Warming up - Turbo trainer session with Chris Stirling

Warming up for the Turbo

How well you warm up before a key workout can make or break the session and can also take a lot of trial and error before you get it right. It’s defiantly a personal thing and what works for me may not work for you but hopefully you will find these tips of some use. Experiment and record the results in your training diary so you can find your perfect warm up.

I find a 20min incremental warm up works best for me.

Make sure you have a plan and know what you are going to do during the session; I use HR and RPE for my session so have my zones written on a little note that sits on the beam in front of me. I also have my key workouts on a note so I can have a quick glance when I am suffering and can’t think what to do next. Along side this is a photo for inspiration and a bike splits, avg speeds that I am hoping to achieve through all this hard work, sometimes it helps to have a reminder why we are sat here!

Sort everything out, drink, towels, Garmin, etc etc, I also set the bike up the night before if it’s a morning session and make sure drinks etc are loaded up so you can just roll out of bed and get on the bike if needs be. Make it as easy as possible!

I split the 20mins into 3.

5mins easy pedalling but I make sure I start the session like I mean it, no soft pedalling but a comfortable cadence and resistance to bring my HR up to the bottom of Zone 1.

10mins building to just below my target HR (Some days I just use RPE as HR can be a little slow to respond, we don’t want to go too hard too soon). Once my HR levels out, I increase my cadence (100RPM+ for me) for 30secs to 1min, this should get the HR to rise again. Then I shift up a gear and drop back to a comfortable cadence. I repeat this process till I reach my target. This is also a good way to select the appropriate gearing and resistance level for your main intervals. A little patience with the HR is key, let is rise gradually.

5mins easier pedalling but I like to keep my HR at the top end of Zone 1 for this.

If your time crunched you can trim the easy pedalling and just get straight into the incremental build but I defiantly get better results with them.

You should now be nice and warm, pouring with sweat and ready to smash those intervals, when it gets hard and you want to quit just look up and remember why you are there!

Heart Rate (HR) zones-

http://www.trainingbible.com/joesblog/2009/11/quick-guide-to-setting-zones.html