Originally Posted by
Iride01
I'm not sure what either of you are saying about warm ups. but for me, I don't do them. I just get on the bike and ride. The only thing going really hard in the first five minutes of a ride has done is to keep me from going hard during the second five minutes.
I do find now that I have a PM that I can put out more power for longer intervals IE, 60 second power, after I've been riding for over 90 minutes than I can after only 20 minutes on the bike. And even before getting a PM I was finding that some of my PR's were also after riding for quite a while.
So if warm up is 60 to 90 minutes of riding, then I guess I am doing a warm up.
This is very much what I'm talking about.
During the week, because of time constraints, I can only ride on the trainer, indoors, and then I have a maximum 90 window. Obviously, I can't really do a 60 minute fitness test with a 60 minute warmup in only 90 minutes. So, the warmup has to accomplish that, what 60 minutes of riding on the road would do for me, in 20 minutes - not just warming up the muscles, but priming the cardiovascular system. The warmup workout I mentioned has brief efforts that ramp up from 50% of FTP to 100% of FTP, a 30 second effort at about 110% of FTP, and a couple 'sprints' at 150% and one at about 200% of FTP, but those are literally 8 second efforts. They get the system warmed and humming along, without burning any matches.
I tried once, doing a ramp test with only 10-15 minutes of light spinning as a warmup, no more than 80% of FTP. In the test, when my HR entered the high 150s, I felt sick. Not like throwing up, just distinctly unwell, and I bailed on the ramp way early. I'd had a similar experience one time, trying to set a new PM on a 5 mile segment with no warmup. I figured I'd warm up within the effort, since the start was flat with a nice little dip after half a mile. I was on pace to beat that PR, when, as my HR entered the high 150s, I had felt that same 'unwell' feeling. I slowed down, missed the PR by a couple seconds. It only took a minute or two for me to feel fine again pedaling at lower power, so I kept on with the ride. Later in the ride, I was pushing hard up a slight gradient where I like to go hard, and ran my HR up to 170 with no problem - going up a similar gradient to the one where I'd felt sick at 150-something.
So, after that experience on the ramp test, the next week, I did a separate warmup of about 20 minutes including some efforts above FTP and a hard, but brief sprint, and I had no problem driving past the 150s. Lesson learned - warmup, for me at least, has to be more than just 20 minutes of spinning below FTP.