I've found them to do lots of good, especially for short course.

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Eliot
blog thing - strava thing

Doesn't it really depend on what else you are/have been doing?

Peaking from 15 to 20 hours of training a week is very different than from 7 to 9 hours a week.

All fair points.

Currently training around 14hrs/week.
a typical week looks something like this:

Monday
AM 45-60min swim
PM 1:40-2hr run (70-75% MHR)

Tuesday
Rest

Wednesday
AM 45-60min swim
PM 1:30hr turbo ride with 2x20 @ FTP

Thursday
PM 1hr run (Half mary pace)

Friday
AM 1hr turbo session - mainly recovery, with high cadence and 1 leg drills.
PM - 1hr club swim (generally quite hard for me)

Saturday
AM 4hr ride @~70% FTP (Hilly, so hard to avoid some threshold efforts), with easy 30min transition run

Sunday
AM 2hr easy ride with my girlfriend (freewheeling, soft pedalling)


Essentially, I'm wondering whether I should push it on my turbo ride tomorrow.

Taper, whats that? :) I do the same exercises up to 2 days before a race. I have one Sat, so will not do any leg stuff Thurs or friday, then race Sat. I have another the next week so same process.''

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

Boom Nutrition code 19F4Y3 $5 off 24 pack box | Bionic Runner | PowerCranks | Velotron | Spruzzamist

Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

In fairness, I will probably only ease off on my Wednesday and Thursday evening sessions.
I'll also switch my Friday evening swim to Friday morning, as I travel at lunchtime.

No scientific evidence to back this up but I have been advised by more than one coach in different sports the following.

There is nothing you can do to improve fitness in the 5 or 6 days before an event but a lot of things you can do to make yourself underperform in the days leading up to the event.

You are the training you did up to 7 days ago, so do your last really hard session no closer than 7 days before the event.

As I said no scientific evidence to back that up but in several sports I have seen people training way too hard only a few days befor a competition and wonder why they didn't get the results they expected.

I know tri is a sport where there is less need for a long taper than others but still why risk going too hard near an event and turning up stale on the day.

12 days out though gives plenty of time to recover and get the benefit.

Olbrecht would appear to disagree with you, perhaps he has some scientific evidence..?

Time is in hours.

You could sit in a steam room for 30 minutes a day and increase your plasma volume

I would push a 30k TT tomorrow and know that you still have some left in the tank and that you could have done more. That will build confidence and confirm that you are ready.

does hot tub increase plasma volume as well? i had one after a long ride sunday, mostly to unthaw, and had a surprisingly great 10-mile run that evening.

Is Olbrecht talking about elite swimmers or triathletes? Does he say the same for other sports?


You have to take into account levels of fitness, ability to recover, age and mental freshness. Being fully recovered from niggles.

Swimming is different for obvious reasons so if Olbrecht says 2.5 to 3 days for swimming I reckon that is too short a time to be fully recovered for most other sports.

Would Olbrecht quote the same for optimum performance in a major event?

Non elite sportsmen need more time to recover as well and the less fit the longer the recovery particularly running compared to swimming and cycling. Then older athletes need more time to recover.

As I said, I've seen people training way too hard a few days before major events and turning up on the day and underperforming.

No doubt I err on the side of caution - but I think too many people read things on the Internet and take advice then go out training too hard in the week before a major event and turn up on the day having shot their bolt in training.

Most important thing on race day is to turn up fully recovered, injury free, rested and fresh and fully motivated and mentally sharp. Why risk overdoing it in the few days before the event?
That is my opinion.

I have not seen evidence that a hot tub does but it might.

It takes a several days for your body to react to the heat stress from a sauna so I doubt the hot tub did anything other than make you feel better for your evening run.

Is that a serious post? Had no idea steam room would help with that? Suprised on a taper no one has posted that on maintaining volume

What race is this?

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''Sweeney - you can both crush your AG *and* cruise in dead last!! 😂 '' Murphy's Law

Trev, what happened to your original reply "so you'd recommend doing an Ironman 2 days before your race..." or something! Brilliant! Clearly, this graph isn't the whole picture. Rather it demonstrates the response to training stimulus for whatever system it is that you are working. It doesn't, for example, say anything about how much your knees bloody hurt after running 26.2 miles, nor does it account for depleted glycogen reserves I guess..

