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Tapering to a
Razor's Edge
By Dr. Stephen
Cheung, Ph.D.
PezCycling News
The Vuelta
sometimes seems to be the Rodney Dangerfield of Grand Tours and never
able to get any real respect. Back in the days, it was the first of the
big three tours, taking place in April and May. With such an early date,
it was hard recruiting a top-quality field. Since its switch in the late
1990s to its September date and inclusion in the ProTour, the fields are
stronger but it's still difficult to shake the sense that it's a venue
for those looking to redeem an otherwise lean (i.e., bad Tour) season.
Then there's the
other problem of the World's being scheduled the week post-Vuelta. While
many riders start the Vuelta to gain fitness and peak for the Worlds,
many also quit partway through for the exact same reason of avoiding
overcooking themselves.
Peaking Science
We can partly
thank sport science and research into peaking and tapering for such an
attitude within the peloton. It has long been known amongst athletes and
coaches that continually hammering yourself into the ground is not the
best strategy for hitting a physical peak.
Therefore, gone
are the days where most riders will try to win every race from February
to October. Instead, the increasing specialization of the sport has led
riders to aim for specific events and types of races.
For the common
rider, this template was first systematically laid out by Joe Friel's
classic Cyclists Training Bible
in 1996. As part of periodization and aiming for specific races, it
became critical to know just exactly how to alter training the final few
weeks to avoid both under- and over-training.
At its heart,
training consists of manipulating volume (frequency, duration) and
intensity of efforts. What is the best combination of these two
variables in the weeks leading up to a peak? This seemingly simple
question is actually quite difficult to nail down in the lab.
First off is the
difficulty in recruiting appropriate subjects. Most studies require
competitive athletes ideally training for a major event, but these are
typically the last subjects willing to sign up for studies that may mess
up their training and main event. Secondly, keep in mind that individual
variability is huge in terms of response to a training load or a
tapering program.
Surveying the
Literature
With the above
caveats in mind, a recent study in the top journal
Medicine and Science in Sports and
Exercise surveyed the entire existing tapering literature to
draw some general conclusions.
The methodology of
this study is a meta-analysis, where all available data from previous
studies are pooled together and statistically analyzed. Of course, this
is only a useful technique when there is a large body of literature to
draw general conclusions from. If there are only two or three papers,
the power of this technique becomes far too weak.
To compile the
relevant studies, the authors searched six different scientific
databases for studies with the following criteria:
-
Competitive
athletes were used. This is vital to address one of the key caveats
I discussed above in terms of both scientific control (less
test-to-test variability than with recreational or non-fit subjects)
and realism (after all, we're concerned with elite performance, not
couch potatoes).
-
Sufficient
detail provided about the actual tapering intervention. This detail
is important because the authors are trying to tease out what kind
of tapering works best.
-
Use of actual
competition or field-based criterion performance. This again adds to
the realism and applicability of the research. An example of this
might be the use of performance during a 10 km time trial rather
than how long the subject can ride at a set intensity.
-
Enough data
provided for the investigators to calculate statistical effect
sizes.
-
If the data is
reported in more than one study, it was only used once.
Of the original
182 potential studies found, only 27 matched the above inclusion
criteria. This still makes for a very broad and strong dataset.
From this group of
studies, the authors investigated the effects of the following on
"performance" loosely defined as the test performed pre- and post-taper:
-
Amount of
decrease in training intensity
-
Amount of
decrease in volume
-
Amount of
decrease in frequency
-
Pattern of the
taper and its duration
Key Findings
The major findings
from this meta-analysis support the current prevailing wisdom that the
optimal tapering involves a reduction in training volume without any
modification to the intensity or frequency of training. Specifically,
the optimal tapering seems to be achieved with a 41 to 60 percent
reduction in overall volume.
So if you're used
to a 10-hour training week with five days of riding and two days of
breakthrough workouts, the volume might drop down to only one hour
rides, but there should generally still be five of them, and two of them
should remain condensed interval/sprint workouts.
Furthering the
drop in volume, the drop does not need to be instant in the very first
days of the taper, but it can be a relatively quick drop over the first
few days.
In addition, the
ideal tapering duration seems to last two weeks. This is somewhat longer
than the "traditional" one week that many of us may consider for a taper
or recovery week in the typical four-week cycle of training, and also
highlights that a taper is a specific program and not just an extended
recovery phase.
Summary
The key to a taper
is that it is a highly specialized training phase designed to promote an
overall drop in training stress by decreasing the volume while
maintaining intensity. By doing so, it is permitting your body
sufficient resources to recover and adapt by temporarily sacrificing
your aerobic capacity while maintaining your anaerobic capacity.
Within the above
general template, the actual duration of taper and the type of intensity
work during the taper varies depending on the event. So a taper for a
period of crit racing would differ from that for a time trial or hilly
road race, and these would also differ from that for a multi-day or
week-long stage race.
The devil is in
the details, so it's still important to individualize each taper.
Reference
Bosquet, L, J. Montpetit, D. Arvisais, and I. Mujika. Effects of
tapering on performance: a meta-analysis.
Med Sci Sports Exerc 39:
1358-1365. |
