This is really a question for one of the coaches but, perhaps another coach or someone who has studied Kinesiology/Physiology could chime in…
Many workouts have 2 minutes at 50% FTP followed by 2 minutes at 70% then 2 minutes at something close to threshold. Then a couple jumps and a few minutes at 40% for a total of about 10 minutes.
To me, this feels too hard too quick, but maybe it’s mental or most likely my age which is 50. Specifically the first 6 minutes. Physiologically, is there an optimal warm up for the majority of cyclist?
I think they are aiming for 60, 75, 90 minute workouts and that makes many of them with too short warmup/cooldown periods. But also it works better for planing these workouts and putting them into the plan. Imagine, if you want to do a morning workout expecting it to be 1h hour but it turns out to be 1h 9m and you somehow miss your morning bus
You are always welcome to extend warmup/cooldown and there is this new feature which allows doing this on the fly.
You can now extend warmup and cooldown on TR workouts. Currently only on Android I think, but coming to all devices soon. It’s a great feature. Some workouts have to cram a lot into a short time, so being able to tailor them yourself is excellent.
I’m 65, soon 66, and these short warm-ups worried me at first, before I actually did the passes. When I am out with a group, I need significantly more warm-up than the 40-year-olds. Once I started doing the workouts, I was pleasantly surprized to find that the TR warm-ups worked out just fine.
I do prefer a longer cool-down occasionally. I just keep pedalling even though the workout is over. Sometimes I think the cooldowns are way too long … I just want off that $€I# bike, but I do them anyway.
At 47 i need a couple of minutes of ticking the legs over at 100w before i start the warm up at 150-160w. i go into the spindown mode and noodle along for a bit just to give me a gentle start.
I ride Zwift and TR at the same time. I start the ride in Zwift on my PC and start the iPad TR app around the 10 minute mark. Mostly because I also need the extra warm-up and cool-down, but also for the Strava mileage and elevation stats to be included for my yearly numbers
I prioritise finding extra time to add time to my warm up, I normally only need an extra 5-10mins, but my workouts are a lot better for it. Will sometimes use zwift for my warm up and just ride around. For cooldowns I might add a couple mins depending on the workout, more likely on vo2max type workouts.
I would like to add the extra time to the warmup before I start. I am working out on rollers and I have to get off the bike to hit the +5/+10 which I find a bit annoying but it is better than not having the extended WU.
I do a few minutes of active stretching before every session. Most days I don’t add extra time but will add 5 min if my legs feel tight or sluggish. When I started using TR two years ago the warmups felt too short but not so much anymore. I adapted. (Btw I’m 58)