But you did post..


Which is the statement that I responded to with the graph, because it would appear to disagree with that. Also, it's not my graph and I'm not really going to defend it, but I am aware of it and the principle of supercompensation is something I think about a lot when I am trying to construct my training blocks.

You also wrote..


Which I totally agree with.

I'd be interested in knowing what some of the more experienced coaches/sports scientists on here make of the Olbrecht graph, because at first glance it would appear to call into question the benefit of a long taper as a technique for maximizing the supercompensation effect from all of your training. Which is why I tend to wonder if a taper is more about feeling "fresh" and replenishing your energy reserves than it is about maximizing your training effect. But I dunno. Desert Dude will know, but like the old guy from The Golden Child he will only hint at the answer... ;-)

I'd have to dig and find the full text on this one, but I'm pretty sure that this study:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24977692


Utilized passive heat acclimation (they actually flew the subjects to the UAE) to good success.

I will ask him about how it applies to the question that started the thread and see if he has time to reply. He was in the US last month discussing his ideas mainly with swim coaches but there were some other coaches including running and cycling coaches at the clinic. It included a session on workout types and periodization. This will be available via videos sometime in the future.

He then spent a day with coaches discussing specific swimmers in their preparations for Olympic trials which are later this summer which was not part of the clinic that was recorded.

The chart in question never came up but he discussed specific effects of different types of workouts especially in the context of periodization, either a 2/1 model or 3/2 model.

These were for swimming and mainly short races. But I know he uses what he calls an aerobic power workout prior to major races to lower anaerobic capacity and this is relevant for triathletes. The effect of the lower anaerobic capacity is to raise the threshold for the race.


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Jerry Cosgrove

Sports Resource Group
http://www.lactate.com
https://twitter.com/@LactatedotCom

About 12 days out i'll do my last bike race rehearsal. The rest is race pace or vo2max, with reducing volume. 4 days out I do the last strenous workout (4*5@110%+60 min race pace(75-80%, for long course).

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Endurance coach | Physiotherapist (primary care) | Bikefitter | Swede

This chart is barely relevant for triathlon.

I deleted the comment because I thought it over argumentative and didn't want to drag an interesting conversation down to a personal slanging match.

The comment was intended to illustrate that for the big important events one wants to be fresh, fully recovered and above all mentally fresh and rearing to go.

The old repetilian brain, or central governor or unconcious mind needs to be fresh as does the concsious mind. You need to be ready in the soul as well as the mind and brain. And for that you need to be rested, fresh, injury free, pain free etc, not just ordering the body to do as its told and telling it the science says I'm ready and recovered and get that last little bit of adaption from that effort 72 hours ago.

It's all my opinion, and the opinion of a few brilliant coaches I have worked with. It's what I've been advised and it's worked for me.

I've also cocked up badly on occasion and left my best form in training a few days before a major event.

I reckon it's more important to be really fresh than squeeze a very minimal amount of fitness out of very hard sessions close to a major event - as I said perhaps I'm over conservative. But fitness gains get smaller and smaller the fitter you get and even if you risk very hard sessions close to an event you are only going to get bugger all improvement at best - but you could easily lose far more performance than very minimal gains. Fitness takes many months to build. Months for tiny percentages of improvement. Why risk serious performance gains by trainimg too hard close to a major event?

Remember most are not full time athletes and have work and life to recover from as well as training - more to it than numners and graphs and algorithms.

I rushed this post, but I hope the gist of my point of view is clear.

The race is Slateman. It's in Wales, UK.

I saw a video of that on Youtube. Good luck to you!

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''Sweeney - you can both crush your AG *and* cruise in dead last!! 😂 '' Murphy's Law

Thanks! I raced it a few years ago and loved it, such a beautiful place and the route is amazing

The only flat part is the swim though

Another point.

There is never any guarantee that any training session, hard or otherwise is going to improve fitness.

So any hard training close to an event does not necessarily improve fitness. Even if it is effective the gain will be very minimal in % terms.

There is far more to lose than to gain by doing hard sessions in the days before a major event.