For coaches and self-coached athletes, it can be helpful to review programs that worked. Matt Foreman had a great series in the Performance Menu Journal several years ago. Over 5 issues, he shared the exact workouts, day by day, week by week, that were used by his national-class weightlifting team over a training year.
As a weightlifter, that program was easy enough to understand and analyze. A strength & conditioning program can be less clear to analyze. My athletes have been primarily in field sports so they need speed, power, endurance, and skill work. On top of that, if we did our job getting strong, we don’t want to let that strength wane as the fatigue of practices and play mount over the weeks.
So in this first program breakdown, look at the two weeks before a key event.
Thing is, this key event isn’t an absolute peak; it’s an important tryout, but one expected to be at a lower level than the athlete’s absolute capacity. I’ll tear it down at a week level, a day level, and a within-session level to express how we handle (expected) waves in energy across the training block.
This athlete generally trains alone. They had 25 weeks of structured training before this period. The event they tapered for was the key preseason event – but again, not a peak, just enough rest to have two strong days on the field.
Two Weeks Of Training
TRYOUT WEEK
ONE WEEK OUT
How To Taper An Athlete
Due to the influence of Charlie Francis, I believe if you’re targeting a peak, you take your last high intensity, high volume session 10 days before your key event. 10 days back from a Saturday would be the prior week’s Wednesday.
However, in this sport, where there are so many qualities, and for this particular athlete, who goes flat with more than about 3 consecutive light days, I like to take a big session 10 days out, then a somewhat stimulating session about 3 days out. Once again, remember this didn’t need to be a full peak – and further remember there’s more to fatigue than your last training session. Accumulated fatigue dissipates at an unpredictable rate which is different for every athlete. For this athlete, the goal was to reduce fatigue in the legs and the mind but keep the body in a training state.
Breaking Down The Taper
Week layout
With that philosophy as common context, here’s what we did with the week. We did a quality strength block before this period. We want to keep the athlete close to heavy weights all the time, but especially so while dropping the volume.
So one week out, strength training is heavy-medium-heavy, 3 days in a row, followed by rest. (This athlete frequently does a little light activity on rest day. I know that and know the impact it tends to have, so don’t need to prescribe it.) The plan was to follow that day with 2 speed/power sessions in a row, followed by more rest. Instead, you see an adjustment to the program; this athlete felt less bouncy and powerful than expected on Saturday, so the power work was dropped in favor of some bouncy yet easy conditioning.
In the tryout week, light strength work, rest, ultra-low volume sprint work, and a low-volume heavy day were the plan. We followed that with just warmups. This can vary from athlete to athlete in my programs. For this athlete, the limited reps of heavy deadlifts, oddly, produce more stiffness the next day than just going for it. But going for it would have tanked their nervous system for the weekend, when decision making at game speed would be critical. So we took a warmup to shake things out, added a day of rest to intentionally make the athlete antsy, then went into the tryout week.
This was a very successful taper. The athlete reported feeling snappy and powerful all weekend, with plenty of energy beyond the tryout’s demands. Because of that, the Monday after was a warmup, then Tuesday we got right back to work!
Day layout
We use 5 standard warmups each season. Each one is built with certain session demands in mind. Because running warmup #2, specifically, is designed for high-speed, high-activation days, it is also great for turning the system on, so to speak.
So every day starts with a warmup. This athlete has a history of hip & shoulder issues, so our mobility and lifting warmups attend to both. Hence why they are used so frequently.
Monday, One Week Out
Lifting warmup, light Turkish get-ups, and weighted side lunges.
This is all about having control over the end range-of-motion. There are a lot of collisions in this sport, so keeping joints healthy is top priority. You can’t perform if you’re on the sideline because of an injury.
Six sets of two deadlifts, half-kneeling presses, and sit-ups.
This was a heavy day, but much lighter than this athlete has done in peak condition. At a bodyweight of about 150 pounds, doubles at 175 are challenging without being overly fatiguing. The half-kneeling press doubles as a hip flexor stretch while it serves shoulder health. And sit-ups balance the body a bit from deadlifts.
Tuesday, One Week Out
Two rounds of lifting warmup.
