Philosophy of a Taper
uap-taper
This video gives a few suggestions on how to modify your workouts starting about 2 weeks before tryouts. Bullet points below are a good summary and give you the basic points you need to know.
Keep in mind that the season is too long to taper before every tournament. If you spend too much time worrying about absolute peak performance every weekend, then you will not make gains during the season and may even go backwards. Taper for only the most important events of your season. For some of you, this may mean tapering for tryouts, for others of you it won't.
The goal is to have your body feeling loose, energized, and mobile and your nervous system ready. These suggestions are made with these goals in mind.
- Two weeks before the event, cut all of your normal training by one third. Still do all of the workouts, but instead of 3 sets, do 2. This goes for both running and strength training.
- One week from the event, cut another third of your training. So now to one set instead of three, for example. Again, you still want to do work at a high intensity to maintain the neural adaptations. But you want to allow your body some space for extra physical recovery.
- The day before the event, do an extended warm up (maybe some extra mobility drills or running form drills) and 1/3 of an alactic workout. Basically you want to do a little bit of full intensity activity. This may help prevent you from coming out "flat" at the start of your event. It is about keeping teh nervous system primed for action!
- Mobility and the nervous system excitement change daily. This is why we still do something with those systems the day before.
- Conditioning is easily maintained so you could easily cut out your lactic workouts and be totally fine. while you are tapering, don't worry about your conditioning. You're not going to lose anything. The upside of being well rested is greater than the possible downside of a minimal temporary decrease in conditioning level.