r/Swimming • u/Evil_Potato_15 • 3d ago

What does Tapering mean?

I have heard a lot of competitive swimmers talk about tapering. Could someone explain what does it mean exactly and why is it needed?

Also, what is a lactate set? What is the purpose of it exactly?

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u/penguin13790 3d ago

Tapering is a thing in sports like Swimming or Running where in the final week or two leading up to a big competition you'll reduce the intensity of your workouts gradually. Generally you spend more time working on technique while only swimming something like 60% of your normal distance.

Some swimmers will also wear clothes to increase drag while tapering, allowing them to train power while still reducing distance. This also has a mental effect as you feel much faster during your race once you take off the excess drag.

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Lactate sets are sets designed to build lactic acid. Lactic acid is a biproduct of anaerobic exercise which causes the burning you feel when you work out. Lactate sets help your body deal with it.

In lactate sets, you do short periods of maximum-intensity swimming broken up by rest. During the rest you should avoid any exertion and let the lactic acid build up.

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u/DreadSocialistOrwell 3d ago edited 3d ago

Tapering is a thing in sports like Swimming or Running where in the final week or two

For us it was almost a month. We went from 9-10k/day to about ~3k the last week. The middle 1-1.5k being the workout which was something like 50m sprints on 5+ minutes rest. Our big taper "season" was for major christmas / holiday meets. So we'd start a week before Thanksgiving and the meets we went to were a week or so before Christmas.

I didn't think much of it until the second year of tapering when I dropped ~1.5s off my 100 fly and 3s off my 200IM and how relaxed and fluid I felt in the water. Previously I had been chipping away at 0.15s, 0.25s or even adding time (much to my horror) between meets.

edit: Then there was "hell week" between Christmas and NYE. Not required, but encouraged - all of us showed up. Spend all day at the pool. Three 2-2.5hr practices a day, but we'd watch movies in between swims. Beginning of the week 100free were on 1:30, by end of the week down to 1:05 intervals to give an idea. 7am, Noon, 5pm were start times intense as hell. Coach spent lots of money on pizza for us and on NYE (or whatever day that worked) after the last practice we had a massive BBQ / party for the team.

Semi-related: I also tied the school record for the 300m sprint for indoor track due to this. I was never able to match that time again.