More on the Swimming Taper

I don't know what I was thinking earlier when I posted about tapering twice at the end of the high school swim season.

A good taper is nothing more than some rest which allows the body to heal and grow stronger. When your muscles are healed, they are stronger and you can swim faster. A successful taper has two parts: hard work and rest. You can't have one without the other. Almost any coach will agree on those two elements. What coaches don't agree on is the amount of hard work and the amount of rest.

I believe that the amount of rest should be proportional to the amount of hard work that you have done. This is why I was foolhardy to believe that you can taper twice in two weeks at the end of a high school season. A high school season is only 15 weeks in length. Generally, the last 4 weeks of the season are dedicated to championship meets such as Conference, Sectionals, and State, so you really have a 11-12 week aerobic development period. Twelve weeks is enough time to develop some significant aerobic capacity, but it is nothing compared to aerobic capacity developed over many years of consistent training.

In general, a seasonal high school swimmer will only be able to peak at one meet during the championship meet cycle. It would take a more developed, year-round swimmer to peak at multiple meets. To be more clear, that year-round swimmer would not peak at multiple meets, but would be able to rest for a longer period of time and therefore hold their conditioning at a peak performance level for an extended period. My opinion is that tapering twice isn't really possible, but maintaining a peak performance level for a period of time is possible for a highly conditioned swimmer.

How long can they hold that peak performance level? That's a topic for another day.