Tapers and rest days
Personalising your recovery needs
When you recognise that you need more rest by tracking the stressors in your life having a lighter training week is good athlete self-management.You can use a daily diary [free download]] to help you track your pattern of recovery. This tool is very useful in the context of adapting your training to suit your recovery needs.
When following the full Faster Masters Rowing program, Monday is your only day off in the week, incorporating a degree of unloading will help your progress. Unloading is when you choose lighter workouts.
A typical mesocycle periodized training program follows a weekly progression of light – medium – hard – light workout loading.
If you consistently train five or six days a week that is the threshold for possibly needing more rest during a month. Whereas if you do three or four sessions a week there is plenty of recovery time between workouts and you may not need this. Tracking your recovery using a daily diary or HRV monitoring will give you the answer.
Get more recovery
As a general principle, here are some ways you can get more recovery while still following the program. For example if after 3 weeks of full training you feel you need a couple of lighter sessions, choose one of the options below.
- Do fewer repeats on the three key workout days (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday) e.g. the 5k program has 3x 10’ pieces – do two instead of three
- Reduce the category 6 low intensity volume – instead of 60 minutes do 45 or 40 minutes
- Take the day off for a full rest on one of the three key workout days (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday)
Remember, the program should be challenging – strike a balance between your rest needs and a robust workout.
Taper vs rest
What’s the difference between a taper and a rest day? When should you taper before a regatta and how does it affect your readiness to race? A rest day gives your body time to recovery and feel more energetic. After the rest day you continue training in the normal way.
A taper is when training volume is vastly reduced before a race – this helps your body get deep rest, allows for traveling and will leave you bouncing with energy come race day. Usually a taper starts around 7 days before the big event.
The HOCR taper will be published in the October program.The design of Faster Masters programs is such that we do not recommend tapering before a test like a 5k that’s just part of your training. We’ve been doing race distance workouts at weekends throughout the 5k/HOCR training program.
But resting in order to feel read to do a test helps you feel prepared for the test. Take a rest day beforehand – either 3 days before or 1 day before.
In Faster Masters programs the “training load” is designed to stress your body and doing 5k test rows are programmed into the workouts as part of this process. You want your best performance to be on race day, not necessarily on the test day.
To be effective, tapers have to be preceded by strong periods of regular workouts. Most athletes only taper for 2 or 3 events per year. There are only a few weeks left before HOCR and doing a taper at this time will lower your training stress at a time when the program is designed to be bringing it gradually up. This compromises your ultimate peak if you’ve not followed the program.
