Poppit

Has anyone got any suggestions for a 2k pursuit warm up? I usually use rollers and my track bike and do a couple of steady activation sets and then a 20 minute standard British Cycling warm up finishing about 30mins before I’m due to race and then just keep warm. I’m feeling that it isn’t a high enough intensity and because of the relative shortness of the event I’d be better with a warm up that is a bit more of sprint or 500m TT type.

Baby Puke

What is a "standard British Cycling warm up"?

Poppit

https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/zu...TE_WARM_UP.pdf

Baby Puke

Ah, ok, thanks!

SyntaxMonstr

Yeah, that one is designed for road TT's. I generally do:

5 min easy
8 min ramp to hard
2 min easy
3 min 3x 6" sprints
3 min recovery
10" revout
8 min recovery
10" revout
5 min mental prep and wind down

Obviously it's different strokes for different folks and I'm a sprinter but you definitely want something resembling a maximal effort in there.

jsk

I'm a minimalist when it comes to warm-ups. About 10 minutes usually (unless it's really cold out). Mostly easy spinning to get the muscles warm, and some high cadence bursts to get the CNS fully firing. Any hard efforts are kept extremely short. IMHO Long warm-ups just make you tired.

Might want to give this a listen (talks about warmup in the context of both track and road): Fast Talk, ep. 16: Forget what you thought you knew about warm-ups | VeloNews.com

carleton

This is where I think a PM could be very useful (for sprinters as well as enduros).

It seems that every track has a warmup routine that most participate in. Then every coach has a warmup routine that they have for their athletes. Using a PM, I noticed that the normal warmup for some would often be overkill for me and I'd tap into my race "bank account" and use energy that I would like to reserve for racing. Where some would need 45 minutes of warmup, I would be ready for a full-gas effort in, say, 12-15 minutes. Also, using a PM, I also noticed that I only have so many repeatable max wattage efforts available during the race day (say a sprint tournament), and after that things decrease at a certain rate. So, using 1 or 2 of those during warmups are a waste.

This is why I consider a power meter a "fatigue meter", to let one know when things are not the max that's possible.

I think that we should pay attention to our particular individual warmup needs just as we pay attention to individual fit or gearing options. I know some that are ready to race after 10-15 minutes of warmup and others that don't wake up for at least 45 minutes.

I recall one Masters Nationals where my best flying 200M effort was during warmup and the one during the event was a fraction of the speed/wattage. I was pretty pissed about that.

topflightpro

I think warm up is a pretty personal thing. What works for some, doesn't work for others.

For long events, I like to just roll around in a super easy gear to get my legs moving. I may throw a couple of short hard efforts in, but I don't really need them.

For sprint stuff, I know through experience that I tend to do best on my second or third effort, so it helps to get a good hard 200 effort in during warm up. BUT, that only really helps if I'm going to be doing my race shortly thereafter. If I am going to be sitting around for an hour waiting for my turn, it doesn't help. So, why waste the energy and burn the match?

Poppit

Thanks everyone for the info, I’ll see what I can piece together