Putting the recovery benefits of tempo aside, what reduction of tempo would allow for the physiological adaptions to be maintained?
eg. if an athlete has performed 2 sessions of 2000m tempo per week for several weeks, would 1 session of 1200m tempo per week maintain the fitness gained previously?
Try it out. But for tempo i just goto something like 10x100m 2-3x a week when maintaining close to championships. Usual tempo volume is 1600m. So it’s about a 33% drop off.
There’s very little CNS drain from doing tempo so the benifits of keeping it till the last minute are considerable. I’d just taper it a bit at the very end before big meets.
it’s also worth considering what can be done to meet recovery needs without affecting the total volume very much. IE a big circuit is 2200m and 2 x (10x100) is 2000m. Not much vol change but a considerable reduction in demand overall. Likewise, intensity can drop over the same volume. check out the Taper DVD for examples of the approach.
what does the rest of the week look like? also whats ur bodyweight bc if your over 200+ two days may be too much during comp period.
The main focus for reducing tempo volume would be reduce potential knee tendonitis. With sprints alone, knee tendonitis stays managable but with 4000m tempo/week it is more likely to return. Hence tempo here would be counter productive in terms of recovery and so I would reduce it to maintain fitness.
I must be missing something because I fail to see the benefit of tempo that close to competition - I’m under the perhaps ill informed impression that slow paced work such as tempo would hinder maximal speed at this stage…
Please, apart from recovery and aerobic fitness what are the training benefits of tempo? How does it help this close to competition?
Thanks
I think the idea is that is does not hinder competition and quite the contrary it aids recovery and maintains aerobic & cardio vascular fitness right up to competition.
you can accomplish tempo work in the pool if you need to.
you can accomplish tempo work in the pool if you need to.
Why do you want to maintian this during competition? Could the aerobic demand on the muscle fibers not retard speed/power adaptations???
Competition periods are typically 6-8 weeks long. What shape will you be in by the end of that time if you drop it? How long will it take you to redevelop this ability for the next training phase. How much of an affect does 4000m of tempo have on your muscle physiology when you are also doing 1500m of extremely high intensity sprinting and then weight training on top?
Reducing or removing (previously attained) tempo workouts, while speed training continues to a probably higher level towards an important competition, will very possibly backfire (e.g., lead to an injury).
To the original post, the situation with the knee seems to be such that only the minimum volume that does not irritate it should be completed, keeping though the possible consequences in mind and acting accordingly (e.g., other methods, as suggested).