There are two questions I get asked all of the time by clients, and others, and they are, “how long should I warm up for”, and “how hard should my warm up be”? These are both excellent questions, and some times they are referring to warming up for workouts, and sometimes for races. In this post I will address workouts, and at another time I will write on races.

There are a variety of physiological and psychological reasons why a solid warm up is important. On the physical side, the warm up process does everything from increasing the body temperature to increasing the blood flow to the muscles and joints. Both of these processes are vital for optimal cardiovascular function, and these two examples are just a few of the many physiological gains to be had from an effective warm up. On the psychological side, the warm up allows the athlete to shift their focus from the day’s activities to the workout that is at hand. This is important because a physically taxing session is also very mentally engaging. If you are not able to connect with the session in your head, then you will more than likely not be able to connect with the effort that is being asked.

So how long or hard should you warm up? The answer is this – everyone is different with what they need to get warmed up. It is one of the most subjective things that I have witnessed. Some people are good to go with a 20:00 warm up, and others need 1:00:00 of pedaling to get into the game. Take my workout from the other night for example, I had planned a high cadence and standing start sprint workout. I knew that the standing start sprints were all out explosive efforts, and that was going to require that I be 100% warmed up before I attempted them. To reach the state that felt right, and ready, I needed 1:00:00 of progressively harder pedaling. And then a few lower power and duration sprints to finish off the warm up process. Once I got through the initial easy pedaling portion, I increased the intensity, and then I added the lower power efforts to finish up the process. I completed the entire process by adding a couple minutes of easy pedaling to recover.

These are the guidelines you should follow to get your warm up dialed in to your needs. Remember, this is a very subjective process so start with these suggestions and tweak them to meet your needs and abilities.

1. Phase 1: Start with a very low watt pedal to warm up the joints and muscles. Aim for 10:00 – 45:00 of this type of effort to get the system engaged. This level of effort should bring on a light sweat.
2. Phase 2: After the initial low watt period add another 5:00 – 15:00 of progressively harder pedaling. I do not undertake this block of time as a linear increase in effort. Instead I shoot for something like 30 seconds on and then 1:00 easy, and I increase the workload on each successive block. This progressive effort should take you from a point of a light sweat up to the point of perceived medium hard work.
3. Phase 3: This portion of the warm up is meant to activate the systems that you will be training during the session. This part of the warm up should be 5:00 – 10:00 in length. The example I used above was shorter and less powerful sprints being performed in this block of time compared to my main efforts. If you have long steady state exertions planned you could do a ~3:00 effort @ ~80% of training effort to finish up the warm up process.
4. Phase 4: This is the recovery portion of the warm up. In Phase 3 you have just completed a lower level simulation of the main efforts you will be completing. In this block of time give yourself ~5:00 to recover from the prior effort, and get everything ready for the real work that is ahead.

If you add up the time blocks above I have the minimum time to warm up set  at 25:00, and the maximum set at 1:15:00. But like I stated early, warm up is a very subjective. If you find that you can progress through the 4 phases in 20:00 minutes then get at it. Sometimes, if you are tired and sore, it may take you longer than usual to reach a satisfactory place, and the is fine too. The bottom line is this – a complete and thorough warm up is important for the optimal function of your cardiovascular and musculoskeletal systems. Make sure you take the time to figure out what works best for you, and implement the plan before each and every training session.

– Jason