What you don’t see in the lifting warmup are lots of glute work, lots of dynamic twists on the ground, and classic hanging leg lifts. By going through that twice, we’re making sure this athlete is loose in every plane at every speed, yet absent any even remotely novel stimuli that might produce soreness.
Dumbbell front squats, pushups, and side planks.
In reality, this is all core work. Stabilizing the hips and bracing the trunk are key to accelerating hard and to throwing far, both of which matter for this athlete. Plus, front squats the day after deadlifts seem to work magic on this athlete for knee health. Can’t explain that and I don’t need to – if it works, it’s good!
Wednesday, One Week Out
This session looked a lot like Monday, but the volume goes up (more than twice as many deadlifts!) without even approaching the medium-heavy weights. We’re intentionally adding fatigue here, so the body is fully stimulated and committing resources to recovery. A bonus of the higher volume deadlifts is some grip fatigue, which stimulates CNS spikes after adequate rest – just what’s needed to run fast, jump high, and throw far.
Thursday, One Week Out
Take a day off every week. Even better: take off two. That’s what we did here.
Friday, One Week Out
This was intended as a power session focused on force production. Jumping uphill and up stairs is great because the landing is much less stressful on joints and connective tissues. There’s an element of risk to jumping on stairs, but this athlete had some sort of stair work every week up to this point, so felt very comfortable with the plan.
Rest isn’t specified, which my athletes know means they should rest “until”. Until they feel great, until they feel relaxed, until they feel completely fresh.
Saturday, One Week Out
This was the session where we needed a pivot. The week took more out of this athlete than expected (a couple of late nights and poor sleep – remember, recovery doesn’t just happen!) so instead of speed work to build elastic qualities, we did bouncy conditioning at fairly low volume. Still stimulates the tendons and fascia, but much less stress on the system as a whole compared to top speed running.
Monday, Tryout Week
Even though the front squat volume went up and the plank duration increased, swapping pushups for mountain climbers significantly reduced the difficulty of this session. This athlete was squatting considerably less than they could have handled, so, in all, this was a light strength day. Given that it was 5 days from go time, light strength work was plenty. You can’t get weaker in a week, but you can definitely overdo work in the gym.
Tuesday, Tryout Week
A “rest” day, for all practical purposes. Pickleball league is something this athlete did just for fun, largely as a social activity, and it doesn’t involve any meaningful impact. Thus, no work is prescribed, but this athlete knows to loosen up early in the day and to get to bed early, even without it being written.
Wednesday, Tryout Week
Always stay close to speed. Because of the adjustment on the prior Saturday, this athlete hadn’t approached full speed in over 10 days. That borders on too long. The bounds from Friday helped, but it was time to refresh acceleration and top speed mechanics. But it’s much too close to a big performance day to do true speed work, just in case overall fatigue lingered. So a low-volume, limited-intensity sprint session.
Thursday, Tryout Week
If the coming weekend were meant to be an absolute peak, this session would be extremely low volume with near-maximal weights. BUT, this session also would happen one day earlier. The idea in this particular week was to keep the primary strength stimulus without making any changes to the movements. If there’s nothing novel, there won’t be any soreness. So even with a touch more intensity, this got the athlete excited rather than tired. Exactly the goal!
Friday, Tryout Week
You can’t get better one day out, but you can certainly get worse. As Tony Holler says, “don’t burn the steak.” So Friday was nothing more than a shakedown to get this athlete loose, then an early bed time.
Peaking Is About Courage
As described above, this was a very successful taper. We pulled back the workload just a bit to let some recovery happen, but stayed close to all the qualities that needed further development over the long season. Ultimately, this little peak resulted in a team selection and set up 8 months of strong training with a big peak in fall.
As an athlete, peaking is not exciting. The training sessions are short, fairly easy, and separated by lots of rest.
And that’s exactly the point: don’t be a practice hero. Turn it on when it matters. Peaking means you need to do far less, far better.
Of course, when you have lots of qualities to develop and peak at the same time, that’s plenty of challenge unto itself. Have enough courage to back off before your big performances and have the good sense to trust your preparation up to that point. Hopefully this look at a high-performing athlete’s taper helps you along the way.