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Athletes are gradually getting the idea that reducing their training ('tapering') prior to major competitions is a good idea, but major disagreements about exactly how to taper remain. There's considerable debate about whether one should reduce training volume (mileage or time) while preserving training intensity (speed) during a tapering period, trim intensity while maintaining volume, or simply cut back on both. There are also differences of opinion concerning how often one should train (frequency), how long the tapering period should actually last, and whether different competitive events require dissimilar tapers

In addition to the confusion about the exact specifications of a tapering period, an additional problem is that athletes often worry that they might actually LOSE fitness during a period of reduced training. Are these athletes right'? Is there some way to construct a taper which makes 'detraining' impossible?

Fortunately, scientific research can answer many of these perplexing questions. The first good scientific study related to tapering took place in 1981, when scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago studied 21 individuals who were training strenuously six days per week (three days of running and three days of bicycling). During their bike workouts, the subjects usually completed six five-minute intervals at close to top intensity, with only two minutes of rest between intervals. The running sessions consisted of 3()-4() minutes of moderately hard running

To see what would happen during a tapering period, one group of athletes reduced exercise frequency to just four sessions per week (two cycling efforts and two runs), while a second group cut back drastically to just two weekly workouts (one cycle and one run). The actual exercise intensity (cycling or running speed) was maintained, so frequency (the number of workouts per week) and volume (the total amount of work) were the two variables which were altered during the taper


No fitness loss for up to 15 weeks
As the tapering periods proceeded, the Illinois scientists discovered an amazing fact: fitness was perfectly preserved in BOTH groups of tapering athletes for up to 15 WEEKS, even though frequency and total training volume were reduced by as much as 67 per cent! This startling result generated some 'Why is the emperor wearing no clothes' questions. For example, many observers began to wonder why athletes insisted on training so much, since they would be just as fit - and probably considerably less injured - with a lower amount of training. (Unfortunately, this dilemma was quickly shoved aside by the majority of athletes and coaches, who continued to cling to high-volume training. As the French like to say, it's easy to train with the nose, not the mind.) The second question was as follows: if athletes don't lose anything when training is reduced, might it not be possible to actually GAIN something during diminished-training periods, if total training were cut by just the right amount and athletes were truly allowed to rest?


It's the intensity that counts
Follow-up research by the same Illinois investigative team revealed an important fact. Although carving away big chunks of frequency and volume during a tapering period usually produced no problems, reductions in intensity did lead to difficulties. In tact, almost as soon as running or cycling speed fell, fitness began to fall as well during the tapering period. It appeared that intensity was the key preserver of fitness during reduced training. This latter finding was not too surprising. After all, intensity is the best PRODUCER of fitness during regular training, too. If you want to become fitter, it's always - within reason - better to upgrade the intensity of your workouts, instead of their volume or frequency. Carrying out some intense training sessions is the optimal way both to produce and preserve fitness


Studies with swimmers
In the mid-1980s, an increased number of tapering studies began to appear in the scientific literature, most of them emanating from Dave Costill's :famous laboratory at Ball State University in the United States. In one of Costill's early pieces of research, highly competitive collegiate swimmers tapered by cutting their training volume by 68 per cent (from 10,000 to 3,200 yards per day) for 1 5 days. Over the course of this tapering period, the swimmers' muscular power soared by 25 per cent, their levels of blood lactate while swimming at rapid speeds diminished, and - best of all - their performances improved by almost 4 per cent. Indeed, Costill found that the biggest problem experienced by the swimmers was that they felt TOO good and tended to go out too fast at the beginnings of their races

Costill's work was 'fine tuned' a few years later in an investigation at Northern Colorado University. There, swimmers again cut their training to about one-third of its normal level, but this time the athletes were monitored over a four-week period. The Northern Colorado scientists found that blood lactate levels during exercise (an indicator of fatigue) tended to drop for the first two and a half weeks of tapering, but rose thereafter. Likewise, performances improved over roughly the first two and a half weeks but declined during the last week and a half of the experimental period. The Northern Colorado study suggested that it might be wise to extend a tapering period to about two and a half weeks - but not longer - in order to 'milk' out all possible benefits. Longer tapering periods didn't seem to work


Is a one-third training cut enough?
Since athletes in the University of Illinois study had trimmed training volume to one-third of its normal level for 15 weeks without any repercussions, and since both the Northern Colorado and Ball State swimmers had also cut training to 33 per cent of normal and had experienced big physiological and competitive gains, a tapering concensus emerged. Knowledgeable coaches and athletes began to think that training volume should be cut to about one-third of its usual level during an optimal taper. A runner who normally covered 40 miles per week could cut back to 15 weekly miles during a tapering period, for example. However, several questions still hadn't been answered. No one knew much about intensity, for example. Since intensity was the key preserver of fitness during a tapering period, should average workout intensity actually increase during a taper, or should it simply be kept the same, or should it be slightly reduced in order to maximize rest? And what about frequency? Would it be wise to take complete days off from training during a tapering period, or was it best to train lightly every day?


