Dear Brian Neal,

If I understood well you are interested in the optimal planning of pre-competition period of Track&Field sprinters.

This is a very complicate issue because there are no universal answer to this question: all depend on the training program used by the athlete in the preceding preparation period.

I suggest you to read my articles about Block System training.

In Block System is not used Taper effect, but the Long Term Delayed Effect (LTDE) of concentrated SPP loads.

The LTDE and Taper are based on the same physiologic phenomenon of Super compensation, but  they are two different training modalities.

Taper is used in the pre-competition period and has two consequent training stages: the “exhaustive” training work with a big volume and intensity of loads and the following stage with drastically  reduced volume and intensity of training loads (“Reduced Training” – Costill et al. 1988 or “Tapering” -  Houmard, Johns, 1994).

Usually, the use of Taper is finalized not to increase the energetic resources of athlete organism (in that moment these recourses must be already on a high level), but to activate the energetic potential of athletes organism before the competition stage.

LTDE of the concentrated strength loads is used at the beginning of preparation period to assure the increasing of the athlete organism energetic potential that permit the increasing of training effect of means used in the following training period.

In simple words, the use of Taper can be viewed as the sequence of two training stages with:

1) the loads of big volume and intensity,

2) the loads of low level of volume and intensity.

The use of LTDE can be viewed as the sequence of two training stages with:

1) the loads of high volume and low intensity,

2) the loads of low volume and high intensity.

Nevertheless, there are two other important differences between the use of  Taper and the use of LTDE.

1. The first part of training plan with the use of LTDE (Block A) includes not “exhaustive”, but “concentrated” loads.

The word “concentrated” means “isolated from other”  and “localized in limited time”.

For example: in speed-strength sport disciplines, in Block A are primarily used maximal strength overload exercises, therefore all the adaptive processes of the athlete organism are involved to increase his specific energetic potential. The volume of these loads achieves the maximal level of athlete not because the athlete uses a very high level of overload exercises in each training session, but because he uses only these kind of training sessions in this period where all the training time is dedicated primarily to one type of work and all “adaptive energy” of his organism is not “dispersed” for other works.

This doesn’t mean that the athlete must use hard strength exercises every day: the training loads in the microcycles of Block A must be organized rationally, they must not disturb the recovery processes and must assure the morphological – functional transformation. Only in this case it will be possible to obtain the increasing of the functional state of athlete organism (with it’s overreaching) in the subsequent training stage, Block B and C.

2. The second part of training plan with the use of LTDE isn’t a simple decrease of volume with  the increasing of intensity of the same training loads, but it’s the change of loads emphasis.

The decrease of volume loads (i.e., the decrease of the number of repetition in overload exercises) have to begin at the end of Block A, because during the Block A the overload weight must be gradually increased . In Block B, the loads volume is decreased because are used more intensive training means (overload jumps, intensive bounces and short running starts). In this period also the loads (exercises) specificity must be gradually increased.

Yuri Verkhoshansky