whereby a swimmer should be able to peak for a competition "season" that may last 4-6 weeks, not just the traditional few days of one big meet.
The introduction to the chapter on tapering in Swimming Fastest has this to say:
Presently, more mystique than fact surrounds tapering procedures. Only in the last decade have researchers conducted a significant number of studies on tapering. As a result we are beginning to know more about the physiological reactions associated with tapering. Still, the exact nature of the physiological changes that result in better performance after a taper continues to be a mystery.
Strangely, the book doesn't seem to address the question of how long peak conditioning can be maintained. Could someone who set a world record at trials be "maintained" in that state through to the Olympics rather than going through another training cycle?
Everyone seems to be thinking that the team performance was down because of the second taper. How about the pool? It was definitely windy. The commentators said that it impacted the Breastroke events and I would think that others would experience the same thing. And the pool itself.. was it fast or not?
