When it comes to tapering in rowing, how much and when to taper can be a tricky thing to get right. Most rowing coaches know that they definitely need to taper for different occasions like testing, monitoring, or racing events. However, the magnitude and duration of the taper can often lead the athlete feeling fatigued from too little, or not feeling fast having tapered too much. Let's get into it from the coach's perspective.
What Are Your Goals?
First we need to look at our regatta schedule. How many competitions will we enter? How important are they? Will you use some competitions to try out new line-ups and others to make final decisions on line-ups. Or perhaps we go all-in for the big championship race. Once we know the answers to these questions, we can quickly decide how much to taper, if at all. For example, a head of the river might be used as a tough training session rather than a test of a crew. Similarly, a short sprint regatta might be used as a HIIT session with rowers racing multiple times. Therefore, more taper means less training dose; Less training dose means less adaptation and improved fitness.
Taper Types
There are three types of taper we can use:
- Minor taper
- Moderate taper
- Major taper
A minor taper can be used in endurance sport 1 to 3 times per season; moderate tapers can be 1 to 2 times per season; major tapers are used once in a season. Considering how busy the domestic regatta calendar can be in Ireland, coaches are in a tough position when it comes to prioritising events and tapering methods used.
Major Taper
| Table 1. Training Time for Major Taper | |
| Training Hours/Week | Major Taper Duration |
| 6-10 | 7 days |
| 10-15 | 14 days |
| 15+ | 21-30 days |
Table 1 above shows the duration needed to taper appropriately. Depending on how many hours your athletes usually taper you either need more or less time to taper. For example if we set the default session time of a J18 boys crew to 1.5 hours, and they are training 9 times a week, this puts us at approx 13.5 hours of training per week. This means that according to McNeely and Sandler (2007), a major taper begins around 14 days away from the event.
Remember, as training duration decreases during a taper, the intensity of particular sessions can increase. For example, a HIIT session of 30sec on 30sec off x10 x3 might change to 30sec on 15sec off x15.
For more information on how I can help you manage you load and de-load phases, get in touch here or check out my page on team programming. My athlete management system is the perfect tool to help teams monitor and manage their race day readiness.
Content Source: McNeely, Ed MS; Sandler, David MS, CSCS. Tapering for Endurance Athletes. Strength and Conditioning Journal 29(5):p 18-24, October 2007.