What is Taper?

Why We Taper

As a swimmer, the word “taper” is the greatest thing you can hear after a tough season of training. This usually means more broken swims, turn and dive work, higher intensity and lower volume. Older swimmers will taper for up to two weeks, where some of the younger swimmers won’t taper at all. We hear this word a lot around this time of year, but what does it really mean?

Tapering off and reducing the volume of work that athletes do leading up to an event that requires peak performance allows our body to go into what we call “supercompensation.”

In sports science, supercompensation theory asserts that an athlete who pairs their training load with the proper recovery time will not only return to their performance base level, but will develop the capacity for a higher level of performance. In other words, the body prepares itself for a more intense next training session. Within the standard training cycle, the period of supercompensation is when an athlete becomes capable of performing at a higher level the next time they train.

Athletic training boils down to how you apply stress to your body (training stimulus) and the degree of stress you apply to your body (training load). Applying the right amount of training stress to your body, then recovering over the ideal time period results in supercompensation. To understand the supercompensation process, it's essential to comprehend all some elements of the training cycle.

1. Training load: All athletes begin a training program at their own unique fitness level, so there's no one level of training intensity appropriate for everyone. A good training program has hard training sessions, but if your training load is too high, your body will struggle to return to a state of homeostasis (your fitness baseline). On the other hand, if your training load is too easy, your body won't adapt and grow stronger.

2. Recovery period: In order to reach the supercompensation period of the training cycle, it's crucial to completely recover from your training stimuli. If you begin your next workout too quickly after a hard training session, your body may fail to supercompensate due to overtraining. Inadequate recovery time leads to fatigue and a decline in your baseline performance level.

3. Supercompensation: A suitable training load and recovery period provide the conditions necessary for your body to enter the supercompensation window. In the supercompensation window, your body responds to prior training stimuli by growing stronger in order to handle future stress. When your body is in the supercompensation phase, you start to feel stronger or faster, and your baseline performance level increases. Supercompensation lasts for up to a week before your body moves on to the next phase of the training cycle. Common signs of supercompensation include an increase in athletic performance, a decrease in your resting and training heart rate, and an overall increase in energy.

So when we get into the Supercpmpensation phase, but we do not actually increase the stimulus of training, our bodies continue to prepare itself for the absent added stress. Our bodies sometimes do not know how to handle this confusing adaptionand we might start to feel different. Some of us might feel like we can bounce off of the walls, but some of us might feel extra tired. During this time, and In the days leading up to your meet, it is crucial that we do not listen to our bodies and overthink every little detail that we feel. The best approach to compound the beneficial effects of Supercompensation is to eat healthy and nutritious food, get more quality sleep, staying very hydrated, and doing your best to follow your coach’s orders when they say to go fast, and everything in practice that isn't fast is done perfectly.

It is finally meet season again, so let’s let it rip!

Go SMAC!

Julian