The sceptical athletes
In addition to the confusion about frequency and intensity, another problem was that athletes simply didn't believe the scientists' contention that training volume should be cut by two-thirds during a taper. Athletes addicted to the 'work-work-work' method of training and the 'more is better' philosophy had a very difficult time accepting the idea that less training could make them stronger or faster. Also, many athletes were quite obsessive about their body weights and believed that a trimming-down of training volume would automatically lead to increases in corpulence. Among the athletic community, therefore, tapering periods continued to be kept as abbreviated as possible. Unfortunately, news that world-best Kenyan runners were only tapering for a few days before major competitions also fueled the belief that the tapering information emerging from scientific laboratories was 'ivory-tower' stuff which had little relevance to real athletes trying to win important competitions

In fact, the athletes' stubborn beliefs flew in the face of a training principle which exercise physiologists had known about for a long time. This principle can be stated as follows: with a few exceptions, the physiological benefits of a workout usually don't show up until at least 10-14 days have passed after the workout, a time period during which the body is adjusting and (hopefully) rebuilding after strenuous exercise. A logical question to ask the athletes, then, would have been, 'Why are you working so hard during the final two weeks before your big competition, when the benefits won't show up until after the event is over?' No one posed this query, though, since most coaches and 'experts' believed in abridged tapering, too


And now-the 90 per cent cut!
Meanwhile, tapering research continued, and a real tapering breakthrough occurred in 1990, when Duncan MacDougall and his colleagues at Mc Master University in Ontario, Canada, pulled out all the stops and asked a group of runners to trim their training by almost 90 per cent during their tapering period! Another group followed the usual strategy of cutting back by two-thirds, and yet a third group did absolutely no running at all during the tapering period, which was one week in duration for all three groups

An unusual feature of the 90-per-cent-cutback group's training during the tapering period was that almost all of the mileage consisted of fast 500-metre intervals at about one-mile race pace. In fact, the athletes ran five 500-metre intervals on the first day of the taper, four 500-metre intervals on the second day, three 50()-metre intervals on day three, etc., and rested completely on day six. On the seventh day, they participated in performance tests. MacDougall had set up the taper in this manner, with an almost total emphasis on fast intervals, because he was aware that intensity was the most potent way to preserve - or build - fitness during a tapering period

Amazingly enough, endurance (measured as the length of time the runners could run at a quality pace) skyrocketed by 22 per cent in the 90-per-cent-cutback group after the tapering period but increased by only 6 per cent in the regular-taper group (the group which had performed only easy running at one-third of their normal volume). The do-nothing taper produced...well...nothing in the way of performance enhancement

Why did the strange, 9()-per-cent-cutback taper work so well? First, these speedy taperers stockpiled more glycogen in their leg muscles, suggesting that perhaps the traditional, previously accepted, two-thirds diminishment of training volume in fact wasn't enough of a curtailment to allow muscles to completely restore their energy levels

In addition, levels of key energy-producing enzymes advanced to a magnificent extent in the strange-taper group, indicating that almost-complete rest (with training comprising only 10 per cent of normal volume) was needed to give muscles a real chance to synthesise mega-quantities of important ergogenic chemicals

Finally, the strange-taper runners had much higher blood volumes, compared to runners using the more conventional tapering strategy. High blood volume is extremely beneficial, because it permits more red fluid to gush toward the leg muscles during strenuous exercise, bringing along bumper crops of oxygen and fuel. It seemed that this flood of blood was induced by the fast intervals included in the strange taper, because one of the key acute effects of an intense (but not a moderate or easy) workout is an expansion of blood volume

To summarize, the Canadian study showed that if you cut back on your training by 90 per cent and let fairly intense work make up most of the remaining training which you do carry out, you may be astoundingly better after just one week. This finding was subsequently verified by researchers at other laboratories

An additional bonus for athletes using this 90-per- cent plan is that 'strange' tapering training, consisting of intervals conducted at close to race pace, prepares them for the exact neuromuscular requirements needed on race day. In other words, they'll need to run or cycle or swim at a specific goal pace on the day of their important competition, and 'strange' tapering allows them to practise this tempo repeatedly during their tapering periods. As a result, their nervous and muscular systems learn to handle this pace in an energy-efficient and relaxed manner, and mental confidence also soars. A 'strange-tapered' athlete will often think, 'I can deal with this pace; it's one that I've practised often.' On race day, the athlete will settle into the pace almost without thinking. Exercise economy will improve, the feeling of mental effort associated with the pace will decline, and there will be little chance of going too fast or too slow during early moments of the competition

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