- Welcome back to the triathlon training explained show,
powered by TrainingPeaks.
This week, we're looking ahead to race day
and by that I specifically mean the buildup to it.
We're well and truly stuck into race season now
and hopefully you've done the hard work
and you're ready to nail your performance.
But actually as much as it's physically hard
doing the preparation, it's straightforward,
you've gotta work hard, you know that.
But when it comes to those final few weeks
of dialing it in, sometimes really difficult to know
how much or how little to train
in order to get the best performance possible.
Getting the taper right is not easy
we're all different and therefore
we require different amounts of rest or stimulus.
In those final few weeks and few days before a race.
Well, we're gonna be hearing from the professional athletes
and coaches on how they do it.
And also gonna be discussing my own experiences.
So we can guide you towards
that perfect pre-race preparation.
(upbeat music)
Okay, before we go any further,
I probably should explain exactly what a taper is.
Well, basically it is a gradual decrease
in your training load, usually before a race.
And this should then combine your peak fitness
with your minimum fatigue,
which will result in hopefully,
your best possible performance.
But it isn't quite that straightforward.
There's not one size fits all.
And finding that perfect balance between mind and body
before a race isn't just a mathematical equation.
Personally coming from a swimming background
I was used to racing several times in a season
often in the middle of a really heavy training block.
But that said, every year I did have an A Race,
it was national championships in the summer
and we'd have a really big taper and that was
the main focus, but I'd very rarely swam a personal best
on the whole, didn't perform that well.
And it turns out that basically it was pretty much
down to the taper and sadly and frustratingly for me,
it meant that I actually don't need as much of a rest
as some other athletes do.
And I actually need to keep that intensity up as much
as it didn't really want to admit it.
But it just proves that everyone is different
and individual and now moving on to triathlon
it's different again, because the fatigue
that you get in your legs from cycling and running
lasts much longer than swimming,
so I'm still actually trying to figure that one out exactly.
But I think it's time we went and spoke to the experts.
I actually earlier caught up with my former coach,
Robin Brew who's coached numerous triathlon
and swimming Olympic and world medalists.
So first, Robin, when does one start a taper?
What's the time scale?
- Everything really depends on the athlete
and the amount of work that has been done
up until that point.
It all depends on you working back to see
and find out how much you've done.
Because tapering off a not a lot of work
isn't very effective.
But tapering off a sustained period of time
is effective.
In swimming as an example, we would generally
taper start to taper about three weeks
from a major competition.
And in triathlon, triathletes we work with,
we will look at a more specific phase of training
six weeks up to an event.
With a very detailed two week out approach.
- And why does some athletes perform sort of
as well when they've tapered as when they haven't?
And sometimes even they might have a better performance
when they haven't in theory actually tapered?
- Well, it tapering is different for every person.
And one of the interesting facts is,
two tapers the same never work for the same person.
It's all very individualized,
it's all down to the craft and the skill of the coach
and the athlete, to understand their performance ability,
and understand the training effect
that has happened to that point.
If you take again, strip it down to its basic levels,
tapering is actually becoming unfit.
You're actually losing your fitness,
as you go into the race.
What you're allowing yourself to do
is your energy is increasing,
your form is increasing,
and your physique is reducing.
So therefore, you've got these components
and a meeting in the middle,
where you're at your optimum.
So, it's a case of not losing too much fitness
but just enough to allow these other adaptations
to really nail it.
- Well that leads me on to the next question,
how many times in a year can you taper
without having this big loss of fitness?
- It depends how significant the competitions are.
Generally speaking, people will go for
if it's elite level racing,
a maximum of three main tapers a year.
It can cut down to two,
but you would never want one,
because really you need to practice the tapering
and your body's got to have the practice
of adapting to a taper.
So, three big ones, three considerable events,
a proper taper where it's really speced out
is a good idea.
Now, what I do is I throw loads of mini tapers in.
Because a mini taper can be done over three days.
So you can get an effect of adaptation
in a short period of time.
Again depending on what you've done,
but it's all about understanding requirements of the race,
what kind of work you've put in place up to that point,
and how your body adapts.
And it's just it's the formula of working the right rest
to the right intensity.
