How hard to warm up?

term1te

I've entered a hill climb TT on Saturday, 5km with 300m elevation. I've done it a few times before, with different, mostly accidental, warm up strategies. One year I cycled 115km in the morning, then spent a couple of hours cutting a large hedge before turning up just in time to start. Another time we had friends staying with us and I only managed to escape the sofa in time to cycle the 3km to the start.

Neither approach sounds optimal. Reading a number of articles online, they suggest that for a relatively short TT I should be undertaking a fairly long and hard warm up. But how long and hard should that be? I don't have a power meter but do use an HRM

Also, should I take it easy the day before, or go for a short, but hard ride? I live very close to the course, so I could ride it on the Friday, if it stops raining, but would I benefit from going gently, tempo or maxing out? Although I remember reading on National hill climb champion saying that he didn't ride the bike at all during the week before the race.

Thanks

fenix

The shorter the event the more important the warm up is. I'd take it easy the day before though.

You want at least a 20 min warm up and a few intervals to get your HR up.

imposter2.0

If you get to the start line sweating and breathing hard, then your warm-up is about right.

twotyred

British Cycling warm up for all events and all disciplines. Link to a PDF in this page

https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/knowledge/training-plans/article/izn20160113-Ask-the-experts-How-to-warm-up-for-a-cycling-race-0

DeVlaeminck

Ibelieve, but could be wrong, that when you go anaerobic your body produces buffers to control the acidity level of the blood or muscle or something. You want these to already be there ready so you need to do some decent anaerobic efforts as part of your warm up and of course before going anaerobic you want the muscles and soft tissues to be generally warmed up. Ideally I'd do a 30 minute steady ride followed by some hard anaerobic intervals but what duration Iam not sure - maybe a set of 5 minute on minute off starting at just tempo and building intensity with the last one fairly full on bit not absolutely flat out ? Then roll up to the start line with a couple of minutes to recover.

sloppyschleckonds

colinsmith123

I can vouch how hard those 5 on 5 off activations are. Lowish gear, 39x16, Full gas for 5s, then off, then full gas again etc. First minute is easy, by the end of the second minute you are starting to struggle. 15s later, the clock stops. Contador does 3 mins, see how far you can get.

Lookyhere

colinsmith123 wrote:

I can vouch how hard those 5 on 5 off activations are. Lowish gear, 39x16, Full gas for 5s, then off, then full gas again etc. First minute is easy, by the end of the second minute you are starting to struggle. 15s later, the clock stops. Contador does 3 mins, see how far you can get.

Unless i m blind that script says 3' Activation 5" ON 55" OFF (not 5sec) ........which is very similar to the BC warm with 3 x 6sec sprints over a 3 minute period, after the 8min build session.

term1te

So if I follow that warm up, I'll perform like Contador? Excellent, I better eat a nice big Spanish steak as well, and I'll be well away.

Actually, I'll probably give the steak a miss. Although clearly I need to warm up a lot harder than I've done in the past. Thanks for the comments.

john1967

Weres the climb ?

term1te

john1967 wrote:

Weres the climb ?

Sorry, missed this one. The climb is just outside Basel in Switzerland, between Dornach and Gempen. https://www.strava.com/segments/1268394

I think I undertook a good warm up, however, I didn't do as well as I'd hoped, but you never do. More motivation for next year.

