Triathlon taper week: the practical guide to training and diet

Most triathletes overthink a taper week, and still end up doing the wrong thing. Here’s the simple, evidence-based way to make your taper week easier and your race day faster.

Triathlon taper week in a nutshell

During a taper week, your goal is to reduce fatigue, without losing (and preferably improving) fitness. You do this by decreasing training load and improving recovery.

Your triathlon taper week checklist:

• Increase training load slightly before your taper

• Use a transition week to gradually reduce training volume before taper week

• Maintain training frequency during the taper week

• Maintain training intensity during the taper week

• Reduce training volume by ~50% during the taper week

• Choose short sessions with small intensity doses over passive rest days

• Eat more carbohydrates 1-2 days before the triathlon event

• Don’t neglect the power of sleep

Before we dive into important details, like sport specific recommendations, you probably wonder:

How much is there to gain?

Taper week benefits: expected performance improvements

Literature shows that a taper week can lead to performance changes ranging from -2% (oops) to +9%. When done right, a taper week is certainly worth doing.

To put these improvements into perspective: a 2% increase in performance can take you from an eight place to podium during the Olympics, swimming.

Physiologically, these performance increases after a taper week are a result of:

• Increased VO2max

• Increased capacity to sustain a high percentage of VO2max (tied to taper diet)

• Increased economy (less energy cost for the same output)

But how do you make sure you’re the +9%, not the -2%? Here’s how to implement a taper week, the right way.

How to implement a taper week before your triathlon?

The goal of a taper week is to decrease fatigue, by reducing training load. But should you decrease training frequency, intensity or volume? And is a single taper week enough?

The Aixsurge triathlon app creates a tailored training program and taper that suits your individual needs. Try it now, or learn how to plan your own taper week:

Duration: is one taper week enough for a triathlon?

Literature shows that the duration of an effective triathlon taper is 8 to 14 days. At least for cycling and running. A slightly longer taper duration is suitable in swimming.

In this article we split that taper into two parts: a transition phase and a taper week. Together, they end up in the effective taper window.

If your taper takes much less than a week, fatigue likely did not disappear fully. If you taper more than 2 weeks, detraining might decrease fitness/performance.

As expected, the ideal taper duration can vary between individuals, and depends on the training performed immediately before the taper week (e.g. hard vs easy training). We’ll dive deeper into the topic of what to do before your taper week in a bit.

In practice, triathletes participating in shorter distance triathlons like sprints, tend to work with only one taper week. Full distance IRONMAN participants are often advised to implement 3-4 taper weeks.

But what should you do during a taper week?

Frequency: how often should you train during a taper week?

Planning to train much less often during your taper week? Think again.

There’s no clear scientific evidence that decreasing the number of weekly training sessions improves performance. In practice, this means that if your typical training week includes 6 workouts, your taper week should too.

So if you’re wondering how many rest days to schedule during a taper week, the answer is: no more than in a regular training week.

A slight reduction of no more than 20% is unlikely to hurt performance though. So if it fits your personal preference, going from six to five workouts (−17%) for example, will most likely do no harm.

So what should those sessions look like?

Intensity: how hard should you train during a taper week?

There’s scientific consensus that training intensity should be maintained during a taper week. That is true for swimming, cycling and running.

In other words: don’t remove intensity during a taper week!

Maintain your usual number of high intensity sessions and maintain the intensity level (e.g. threshold, VO2max or race pace).

So far, we did not change the training load, since frequency and intensity stayed the same. That leaves us with one last option to make our high intensity workouts — and taper week in general — easier:

Volume: how long should you train during a taper week?

Yes, volume (how long you train) is the thing you want to decrease during your taper week.

Science shows training volume should be reduced by about 50% during a taper week. Or to be more precise:

• Decrease training volume 41-60% in swimming

• Decrease training volume 21-60% in cycling and running

These ranges are pretty wide. The Aixsurge triathlon app picks the percentage that works best for you, so you don’t need to worry about it. Try the app or learn how to decide yourself:

If your typical training week already has little swim workouts, decrease training volume less, e.g. 40%. If you swim a lot, decrease volume by 60% during a taper. Also, if you’re injury prone in one sport, e.g. running, decrease training volume more.

Note that by decreasing the training volume, you’re automatically decreasing time spent at high (and low) intensities, even though we do not change training frequency and intensity.

How many days should you rest before a triathlon?

There’s no clear research-based rule that says you must take a specific number of full rest days before race day. What the literature does consistently suggest is that there’s no need to reduce training frequency during a taper.

Keep in mind that the goal of your taper week is to reduce fatigue while maintaining fitness. Put those together and the message is simple: you don’t need passive rest days prior to your triathlon, but you do need to avoid adding fatigue.

In practice, that means you can train in the days leading into your triathlon, as long as sessions are short and low-stress. You can add some higher intensity efforts, but the overall session should leave you feeling fresher, not fatigued.

Summary: what to do during a taper week before your triathlon?

A taper week is very similar to a regular training week, except for the duration of individual workouts, which are much shorter.