- And how do you prevent loss of fitness,
or you don't, you just manage around it?
I mean, it's a strange question,
but you talked about and people watching this
might go, but we don't want to get unfit
before the race and I know it's completely different
to performance, but what would you say to someone
who says that and how do you prevent loss of fitness
over the season from tapering?
- Yeah, well your followers will know that
they've had some amazing races where
they've least expected it.
And they felt probably not as fit as they should've been.
Fitness and being fast are two different things.
The body is a very clever bit of kit.
And it needs that ability to have recovered from something
to perform, it's, the tightrope we walk
in performance sport is exactly that balance.
Is how much of each commodity?
But the deal is, you have to retain your intensity.
So for example, it's not uncommon for triathletes
on the elite level to put a very, very hard
specific training on a Wednesday
before they race,
but they will make that one component
the only meaningful component that week.
The other stuff just skills and drills,
maintenance work, recovery sessions,
but a really solid 20 minute,
for example, 10 mile (mumbles),
is a perfect mid week thing if you're racing on a Sunday.
Because your body's then recognized the muscle fiber
recruitment recognize that the intensity
it's gotta work to, it's familiar with that,
it meets the demands, and then the next few days
are about recovering from that, getting ready to go again.
So, the idea of resting completely
will put you in a bit of a hole you can't get out of.
It's about resting enough,
with the right components in the sessions.
- But why is that?
So say if you work really hard all year
and you think yes, my race is next week,
and I want to be rested so I'm gonna put my feet up,
and I'm gonna do nothing all week.
Why is that bad?
Why do we not perform well if we've had a weeks rest?
- Yeah, well, it's your body is no different
to a formula one vehicle,
it's if you just leave the race car in the garage
for a week without firing up,
getting all your systems working,
everything is optimized.
If you've done all that work,
you've got an optimization and an engine
that is used to being worked.
You've got to keep that going,
you just got to allow physiology of the performance
the race, to come to the fore, which is your energy.
You know, having enough energy, having enough motivation
and when you start to take an interestingly,
in swimming performance, swimming we call it
the taper blues, because three weeks out
first few days since the taper,
especially a week into it,
your performances just are off, off the radar,
it's sort of useless.
- Oh, I've had that.
It's the most horrible you panic, don't you?
'Cause you had done all that work,
you know that you're in good shape,
but then you start doubting it,
because you feel awful.
- Commit it to paper,
because seven days out, 14 days out,
they are critical days.
And what you're doing, know your timelines to things,
know that the intensity you've got to work out,
and if it means that that session
needs to be done slow and controlled
that needs to be slow and controlled.
If that session needs to be intensive,
make sure that you get the right workload
for the right duration.
It's about reducing the duration of intensity
but actually stepping up the intensity
and that's what people forget,
is it's oh I just need to go easier,
or I just need to go steady,
no, you've got to meet the demands of the race.
But actually your body and the general stuff,
the maintenance stuff is got to have a chance
to recover and repair.
- And for the final question,
for athletes that don't have a coach
and maybe they're doing their first ever big race,
so they've had their first proper block of training
and this is their A race of the year,
what advice would you give to someone who's
sort of doing a taper for the first time,
so this their yes they'll learn from it,
but this time they wanna try and get it as right
as possible and they're making their own structure,
what tips would you give them?
- Right, if somebody is training about
say, 10 hours a week.
So, most people give about six to 10 hours a week,
out there that they've got busy lifestyles,
busy jobs, you then have a 10 hour block,
you're really looking at reducing that down
in the final week by about 40%.
So if there's 10 hour athlete,
you're looking to bring your hours down to about six hours.
So just generally there,
you've got a saving of energy expenditure,
so that's one thing.
And if it is six to 10 hours,
you haven't got enough in the bank,
you've been very consistent,
assuming that they kept this up for six to 12 weeks,
so therefore, you don't need a long lead in,
you just need a week to 10 days,
where you start to become much more specific
the sessions, here's an example,
for a leadin, for the run for example,
in the days leading up to it,
okay, you might still run a 5K in a session
or an 8K in a session,
but a lot of that is jogging.
