I coach a 17-year-old (2 years of sprint training) girl and would appreciate thoughts about the final taper for the main competition of the year. Here is the planned schedule (basically this is Charlie’s 10-day taper slightly modified; javelin workouts aren’t shown and probably some of the accel work will be with hurdles):
week 2
mon: 4x30m blocks, 1x80m (95%)
tue: tempo
wed: 4x30m blocks (95%)
thu: rest
fri: 100m hurdles (heats + final) and javelin
sat: rest
sun: 100m (heats + final)
The question is should I lower the volume even more since her weekly volumes leading to the taper are around 950m during the comp period? Her current SPP II speed volumes are at around 1260m/wk. Is there even a need to taper for someone at this level (pb for 60m 7,80s, aiming at 12,20s in the 100)?
That’s a loaded question and the best you can do is try it!
However, it might be the case that a 10 day tapering period is too long for her. Five to seven days might be enough; of course, you never know until you apply things…
It might be a good idea to take into account the javelin workouts, as these might represent another, additional (CNS) stimulus.
Last Wed and Thu, it might be better to have rest and block work instead of the other way round; if your sequence has been tested though and proven successful, stick with it!
The day between the races, passive rest might be ok for her and at her age, but stick with some good warm-downs after day 1; otherwise, some very light tempo on the between-day might also help.
If finals is a “certainty”, why counting 10 days backwards from the semis and not the final itself?
Good points Nikoluski. Last year we had to improvise a bit and ended up doing a “9 day taper” with 4 speed sessions. She ran a pb so I guess we managed the situation pretty well. The 7-day taper sounds good though and is worth looking into.
The javelin workouts at this point are very short, consisting of maybe 30-40 throws on wk1 and about 20 on wk2 so they shouldn’t stress the cns too much. At least last year we didn’t have any problems doing those on either tempo days or usually before sprints on high cns days.
The hurdle race is of secondary importance and I’m not even sure if she is going to run in the finals. I don’t have the confirmed timetable for the meet yet, so if the hurdle race would interfere with the javelin competition, it would be left out completely. Then I would of course count backwards from the sunday race, but I think doing the 4x30m block + javelin throws on wednesday is better because I want to keep those on the same day this close to competition to maximize recovery (and the last jav workout is on wed )
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