I thought this would be a great opportunity to give you guys a small snippet of the upcoming book The Sprinters Compendium. The information below comes from Chapter 13 section 3 "Interviews with Athletes and Coaches about Training Plans for Sprinters"
In the interview section of each chapter, I ask a series of questions about different topics that go with the theme of the chapter.
The information I have provided below comes from just one question on tapering sprinters. I hope you enjoy and learn something from this small preview. The book is currently 786 pages of information, thoughts, stories, and ideas about training sprinters. I have spent most of the summer editing and removing duplicate information. I would love to hear your feedback.
What Tapering Strategies do you Use to Bring your Speed Athletes to Peak Cycle?
We will use a similar style of setup as the Charlie Francis 10 Day Taper.Typically we have our last tune-up meet being two weeks before our national meet, which gives us the perfect amount of time in order to recover and get in one or two high-intensity sprinting and lifting workouts, 10 and 8 days before the big meet. After that, we will drop the lifting a week before the championship meet starts and everything sprinting wise turns into sub-maximal. Injuries are avoided when doing this, and meanwhile, it's all about maintaining the CNS Stimulus that you have put in place. Less is more, and you want the athlete to be feeling fresh.
Another factor that goes into it is how many rounds will the athlete have to run? At the High School or Collegiate level, most do two or three or maybe even four events at a championship. The more rounds the fresher you want the athlete as long as he or she is good enough to get past the 1st round to raise the muscle tone that way. Otherwise, you may want to raise the muscle tone a little bit more leading up to the meet for less experienced or maybe not as talented athlete. A good way to do this is have the athlete perform a competition warm up, and some med ball throws, vertical jumps or short block starts, This primes the CNS and raises or maintains a fairly higher muscle tone.