However, in the middle of the set,
doing five repeats of 30 seconds
up the intensity you're going to meet in your race
is really with the two minute recovery.
So there's small bite sized bits of intensity
that aren't fatiguing the body,
the body's able to manage the (mumbles)
because you've got great consistency
through the last 12 six weeks, whatever.
And you're just being smart about just enough.
It's all about just enough.
And one final word of advice would be,
if in doubt, if in doubt,
whether you do the session or not,
if you feel just like to take a rest,
just don't do it.
This is err on the side of caution, less is more.
And it's I think they get it wrong.
They get anxious that I'm not running today,
if I'm not cycling, need to keep on top of it.
And then what you end up getting is quite a mediocre race.
The body is gotta be, it's like a spring,
it's gotta coil up and then it's gotta perform.
- Yeah, I think especially triathletes
are guilty of that, aren't we?
'Cause we're used to training three sports
and it's kind of you always want to be doing more,
I know I'm guilty of it, even before I did triathlons.
But it's yeah I think that's really valid point.
But really, really interesting and thank you so much
for you time today.
- You're welcome.
(upbeat music)
- Some interesting points there from Robin.
And hopefully some things that you can actually take away,
and it just proves how different athletes can be
and Robin is obviously coached the full spectrum
of athletes and it takes some time to work out
the best taper for you.
But I think it's time we actually spoke to
a couple of athletes themselves,
to see how they deal with the taper.
Now, you've probably noticed that Mark isn't here this week,
well he's out having fun at challenge roth,
so I've given him a job
and I've asked him to go and speak to a couple
to find out exactly how they hone their taper,
so we're gonna hear from pro athletes,
Jesse Thomas and Reece Barclay.
- It depends on the distance, really.
Going into a full distance running man,
we'll start tapering just over two weeks before.
And that will be just sort of gradually taking off
a little bit of run volume,
but we tend to navigate back to doing
quite a lot more swimming during our taper.
'Cause that's our roots
and we just find that works for us personally.
But we drop the volume, up the intensity,
different people have different methods of tapering,
but when we were swimmers that's always
the way we did it.
We backed off the volume and increased the intensity
and we've kept that with us for triathlons,
seems to work well.
- Sure and then obviously a taper
is quite a big block of your training gone
and do you, are you specific in how many times
throughout the year you do that,
for certain races and whatnot?
- Yeah, so we tend to peak probably twice,
maybe three times a year,
but a lot of the races we turn up for
are what we would call training races.
So serious training races, like a half Iron Man,
we kind of back off a little bit,
but very much use it as a training stimulus.
- I like to race two to three weeks before.
And have a half distance of some kind.
And so, this year I raced Challenge Heel Braun,
in Germany, about twelve days ago.
And so I won't really taper at all until that race,
pretty much training up through it,
doin' my last big long distance workouts
a week before and then going straight into the race.
Racing hard and then usually doing a little bit
of volume on the back of the race too.
So, after that race, I rowed for about 90 minutes
to two hours, so get a little bit of that kinda like,
Iron Man distance stuff on the race day
and then over that next two weeks is when I start
to taper down, so instead of a four hour ride,
a week before I did like a three hour ride,
with a little bit less running
and all the same intensity,
all the same kinda like high hard efforts,
but just two thirds of the volume.
- Admittedly it can be tempting to get excited
when it comes to taper time,
because you've probably spent months being fatigued,
training really hard, and having no time.
And suddenly you've got all this energy,
you've got a bit more time and you think,
yeah I'm gonna get this done, that done,
but just hang on 'cause this is still a really important
part of your training.
I'm not saying do nothing,
it is really important to keep your mind and body
stimulated, but think about it as a very important
structure, so it's gonna take a little bit of
time to experiment with what works best for you.
And this is when it's so important that you plan
your season, work out which races
you're going to really peak for.
And then, enjoy that period.
It is the icing on the cake on top of that training.
And we would love to know what taper works for you?
As I've said everyone's different,
so let us know in the comments section below.
And if you wanna catch other videos from GTN,
just hit the globe to subscribe.
And we've actually caught up with some pros
to find out how they prepared just before their race.
And that video is just here.