{"id":28923,"date":"2011-11-30T21:05:23","date_gmt":"2011-12-01T02:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/uncategorized\/2011\/11\/journey-to-olympic-trials-taper-time\/"},"modified":"2014-07-29T00:21:01","modified_gmt":"2014-07-29T07:21:01","slug":"journey-to-olympic-trials-taper-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/journey-to-olympic-trials-taper-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Journey to Olympic Trials: Taper Time!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>PHOENIX, Arizona, December 1. TODAY is the day every competitive swimmer dreams about for months. It&#39;s the start of taper!<\/p>\n<p>If you&#39;ve been following <a href=http:\/\/commings.blogspot.com\/>my blog<\/a>, you know that I have been training not just for the upcoming U.S. Olympic Trials, but for the Arizona Masters state championships, Dec. 10-11 here in Phoenix. It is a short course meters meet that will serve as a gauge on how my training has been these past few months, and whether the additions I&#39;ve made to my workouts in and out of the pool have been positive or negative.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, any great training season can be completely ruined by a bad taper, and I am well aware of that. I&#39;m making myself very aware of how my body feels each day, adjusting workouts as needed. This is something I learned to do only a few years ago, when I started swimming Masters. When I was swimming in high school and college &#8212; as well as my brief postgrad career &#8212; I put the fate of my taper in the hands of very accomplished coaches. More often than not, the tapers did not go well, and I swam slower than I expected. But when the taper did go well, I never stopped to think about the things I did that helped get me to fast swimming. That has all changed.<\/p>\n<p>A few friends have asked me why I only taper for 10 days. The answer is very simple. If you only put in an average of 3,500 yards\/meters per workout, you don&#39;t have much to taper from. A typical swimmer who trains 6,000 yards\/meters or more in a day will need the common two-week taper. I am already concerned about tapering 10 days. I have a feeling it might be reduced to eight. Last week, I didn&#39;t do much in the pool, with the Thanksgiving holiday being a major culprit. (Read my blog to see what little I did in the pool from Thursday to Monday.)<\/p>\n<p>What is my taper like? It&#39;s hard to say. It varies each season, but mostly it involves doing &quot;test sets&quot; through the course of taper, to give me an indicator of how my body is preparing to race. At some point, I should feel like I am not stepping up to do a workout test set, but an actual racing test set. From my mindset before stepping on the blocks to executing each crucial element during the swim, everything will be fine-tuned. If something doesn&#39;t feel right during the main part of the season, I move on. During taper, I tend to do more work on starts and turns. But since I&#39;ve been working on those throughout the season, this will be essentially honing one or two lagging parts.<\/p>\n<p>I&#39;m very anxious to race at the Masters meet. I do have some goals in mind, but I&#39;m going to pull a Michael Phelps and not tell you what they are!<\/p>\n<p><i>Jeff Commings is the author of <a href=http:\/\/dolphinsofthedesert.com\/odd_man_out.htm>&quot;Odd Man Out: An Autobiography.&quot;<\/a> In July, he qualified for the Olympic Trials in the 100 breaststroke at age 37. He holds Masters world records in the 50 and 100 breaststrokes for the 35-39 age group.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Follow Jeff Commings&#39; training for Olympic Trials at <a href=http:\/\/commings.blogspot.com\/>commings.blogspot.com.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PHOENIX, Arizona, December 1. TODAY is the day every competitive swimmer dreams about for months. It&#39;s the start of taper! If you&#39;ve been following my blog, you know that I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,17,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-commentary","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\r\n<title>Journey to Olympic Trials: Taper Time! - Swimming World<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/journey-to-olympic-trials-taper-time\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Journey to Olympic Trials: Taper Time!\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"PHOENIX, Arizona, December 1. 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