14 Tapering Strategies to Bring Speed Athletes to Peak Cycle

We will use a similar style of setup as the Charlie Francis 10 Day Taper.Typically we have our last tune-up meet being two weeks before our national meet, which gives us the perfect amount of time in order to recover and get in one or two high-intensity sprinting and lifting workouts, 10 and 8 days before the big meet. After that, we will drop the lifting a week before the championship meet starts and everything sprinting wise turns into sub-maximal. Injuries are avoided when doing this, and meanwhile, it’s all about maintaining the CNS Stimulus that you have put in place. Less is more, and you want the athlete to be feeling fresh.

Another factor that goes into it is how many rounds will the athlete have to run? At the High School or Collegiate level, most do two or three or maybe even four events at a championship. The more rounds the fresher you want the athlete as long as he or she is good enough to get past the 1st round to raise the muscle tone that way. Otherwise, you may want to raise the muscle tone a little bit more leading up to the meet for less experienced or maybe not as talented athlete. A good way to do this is have the athlete perform a competition warmup, and some med ball throws, vertical jumps or short block starts, This primes the CNS and raises or maintains a fairly higher muscle tone.

A key to successful peaking is to focus on key exercises that the athlete is familiar with and to refine the execution of these exercises. We do not want to introduce new exercises or stimuli at this stage of the season because we does not want the athlete to enter another stage of adaptation but rather to refine the skills most important to performance

Peaking in my mind is at least 75% mental but it also means being well rested and reducing everything non-specific to an absolute minimum but last but not least peaking is very individual, and excellent communication between coach and athlete is crucial. Within two weeks before peak we usually don’t do any heavy resistance training at all but in the latter stages of the taper there might be some reactive strength exercises to maintain or increase muscular tonus for individuals that need that. 10days before peak we usually do one rep 300m flat out and then active rest for the next 2-3 days. Within the last week, it was all a matter of fine-tuning emphasizing an effortless and very relaxed running. Within the competitive season, we also do some assisted sprinting using a special towing device. We like to keep the assistance to a minimum for minimum technical interference. A towing force of 1.5-2kp seems to shorten contact time by roughly 0.005″ (can be measured with www.spintest.ee ) for experienced sprinters leading to a 0.10-0.15″ improvement in the 60m sprint.

Our main secret to success with tapering is how we adjust the weight program during the key meets and the end of the season. Because we keep our kids lifting all season long, 3 days a week, when we start to back off on that, they typically peak when we want them to. It is so easy to adjust the weights for tapering. Much easier than trying to mess with running intensity or volume and the injury risk is quite low comparatively. We back off on the weights differently for male and female athletes and have found a lot of success with this simple strategy. We have found that the kids will peak whenever we want them too with this approach. If they need a huge PR to make it into our league meet, then we adjust the weights 1-2 weeks out and BAM, they get the performance they needed to advance into our championship season. These kids are at the most risk, though, because, with our league, you have to qualify based on time first, and then each week after that you have to qualify based on place. So if they peak just to try to make it into the league meet, it is more difficult for them to maintain that level past the district meet.

Rest! Tons and tons of rest. I will training hard outside of a taper period, use mini-tapers for small comps, and then massive tapers for major comps. During a large taper, I will reduce the volume greatly, whilst keeping intensity high. Gym sessions are almost completely cutout, sticking to more power-based lifts (hang snatch, MB throw, plyos, etc.). In the week pre-comp, I will then move down to training 1-day on, 1-day off.

FINALLY, finally, finally! A question that I feel I can give some specifics and give something that may actually help a high school coach.

So this peaking tip only applies if you have a hurdler who can 3 step all 10 hurdles. I know many people say that anyone can 3 steps. Well, at 65 y.o. and way more in shape for the pub than the 110hh, I have to admit that I can’t 3 step 10 hurdles. The problem is I can beat some of my JV girl hurdlers. I do my best with them, but this just isn’t going to help them.

