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Cut the volume, keep the intensity. The fitness stays, the fatigue leaves.
Tudor Bompa's taper rule is simple and constantly violated: reduce volume 40–60% in the final weeks while keeping intensity near race pace. A 10-hour training week becomes 6 hours, then 4 — not slower, just shorter. This calculator descends your volume week by week in whatever unit you train in.
Athletes use it the week it matters: Bompa's descent turns a 10-hour week into 6, then 4 — intensity held, fatigue gone, race day at the bottom.
It scales with the event and the training age of the athlete. Bompa's periodization calls for 1 week for 5K–10K runners and single-lift meets, 2 weeks for marathons and most strength peaks, and up to 3 weeks for ultramarathons, Ironman-distance triathlons, and athletes coming off very high volume blocks. The most common mistake is tapering too long at too low volume — a 3-week taper with a soft final week bleeds sharpness. The descent should be steep enough that you arrive restless, not stale: if race week feels easy, the taper is right.
No — this is the entire point and the most-misunderstood variable in peaking. Intensity (pace, load on the bar, heart rate zones) stays at 90%+ of training norms while volume falls 40–60%. Research on tapering consistently shows that volume-reduced, intensity-maintained tapers outperform both intensity-reduced tapers and full rest, because intensity is the stimulus that preserves neuromuscular readiness and VO2max adaptations. What drops: total reps, total miles, and frequency (roughly one fewer session per week). What never drops: how fast and how heavy the remaining work is.
Yes, and it usually looks like one of two errors. The first is cutting volume below about 30–35% of normal for more than a few days — detraining begins measurably within about two weeks of very low stimulus, so a deep cut only works in the final days. The second is adding a hard "test" workout inside the taper to check fitness — that workout costs glycogen and fatigue without adaptation time, exactly what the taper exists to eliminate. Trust the descent: the fitness was built in the months before; the taper only reveals it. If you feel flat early in taper week 1, that is normal fatigue leaving, not fitness going.