The Aixsurge triathlon app builds a taper with specific taper workouts that suit your needs.

Here’s a quick example of how to turn a regular workout into a taper workout:

Regular workout: 4×15 min at cycling race pace

Taper workout: 2×15 min (or 3×10 min) at race pace

Keep or increase the recovery duration between sets, to make the taper workout feel even less intense.

Whether these scientific recommendations are optimal for you, mainly depends on what your usual (recent) training weeks look like. So make sure you continue reading the next paragraphs.

What to do BEFORE your taper week?

What should you do in the weeks leading up to your taper week? And how do those weeks influence what your ideal taper week looks like? Let’s find out.

We said that a taper week should reduce fatigue and improve fitness.

Clearly, the more fatigued you are, the more you should reduce training load to improve recovery. The opposite is also true: if your recent training weeks were already pretty easy, there’s hardly any need to reduce training load even further.

It’s this individual variation that can make tapering more of an art than a science.

However, there is literature about the ideal training weeks leading towards a taper week. There are roughly two important aspects:

• How hard you train

• How you transition from regular to taper training volume

How hard should you train before your taper week?

There is some literature that suggests increasing training load before the taper week results in higher performance gains. But it comes at a risk: doing too much is counter productive and increases the risk of getting ill.

How to transition from regular to taper training?

A meta-analysis shows that the most effective taper week is preceded by a week in which you gradually decrease training volume to taper volume. This turns out to be better than going from regular to taper volume in one single step.

Triathlon taper week diet (nutrition)

If you’re implementing several taper weeks, it’s important to adjust your diet, based on the decreased energy expenditure. Otherwise it may affect body composition negatively.

However, nutrition wise, your taper week should focus on supercompensating your carbohydrate (muscle glycogen) storages. This means that in the final days prior to your triathlon event, a large proportion of your energy intake should be carbs.

For sprint and Olympic triathlons, 1 day of carb loading before the race should be enough. For full distance IRONMANS, start carb loading 2 days before the race.

Avoid these common taper week mistakes

Taper week ≠ rest week

When most triathletes think about an easy week, they:

• Skip intensity altogether

• Keep the long, low-intensity session

• Add extra passive rest days

A taper week is almost the opposite: keep intensity (at the same level), cut volume, and mostly maintain frequency.

It’s true that the last sessions won’t build much new fitness, but some triathletes use that as an excuse to add too much rest. This can decrease fitness surprisingly quickly.

Tapering is about reducing fatigue while maintaining your hard-earned fitness.

Don’t neglect nutrition and sleep

When we think about a taper week, we think about decreasing training load. We decrease load to reduce fatigue and improve recovery. But training is only one side of the recovery equation.

Sleep is probably the most important recovery tool. With shorter sessions, you’ve got a rare opportunity to add a bit more sleep, or at least protect your usual routine.

On the nutrition side, carb loading alone has proven to improve race performance. So don’t neglect that.

Stick to the plan

The final days before a triathlon can be nerve-wracking. That’s rarely the best mindset for making changes to your plan.

A taper week can feel mentally (and physically) weird. You might feel flat, heavy, or even a bit sore. But that’s exactly why this isn’t the time to experiment. Stick to the plan and keep things familiar.

The Aixsurge triathlon app helps you do that. It creates a tailored training plan, but adapts as you go. Learn more about the app.

Literature

A taper week can lead to performance changes ranging from -2% to +9%.

• Bosquet, Laurent et al. “Effects of tapering on performance: a meta-analysis.” Medicine and science in sports and exercise vol. 39,8 (2007): 1358-65. doi:10.1249/mss.0b013e31806010e0 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17762369/

The duration of an effective triathlon taper is 8 to 14 days.

• Mujika, Iñigo. (2011). Tapering for triathlon competition. Journal of Human Sport and Exercise. 6. 10.4100/jhse.2011.62.06. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228477258_Tapering_for_triathlon_competition

Training volume should be reduced by about 50% during a taper week.

• Mujika, Iñigo. (2011). Tapering for triathlon competition. Journal of Human Sport and Exercise. 6. 10.4100/jhse.2011.62.06. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228477258_Tapering_for_triathlon_competition

Increasing training load before the taper week results in higher performance gains.

• Aubry, Anaël et al. “Functional overreaching: the key to peak performance during the taper?.” Medicine and science in sports and exercise vol. 46,9 (2014): 1769-77. doi:10.1249/MSS.0000000000000301 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25134000/

The most effective taper week is preceded by a week in which you gradually decrease training volume to taper volume.

• Bosquet, Laurent et al. “Effects of tapering on performance: a meta-analysis.” Medicine and science in sports and exercise vol. 39,8 (2007): 1358-65. doi:10.1249/mss.0b013e31806010e0 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17762369/

A taper week comes with psychological challenges.

• Stone, Maxwell J et al. “The Psychology of Athletic Tapering in Sport: A Scoping Review.” Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) vol. 53,4 (2023): 777-801. doi:10.1007/s40279-022-01798-6 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36696042/