how much tapering?

You're likely to get a wide variance in thinking on this. To my mind, there are a few major factors in play here: Historical training regimen The swimmer's past experience with tapers The swimmer's body type / musculature The events & length of meet I can only speak for my experience and some things I've seen from some of my training partners. As my background: I trained for distance events (400 IM, 500 free & up) and am lean in terms of musculature (fat's another story these days). Even in my peak training days back in college (likely ~60K to ~80K weekly yardage), my best tapers would be about 7 calendar days in total. My basic taper would consist of Dramatic reduction in yardage in the week leading up to the meet (e.g., 15K, 10K, 8k, rest, 6k, 4k, 2k) Dramatic reduction in intensity -- most of the workouts switched to predominantly moderate pace swimming with maybe 20% of the workout geared to some race pace swimming on decent rest I think I'm an outlier, though, because most of my teammates needed much longer tapers -- 2 to 4 weeks in some cases. Whenever I tapered more than the above, though, I lost the relatively little muscle I had so quickly (or at least felt like it) that my power in the water went down quickly. Fast forward to now ... I'm 41 and have been averaging about 15K yards per week since August, along with 2 weight lifting sessions of about 30 minutes, 2 runs a week (~2 miles) and the occasional core or yoga class. I'm 8 weeks out from a meet at which I want to swim fast mainly in the 200 & 400 free and 200 & 400 IM. I'm trying to ratchet my swimming yardage up to 20K to 25K per week for the next 7 weeks, while keeping the same dryland work. My meet will start on a Friday and I'll likely do a taper like this: 2 weeks out: swimming at same level, drop running, lighten weights but keep up same reps week of meet: no weights, no running, no core or yoga ... swimming will look like Monday: normal workout at about 4K with pretty high intensity Tuesday: our team does "yoga swimming" with moderate pace and longer swims ... I'll stop at 3K yards and do absolutely nothing hard Wednesday: I'll drop to about 2500 yards, ideally doing about 500 of it at race pace and low rest, split between three 100s free and then 4 x 50 IM Thursday: I'll swim about 2000 yards, doing maybe 4 x 50 stroke fast on longer rest Friday: meet starts and I swim the 400 free I don't know if this will work, but we'll see. I think it'd be neat to see some other folks chime in with specifics as to how they taper.

You're likely to get a wide variance in thinking on this. To my mind, there are a few major factors in play here: Historical training regimen The swimmer's past experience with tapers The swimmer's body type / musculature The events & length of meet I can only speak for my experience and some things I've seen from some of my training partners. As my background: I trained for distance events (400 IM, 500 free & up) and am lean in terms of musculature (fat's another story these days). Even in my peak training days back in college (likely ~60K to ~80K weekly yardage), my best tapers would be about 7 calendar days in total. My basic taper would consist of Dramatic reduction in yardage in the week leading up to the meet (e.g., 15K, 10K, 8k, rest, 6k, 4k, 2k) Dramatic reduction in intensity -- most of the workouts switched to predominantly moderate pace swimming with maybe 20% of the workout geared to some race pace swimming on decent rest I think I'm an outlier, though, because most of my teammates needed much longer tapers -- 2 to 4 weeks in some cases. Whenever I tapered more than the above, though, I lost the relatively little muscle I had so quickly (or at least felt like it) that my power in the water went down quickly. Fast forward to now ... I'm 41 and have been averaging about 15K yards per week since August, along with 2 weight lifting sessions of about 30 minutes, 2 runs a week (~2 miles) and the occasional core or yoga class. I'm 8 weeks out from a meet at which I want to swim fast mainly in the 200 & 400 free and 200 & 400 IM. I'm trying to ratchet my swimming yardage up to 20K to 25K per week for the next 7 weeks, while keeping the same dryland work. My meet will start on a Friday and I'll likely do a taper like this: 2 weeks out: swimming at same level, drop running, lighten weights but keep up same reps week of meet: no weights, no running, no core or yoga ... swimming will look like Monday: normal workout at about 4K with pretty high intensity Tuesday: our team does "yoga swimming" with moderate pace and longer swims ... I'll stop at 3K yards and do absolutely nothing hard Wednesday: I'll drop to about 2500 yards, ideally doing about 500 of it at race pace and low rest, split between three 100s free and then 4 x 50 IM Thursday: I'll swim about 2000 yards, doing maybe 4 x 50 stroke fast on longer rest Friday: meet starts and I swim the 400 free I don't know if this will work, but we'll see. I think it'd be neat to see some other folks chime in with specifics as to how they taper.