Coaching experts Jim Kiltyand Liam Hennessyreveal one of the secrets in tapering for your event: less is actually more

IT IS not uncommon for a coach to feel that as the championship approaches he or she has to ramp up the volume of training. In other words there may be self imposed pressure on the coach to do more work with his team. After all this is what he did as a player. And the harder you work the better you get is an often cited comment by many players and coaches.

Also the coach may have heard of the great volume of training the opposing team has been doing and in the desire to make sure he leaves no stone unturned he piles more work on to the players in the weeks coming into the all important championship game.

The outcome, however, of doing this may very well be that too much work is done and that the team suffers where it matters most – on match day. The old saying that “they left it on the training pitch” is so true of many team sports and indeed individual sports.

Fatigue is the result and the team that was once super fit now travels in a fatigued state to the big game and cannot live up to their previous expectations.

They fall flat on the day and the year’s work is over with nothing to show.

The difficult decision and perhaps the brave one for coaches is to cut back and reduce the volume of training at these important periods. The whole process of reducing volume yet keeping intensity high when training is known as “tapering”. Tapering has been applied very successfully in individual sports and indeed it can be successfully applied to team sports. By and large there is probably about five good tapers in a team in a year. Thus it should not be hard to identify when the team needs to be at its best. The whole process of tapering, however, is only beneficial if the coach has been logging and keeping detailed records of the time spent in training and competition. And by this we mean all training – with the team in question and all other teams.

Keeping good records – the key to managing work and recovery: If we can keep a detailed log or record of all the work completed and if we can use simple yet useful performance and monitoring measurements of our players we are then in a better position to make more informed decisions regarding recovery after playing and tapering before important games. The key elements to record are volume of work and intensity of work completed.

Monitoring volume: It is relatively easy to record the volume of work that a team completes. All training and practice sessions and matches should be timed and recorded. This will then provide a simple yet highly effective record of the volume of work.

For example, if the time spent in training and practice during a week are added then the total training and practice time is known. Thus in a weekly cycle the time spent training and practising can be noted.

Intensity of effort: This can be gauged by using a simple 10 point scale. This scale is a simple yet valid way of determining the athlete’s or player’s effort during a pitch session and is indeed commonly used to do so.

Rating Descriptor

0 Rest

1 Very Easy

2 Easy

3 Moderate

4 Somewhat Hard

5 Hard

6-7 Very Hard

8-9 Very Very Hard

10 Maximal

This intensity scale is best evaluated initially by the players. The players can give an indication of how hard they felt the training or practice session to be after about 20 minutes following the end of the session. Waiting the 20 minutes is important as they will then be in a more informed state to assess the totality of the session.

Giving the intensity rating immediately after training may mislead the player into citing an intensity that is inaccurate, especially if the training session was field-based and had a tough last 10 minutes in the session. Next week we will look at how to use this information to great effect. So in the meantime get recording.

* These notes are contributed by Dr Liam Hennessy and Jim Kilty of Setanta College, the Institute of Strength and Conditioning Studies (www.setantacollege.com)