Warm Ups: A how to and helpful tips

Warm ups have become an essential part of any workout over the past 10 or 15 years. As a community of coaches and athletes, we’ve come to a consensus that a warmed up athlete is better than one who isn’t.  what we haven’t come to a consensus on yet is what a good warm up is, however. Well, because the internet is a place for people to put in their two cents, I’ll add in mine and hopefully it helps you have your best racing yet.

The first thing to discuss when looking at warm ups is the why. We know we should, but why should we? There are some big reasons based on what it can do for you physically. The warm up can be exactly what the body needs to prepare itself for the hard efforts to come. Getting the body moving and the heart rate up will increase the blood flow to the working muscles and decreases blood flow to those that aren’t. The effort activates all the supportive systems that help the body cope with the effort and supply the main components with what they need to do the work. In short, a warm up will flip the switch on your body putting it in perform mode. But what a lot of people easily forget is the mental side of a warm up. A consistent warm up serves as a mental preparation too. If you get used to having intense focus while training, doing a similar warm up also help your mind prepare by relying on habits. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been having a bad day and I just don’t know if I’ll get my workout done, let alone do a good job. But I’ve come to know that if I put the clothes on, prepare the bike, and get to my warm up, I’ll be ready mentally regardless of mental state the day put me in. I think this is because my mind doesn’t know any other way to be after the warm up, it only knows to focus. Having this habit is one of the biggest things that allow me to train day after day, mentally speaking.

So knowing the purpose, we can better execute, because we now understand the reasons. So what is a good warm up? There are different warm ups for different activities, but in general I say the longer event, the shorter and the less intense the warm up should be. For most events, under 4 hours, some structure and targeted intensity is helpful. But with the recent string of 50+ mile MTB races I’ve been doing, the warm ups have been pretty simple. You can find the outline below.

Endurance MTB Warm Up – primarily used for MTB races that are 4-6 hours long

Spin easy for 5 minutes, make sure everything is set; bike, gear, nutrition.

Spend the next 10 minutes slowly increasing the effort from easy spin to tempo. Focus on pedaling complete circles as you increase in both cadence and effort. Focus is the key here.

Spins easy for the remainder of the warm up, maybe put in a couple hard short efforts, but keep the legs going until you get to the line and go.

While these instructions are great, lets dive a little deeper. What should you be thinking and feeling through the warm up? Because your goal is to prepare the body for the effort, and activate the performance systems, we will probably feel this happening. You should feel a wave of heat come over your body as your heart begins to beat faster and the blood start to pump. This usually takes me 5-10 minutes of riding to feel. You want to feel the legs start to loosen up and get into a rhythm. You want to get to the point where the motion of spinning the legs just happens with no though, so you can focus on pedaling hard. And speaking of focus, what should you be focusing on? You want to get your head in the game as much as your body, so start thinking about the race, what will the tactics be, what will the start be like, what do you think will be the best way for you to handle the start will be? Think through your nutrition and gear, remember yourself preparing it and instead of wondering if it’s good to go, tell yourself it is good to go. This will help you clear your mind and focus on the race. Think through the race, visualize happening what you want to happen. I do a lot of visualization especially the night and day before the race, and I like to finish this up some on the day off. Doing this visualization is a way to take all those thoughts and move them from your conscience mind to your unconscious mind. This is important, because in the heat of the race, there isn’t time for thought, only reaction. So you want to inform those reactions as best you can.

Just like a workout, or a course, the more you practice something the better you’ll be at it. So remember that you might not get it right away. But keep at it. The more you practice the more it will work and the better races you’ll have.