In threads where training philosophy comes up, discussions of TRIMPS and TSS and other training models occasionally intrude. These models are not very well known, and even more poorly understood, so probably SolarEnergy, qbrain and I are just talking to each other and killing threads in those conversations. In any case, I figured I would present a brief overview of what it is that we're talking about when this terminology starts showing up.
Best case, this will introduce these models to the subset of swimmers (or coaches) who would be interested enough to use them, but didn't previously know enough to do so.
Plus, even if you're not the type to be interested in quantifying your training, it can be useful to think about workouts in this general framework.
And, at the very least, this might serve as a place to discuss some of the details without worrying about driving those other threads too far off-topic.
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Former Member
Without any more context, I'd interpret this as saying that recovery during taper may be analogous to restocking glycogen during carb loading. Not that the timescales are similar.
You guys may have been mislead by studies conducted among untrained subjects maybe ? Here, you may want to read this
www.pponline.co.uk/.../recovery-training-too-much-hard-training-can-devastate-your-muscles-and-implode-your-immune-system-510
They suggest a key recovery time frame of 36hrs (we see this quite often). 36-72. 36 partial recovery but good enough to book another quality workout. 72h being the maximal recovery time one could expect which covers pretty most physiological aspects (glycogen restore, muscles tissue damage, nervous system fatigue, hydratation etc etc etc....)
If muscle tissue damage was taking that much time to recover from, body builders would have a very hard time putting together a 5day/week training schedule I believe.
I.e., overtraining followed by rest allows recovery to higher than previous levels of fitness (which sounds to me like the standard training effect), just like starvation followed by carb loading allows a temporary over-filling of glycogen levels. But the time scale of the former is ~2 weeks, and the latter is ~2 days. Overreaching (not overtraining which is a completely different condition) can fade out to allow for higher than previous levels of fitness within 36-72 hours. Otherwise, it's the whole periodisation principle that would fall apart.
I don't assume from this that "muscle tissue damage recovery time goes parallel to time to replenish glycogen levels" (emphasis mine). you're definitely allowed to.
Wow, that's a whole different argument. I don't know about you, but I definitely feel fatigue long after my blood lactate concentrations return to normal. Taken in this context, in exercise physiology, fatigue simply refers to the phenomenon that forces you to slow down as Lactate Level increase.
It's not that much of a different argument. One (Lactate/glycogen) is used as a proxy to track or fair guess the others (which are far too complex to be tracked or monitored). Or so is the way I understand Maglischo's statement.
Which implies that your 4-day "sudden break" would be more effective than a 2-week gradual taper. I agree that would not be a good taper strategy. But I think so because I don't believe fatigue has faded in 4 days. If you take a look at one of the studies referred to by the article, you'll see that their protocol involved testing recovery after 24h, then after 5 days. After 5 days, there are no trace whatsoever of muscle damage. Tissue (assessing through biopsies) is back to baseline. If they had tested after 4 days, they would have probably ended up with the same result.
I'm curious why you don't like a full-stop taper strategy? I'm a coach. Therefore people do count on me for achieving their goals (sometimes dreams). Drop tapers have shown to far less predictable than progressive tapers.
How should I put this. There's enough gambling in a season. If you were paying me to create a plan for you, the least I could do is to avoid gambling during your taper.
This instability in the results obtained during drop tapers is certainly in part due to both adverse impact of such a drastic measure on cardiac output (which fades away very rapidly) as well as efficiency of the Enzymes (which also detrain very rapidly) responsible for getting you to swim as fast as you'd which, no matter what these Enzymes are.
Without any more context, I'd interpret this as saying that recovery during taper may be analogous to restocking glycogen during carb loading. Not that the timescales are similar.
You guys may have been mislead by studies conducted among untrained subjects maybe ? Here, you may want to read this
www.pponline.co.uk/.../recovery-training-too-much-hard-training-can-devastate-your-muscles-and-implode-your-immune-system-510
They suggest a key recovery time frame of 36hrs (we see this quite often). 36-72. 36 partial recovery but good enough to book another quality workout. 72h being the maximal recovery time one could expect which covers pretty most physiological aspects (glycogen restore, muscles tissue damage, nervous system fatigue, hydratation etc etc etc....)
If muscle tissue damage was taking that much time to recover from, body builders would have a very hard time putting together a 5day/week training schedule I believe.
I.e., overtraining followed by rest allows recovery to higher than previous levels of fitness (which sounds to me like the standard training effect), just like starvation followed by carb loading allows a temporary over-filling of glycogen levels. But the time scale of the former is ~2 weeks, and the latter is ~2 days. Overreaching (not overtraining which is a completely different condition) can fade out to allow for higher than previous levels of fitness within 36-72 hours. Otherwise, it's the whole periodisation principle that would fall apart.
I don't assume from this that "muscle tissue damage recovery time goes parallel to time to replenish glycogen levels" (emphasis mine). you're definitely allowed to.
Wow, that's a whole different argument. I don't know about you, but I definitely feel fatigue long after my blood lactate concentrations return to normal. Taken in this context, in exercise physiology, fatigue simply refers to the phenomenon that forces you to slow down as Lactate Level increase.
It's not that much of a different argument. One (Lactate/glycogen) is used as a proxy to track or fair guess the others (which are far too complex to be tracked or monitored). Or so is the way I understand Maglischo's statement.
Which implies that your 4-day "sudden break" would be more effective than a 2-week gradual taper. I agree that would not be a good taper strategy. But I think so because I don't believe fatigue has faded in 4 days. If you take a look at one of the studies referred to by the article, you'll see that their protocol involved testing recovery after 24h, then after 5 days. After 5 days, there are no trace whatsoever of muscle damage. Tissue (assessing through biopsies) is back to baseline. If they had tested after 4 days, they would have probably ended up with the same result.
I'm curious why you don't like a full-stop taper strategy? I'm a coach. Therefore people do count on me for achieving their goals (sometimes dreams). Drop tapers have shown to far less predictable than progressive tapers.
How should I put this. There's enough gambling in a season. If you were paying me to create a plan for you, the least I could do is to avoid gambling during your taper.
This instability in the results obtained during drop tapers is certainly in part due to both adverse impact of such a drastic measure on cardiac output (which fades away very rapidly) as well as efficiency of the Enzymes (which also detrain very rapidly) responsible for getting you to swim as fast as you'd which, no matter what these Enzymes are.