I have to admit that I understand why this should work, and I’ve seen it work, but I’m still amazed when it happens. It’s like I’m a pimply faced teen getting his first kiss. Yes, I’m pretty excited every time! So here is the specific that you can apply. About 2.5 weeks before the KEY meet I begin to implement the over speed or speed assisted training for the nervous system. When I heard that Petrovsky used this with Borzov, I was all ears. I really like having the kids towed by a bungee, but a gradual downhill works as well. Obviously, I begin to give more rest and increase the intensity. Specifics depend on the other events the kids may be in. Anyways, once I start the speed assisted component, I begin to target the touchdown times. Just to be sure we are on the same page, I time every time an athlete’s lead leg touches down off of the hurdle. I pick a goal time of 3 to 5-tenths of a second faster than the athlete has been running and then move the hurdles in to FORCH the athlete to establish a new rhythm to meet the goal time. I may move the hurdle up to a full meter, but usually start about 2.5 shoe lengths in. When the athlete can hit the goal touchdown times for 3 hurdles, I add a 4th and a 5th. Yes, one is more pure speed, and the other adds a bit of hurdle endurance. Plan for it. When the athlete can hit the touch times for five hurdles, I move the spacing out a bit. Remember the 1st hurdle is on its’ mark. If the 2nd is moved in two shoes, the 3rd must be moved in four shoes, etc. to keep the spacing consistent. I forgot to mention that, especially with boys, I lower the hurdle 3″ when we are working to get OFF the hurdle. They can run the higher height, but lowering the hurdle gives them the confidence to focus on getting their lead leg down off the hurdle. The nervous system doesn’t know the difference; it just fires at a higher rate of speed.

When the athlete can hit the touchdown times through five hurdles in practice, they are ready to hit those times in a meet through the full 10 hurdles. I still don’t totally believe this, but it works over and over. More on this later.

The other Overspeed training trick I use, I learned from Vince Bingham while I was at MoBap. Move the hurdle height down one notch but leave them at full spacing. BUT, instead of having the kids start form eight steps to the 1st hurdle, move them back to ten steps and eventually you might experiment with 12 steps. I have NO charts for this workout, but it certainly forces the kid to increase their rhythm. If you try this, I will take some time to establish where to start to hit the first hurdle in rhythm. This is very scary for the athlete. When they hit the 1st hurdle on stride, then add a 2nd or 3rd and so forth.

Proof in the pudding!: Going back years ago, I had a girl running 15.3’s. We were hoping to get her to State, so we set her training up to peak at Sectionals. We were looking at 14.8. At Sectionals, she ran 14.8 and set a school record. At state, she matched her time and finished 2nd and her soph. teammate took 3rd. The girl who beat them broke the state record. I know these times a pedestrian these days, but for us it was similar to Roger Bannister back in the day. 2 years later the soph was a Sr. She had run 15.1, and we set the touchdown times for 14.70’s at State. She had a Broken bone in her arch (we didn’t realize it at the time) but ran 14.71 in the prelims at State. New state record back then. She just took the prelims easy so as to protect the foot. In the finals, she was ready to blow it open when a storm front came in and was blowing a gale straight into the hurdler’s faces. She only ran low 15’s, but she won by a full ½ sec. Could have been really fast. Anyways, I got back to coaching hurdles at MoBap, used this peaking system with Nikkie Holder. She was an 18-year-old freshman with good technique. We had to borrow a local high school track for 1 hr. after the hs kids finished and had a weight room in a Janitor’s closet. Anyways, she was running low 14.1’s going into the peaking series. At NAIA Nationals she PR’ed in prelims, semi’s and hit our practice target of 13.50.

Your training should be set up so that you can have your best performances in the meets that are most important to you. This is why you should schedule backwards from the most important events. I schedule back in 12 week blocks from my most important meet to the start of my fall. I usually set it up in a 3 weeks on followed by 1-week light format. So basically, it’s 3, 12 week mesocycles with a week or two in between each. This way I can begin to taper with three weeks towards the end with one-peak week during my championship week. I just decrease the volume, and density of whatever we are doing at that time and put particular emphasis on quality and execution, and no big runs or jumps with less than 10 days out from the target meet.