When to stop lifting weights for taper?

How do you know if you did not lift ? You are not going to lose anything in 3 weeks of a good taper even if you never look at a weight - actually your max lift will most likely increase because of the rest. I actually tried that out after Nationals - I came back after not touching a weight in 4 weeks and did the exact same workout as the last lifting session. I could do 2-4 more reps on every excercise (I don't do max tests). How much taper ? Older swimmers need more rest -- I need more rest now than 20 years ago even though I am training less Sprinters and / or Men need more rest -- bigger muscles need more rest There will be a taper low -- the dreaded taper low, 10 days - 2 weeks into the taper for me. As everybody has said more taper is better than not enough. It's trial and error - nobody knows for certain, you may need 2-3 seasons to figure it out. I read an interesting article a couple of years back that was asking the question of whether swimmers actually tend to under-taper rather than over-taper. As I recall it was more of a discussion paper than presenting clear evidence, but one of the things that it pointed to was the number of swimmers who went faster at the circuit meets that immediately followed the world champs (not masters) in 2009. There could be many variables in that, not least the lack of pressure, but interesting still. I think that as masters we were generally raised in a time where yardage counted and a fear of losing fitness quickly tended to rule. Tapers were quite short and we still worked quite hard when we were in them as 'maintenance'. Contrast this to my time as a masters swimmer where I've gone into the last few weeks before Nationals with an attitude of, "well, I might want to be fitter but it's not going to happen now" and reduced right down on yardage, dropped weights and focused on feel (really important for me) and race pace. So far I've generally done better than I'd expected going in.

How do you know if you did not lift ? You are not going to lose anything in 3 weeks of a good taper even if you never look at a weight - actually your max lift will most likely increase because of the rest. I actually tried that out after Nationals - I came back after not touching a weight in 4 weeks and did the exact same workout as the last lifting session. I could do 2-4 more reps on every excercise (I don't do max tests). How much taper ? Older swimmers need more rest -- I need more rest now than 20 years ago even though I am training less Sprinters and / or Men need more rest -- bigger muscles need more rest There will be a taper low -- the dreaded taper low, 10 days - 2 weeks into the taper for me. As everybody has said more taper is better than not enough. It's trial and error - nobody knows for certain, you may need 2-3 seasons to figure it out. I read an interesting article a couple of years back that was asking the question of whether swimmers actually tend to under-taper rather than over-taper. As I recall it was more of a discussion paper than presenting clear evidence, but one of the things that it pointed to was the number of swimmers who went faster at the circuit meets that immediately followed the world champs (not masters) in 2009. There could be many variables in that, not least the lack of pressure, but interesting still. I think that as masters we were generally raised in a time where yardage counted and a fear of losing fitness quickly tended to rule. Tapers were quite short and we still worked quite hard when we were in them as 'maintenance'. Contrast this to my time as a masters swimmer where I've gone into the last few weeks before Nationals with an attitude of, "well, I might want to be fitter but it's not going to happen now" and reduced right down on yardage, dropped weights and focused on feel (really important for me) and race pace. So far I've generally done better than I'd expected going in.