I did a practice shave of my legs last night, to get used to it and also figure out how long it takes me for planning purposes.
Today in practice, I was faster than usual. The most obvious was in my 200 free warm-up. I dps the first 100 and then gradually speed up to about 75%. Usually I am around 3 minutes. Monday, I went 2:51. Today, I was 2:36 with the usual effort level.
My 200 *** warm-up was about 10 seconds faster than usual.
Can shaving really improve things that much? Is some of this because I am tapering?
Also, for those guys who shave your heads, do you also wear a cap? If not, is the bald head better than a cap?
Agreed. I have had "extended tapers" many times and have never been disappointed; more often than not I've continued to get faster.
If (for example) I was doing a meet 4 weeks after nationals, I would probably bump up the workload slightly for awhile but nowhere near "in-season" levels (which I suspect many college programs do).
There is this perception out there that when you taper you have a couple days of optimum swimming and then it is a sharp downhill from there as you get "out of shape." I think that is wrong. I think that if you taper well you have a reasonably long period of fast swimming in you, and with proper management that period can be extended longer. That's why I think that, if you err, you should err on the side of resting too much rather than too little.
One season I did a 4-week long taper for LCM nationals (it was actually a double-taper: 2-weeks for one meet, then another 2-weeks for nats). Then I had a week-long vacation of no swimming whatsoever, followed by a 2-mile OW swim that I entered on a lark bc it happened to be in the area where we were camping. So after 5 weeks of taper -- including one of no swimming -- I should be in horrible shape, right? No, I did just fine, didn't die at all.
We do 1 hour or longer practices for races which mostly last 2 minutes or less. We're all in good shape.
Sorry for the thread hijack...
Agreed. I have had "extended tapers" many times and have never been disappointed; more often than not I've continued to get faster.
If (for example) I was doing a meet 4 weeks after nationals, I would probably bump up the workload slightly for awhile but nowhere near "in-season" levels (which I suspect many college programs do).
There is this perception out there that when you taper you have a couple days of optimum swimming and then it is a sharp downhill from there as you get "out of shape." I think that is wrong. I think that if you taper well you have a reasonably long period of fast swimming in you, and with proper management that period can be extended longer. That's why I think that, if you err, you should err on the side of resting too much rather than too little.
One season I did a 4-week long taper for LCM nationals (it was actually a double-taper: 2-weeks for one meet, then another 2-weeks for nats). Then I had a week-long vacation of no swimming whatsoever, followed by a 2-mile OW swim that I entered on a lark bc it happened to be in the area where we were camping. So after 5 weeks of taper -- including one of no swimming -- I should be in horrible shape, right? No, I did just fine, didn't die at all.
We do 1 hour or longer practices for races which mostly last 2 minutes or less. We're all in good shape.
Sorry for the thread hijack...
