Tapering Do’s & Don’t’s: Aug ‘23

Hey it’s Tom and Emma with this month’s In-Form Newsletter 👋

Musings

This month we’ve been thinking about tapering do’s and don’t’s and some common mistakes that crop up repeatedly. 

Here are some tapering tips we’ve collated from the scientific literature, practices of top athletes, and our own coaching experience…

Don’t taper for too long

Mathematical models of athletes’ fatigue and form levels generally support quite a long taper period. Based off this evidence, you’ll often see older training advice recommending around 2-weeks or more for the taper period. 

However, in practice for most athletes, this can be too long and result in a decrease in both fitness and form (i.e. performance) on race day.

The optimal taper length will depend on what type of event you’re targeting, as well as how quickly you tend to recover. Athletes who recover quickly (e.g. elite and high-level athletes) may need as little as 3-4 days to taper, whereas amateur and/or older athletes may need around 10-days. 

The type of event makes a difference too, with longer events generally benefitting from a longer taper. 

You’ll also want to consider how hard the training was leading into your taper. If your training load has been higher than normal, then you might want a slightly longer taper period. 

On average, we like to take around 7 days of tapering for an average well-trained but recreational-level cyclist whose training load was not notably increased leading into the taper, and who is gearing towards an event lasting roughly 2-3 hours. 

Don’t take extra days off

One mistake we commonly see is taking lots of days off the bike during the taper period, which can result in heavy legs on competition day. 

In our experience, it can be best to stick quite closely to your usual riding frequency. So if you usually ride 5 days per week, try to still ride 4-5 days per week during your taper. Research looking at the practices of top athletes also supports this principle. 

Do include higher-intensity

The same research looking at tapering practices of top athletes also suggests that it may be beneficial to include some higher-intensity riding during the taper period. 

This may seem counterintuitive, as high-intensity training isn’t exactly restful! However, in our experience, this high-intensity riding is appropriate for athletes across a range of ability levels and ages, and is beneficial in helping minimise fitness loss, priming the aerobic system for racing, and helping keep the legs feeling ‘activated’. 

Successfully completing a high-intensity session leading into your event can also provide confidence that your taper is going well and that you can expect to be in good form on race day. 

Generally, we like to include an abbreviated interval session (perhaps 50% of your usual high-intensity volume) around 4-5 days before an event. We’ll also often include a short ‘openers’ session 1-2 days before the event. This openers session will include just a few short efforts above threshold, stopping well the point that these efforts start to feel challenging. 

Do reduce ride duration

You might be wondering how you can taper your training down, if you’re not taking days off and you’re still including higher intensity riding. One of the best ways to do this is to simply make your rides shorter than normal. 

Generally, you’ll want to aim to be completing roughly 60-70% of your usual ride volume. 

Do polarise your intensity

Simply speaking, you want to keep your easy rides really easy during the taper period, and go hard in your high-intensity sessions.

So, alongside the high-intensity sessions described above, the rest of your riding should be mostly at a Zone 1 or low Zone 2 intensity (e.g. below ~60% FTP, ~65% Max HR or a 3/10 effort level). 

News

• We have a new article on the website that sums up all the training advice gleaned from interviews with Dr Iñigo San Millán (coach of Tadej Pogačar), and also provide some extra notes on nuances that might have been missed in these discussions. For anyone interested in Zone 2 training or lactate testing, this is one for you! 

• We also have some new strength training plans, designed to complement your on-bike training, which are available here. These include both home-based and a gym-based versions. 

As always, we have plenty of training resources available on our website, including the Cycling Physiology and Training Science Guide, the Optimal Cycling Nutrition Guide, and our Hill Climb Handbook. 

Thanks again, and we’ll catch you on the next edition,

Tom and Emma

High North Performance