Not to start a blog post with an obvious attempt at scaremongering, but failing to adequately warm-up your body before training isn’t just damaging your performance, but is also putting yourself at risk of injury.
Not only are you risking damaging your body, but inadequately warming-up isn’t establishing the right mindset to really nail the training. Unleash your mentality to see real improvements and, like readying your body, this process starts long before the hard work does.
Covered in this blog:
- Why warm-up before cycling training?
- Physically
- Mentally
- Example warm-up
- Personalising a warm-up
Why warm-up before cycling training?
Your warm-up is more than just your opportunity to lay the groundwork for your body to perform well in your session. It’s also the ideal opportunity to test something to perfection so that, when your event day comes, you have something that can get both your mind and body ready for what is about to come.
Physically
Dating myself slightly here, but remember the days before synthetic oils, when you’d let your car get warm before going anywhere fast? Essentially, when we warm-up our body we are protecting it from bad stuff that might happen if we go too hard, too soon.
You’re also going to increase your cycling performance when you complete an adequate warm-up, by gently getting your body into the perfect athletic state to hit your desired targets.
Mentally
Something that most people tend to miss is that your warm-up is the perfect time to start settling your mind into the training too. Your best training – and competing, be that racing or sportive/gran fondo events – will happen when you’ve managed to get in the zone or in flow.
“A flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does.” Wikipedia definition of Flow.
The best performing cyclists are the ones who can isolate themselves, perform their warm-up routine, and get in the zone without complications or distractions.
Example warm-up
If you don’t have your own routine, here’s a 20-minute warm-up that I recommend you start with. It’s cadence based, so everyone can try this, starting in a comfortable gear for that cadence. If you read this thinking you will struggle to maintain that cadence, it’s ok to start slightly lower.
- 5 minutes at cadence 90
- 2 minutes at cadence 95
- 2 minutes at cadence 100
- 2 minutes at cadence 105
- 1 minute 30 seconds at cadence 110
- 30 seconds at cadence 120 or more (all out effort)
- 2 minutes at cadence 90
- 6 second sprint at maximum
- 1 minute at cadence 90
- 6 second sprint at maximum
- 1 minute at cadence 90
- 6 second sprint at maximum
- 2 minutes 42 seconds at cadence 90
Personalising a warm-up
Of course, you probably don’t need to do a full 20-minute warm-up for an easy session or even at the start of your sportive or gran fondo. You should take this base and build something similar that you’ll use for your own needs.
You might consider keeping a diary of how your sessions went, and if you felt ready at the start thanks, or not, due to your warm-up. Ideally, you will eventually have a few different warm-ups for different occasions and different sessions.
Interestingly, the duration and intensity of your event is probably the biggest influence of your warm-up duration. If you are about to hit the road on a 200+ mile epic, you can just take it easy, and factor some of your warm-up routine into the first 10 minutes. However, if you’re about to take on an epic UK hill climb time trial (these are typically a few minutes only), you might want to do at least 20-minutes, possibly even more.
You’ll also want to practise your routine both inside and outdoors. Outdoors is where it gets a bit tricky, as you will have traffic, terrain, and weather to cope with while following your routine. This is why you might see some people bringing their trainers to events, so they can get the right warm-up done, get in the zone, and put in their best performance.