ajmitchell

Sorry this is bugbear of mine. This will not be a popular answer and goes against the grain of many early opinion led web articles (and unscientific opinion) but I advise a very short and definitely easy warm up esp for a short event for amateur riders. I'd love to hear the science behind long 20+min warm ups which feature hard intervals which can sometimes be 25% or 50% of the event itself or longer. From a physiological perspective if you deplete ATP-CP system during warm up you will have less "matches" for the race or to put it another way you will shift your power curve to the left. For me over many trials I have found the warm up effectively is only needed for a few mins and then is partly psychological (to calm the nerves) and only partly physiological (maybe to get heart rate up a little). If you pace correctly even in long races you effectively get a warm up by starting easy below your FTP. Yes I know all pros do fairly strong warm ups but they have virtually infinite "matches" compared to the normal guy. OK someone is going to say a warm up is intended to go "easy" not tough but in fact warm up protocols are not simply in Z1 or Z2 they include some almost full effort pieces. In fact the trend for scientific opinion on warm ups across most aerobic events is less is more. The scientific papers on warm ups and running show a modest positive effect of easy activity (60-70% VO2max) and a detrimental effect of intense warm ups (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9475139). The same effect is shown in rowing (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sa ... 000000.pdf) At least one masters thesis shows absolutely no effect of warm ups on cycling performance (http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewc ... ers_theses) and overall recent papers suggest doing less than historically advised ("Less is more") (see http://jap.physiology.org/content/111/1/228) and also (http://link.springer.com/article/10.100 ... -z#/page-1) and (http://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/Abstr ... t_.36.aspx)

So the bottom line is (from experience and from the literature) unless you are at a pro level go easy in the warm up (I would actually say do as little as you feel you can get away with: as papers comparing user led vs protocol leds warm ups show no difference in benefit). If you disagree please don't say "rubbish froome does 1hour warm up" please point me to any piece of scientific evidence that longer or intense warm ups are actually beneficial under test conditions for regular people.

jrich

@ajmitchelll You have completely missed the point of the OP's thread. He is warming up for a 5k hill climb. He doesn't need matches, he can't warm up on the job, he's going to be going into the red from the word 'GO', therefore he needs to have warmed up thoroughly beforehand.

Personally for that sort of event I would be going at least 45mins. Probably something like 15mins easy, 20 mins building from Z3-Z4 and them some intervals. Leave 15 mins for easy Z2 at the end, then off to the start line immediately.

ajmitchell

jrich wrote:

@ajmitchelll You have completely missed the point of the OP's thread. He is warming up for a 5k hill climb. He doesn't need matches, he can't warm up on the job, he's going to be going into the red from the word 'GO', therefore he needs to have warmed up thoroughly beforehand.

Personally for that sort of event I would be going at least 45mins. Probably something like 15mins easy, 20 mins building from Z3-Z4 and them some intervals. Leave 15 mins for easy Z2 at the end, then off to the start line immediately.

So you advise warming up for more than 45mins for a roughly 10-20min event. Interesting. I assume you have at least personal experience that when you have done a short warm up for an intense short event it didnt go as well or are you entirely basing your opinion on what is normally done.

jrich

ajmitchell wrote:

jrich wrote:

@ajmitchelll You have completely missed the point of the OP's thread. He is warming up for a 5k hill climb. He doesn't need matches, he can't warm up on the job, he's going to be going into the red from the word 'GO', therefore he needs to have warmed up thoroughly beforehand.

Personally for that sort of event I would be going at least 45mins. Probably something like 15mins easy, 20 mins building from Z3-Z4 and them some intervals. Leave 15 mins for easy Z2 at the end, then off to the start line immediately.

So you advise warming up for more than 45mins for a roughly 10-20min event. Interesting. I assume you have at least personal experience that when you have done a short warm up for an intense short event it didnt go as well or are you entirely basing your opinion on what is normally done.

I have plenty of personal experience and I have spoken to plenty of people who have similar personal experience and so I have formed my opinion from this information and on my personal performances. If it was me I'd actually be aiming to warm up for an hour....

(I ride time trials, mostly 10 miles i.e. 20 minutes or so. In fact this last week alone I have competed in 4 TTs, so there's a good bit of personal experience in the last few days! And of course most testers are by nature quite a fastidious bunch - they don't leave much to chance... I'f you'd just spent 3 hours driving to ride for 20:02 up and down a dual carriageway you'd want to make damn sure you warm up was absolutely the best it could be.)

fenix

I have found that when doing trainerroad - you get a typical 10 minute warm up before hitting the intervals.

The first interval is always the hardest and it takes two or three to be really efficient - you can see the HR down and the power up. It's really quite interesting.