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Keywords: taper, training, reduced training, athletic performance, periodization
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For many athletes, a year of training comes down to one major race when strength, skill, speed, endurance, and tactics all need to come together at the right time. The final preparation for competition is both an art and a science, requiring an understanding of the physiological changes that are occurring and the skills to manage the psychological and emotional state of an athlete as they near the culmination of a hard year of training.
Designing training plans to bring an athlete to a peak performance is both an art and a science. Nowhere is this more evident than when the topic of tapering is brought up. Although the scientific community has done a good job of determining the adaptations that occur with tapering (34), to date there has not been a definitive study or series of studies on the optimal combinations of intensity, volume, frequency, duration, or format of a taper (25, 51). Often, tapering research yields conflicting results (51), and the studies are conducted under controlled conditions (20, 27, 31) rather than during competitions where physiological changes are combined with technical, tactical, and psychological factors that influence performance. This limits the practical significance of many of the studies, and much of the information on tapering is based on empirical data from coaches and athletes (26, 31, 42). This paper will attempt to blend scientific research, empirical evidence from coaches and athletes, and our own experience preparing cyclists, rowers, runners, triathletes, and biathletes for regional, national, and international competitions. Humans are complex creatures; the recommendations that we provide can form the basis for developing a tapering model, but they should be modified to suit the physical, technical, tactical, and psychological needs of each athlete.
The Training Process
The objective of training is to induce physiological, psychological, technical, and mechanical changes in an athlete so that performance improves. Training often is thought to follow a simple process based on Hans Selye's general adaptation syndrome (GAS) (48), where a training session creates a stress that results in fatigue, possible tissue damage, and a subsequent decrease in performance. If sufficient time is allowed, the body will recover, repair itself, and adapt according to the initial stress....