The Right Way to Warm Up for Every Ride
Warming up before a ride helps you kick things into gear and ward off injury. Get the most out of warmups by going through this five-stage method every time.
Warming up before a ride helps you kick things into gear and ward off injury. Get the most out of warmups by going through this five-stage method every time. – By Christina Bonnington
On a cold day, you wouldn’t take a car straight out of the garage without first warming up its engine. As a cyclist, you’ve got to do the same for your muscles before hammering away at climbs and town-line sprints.
“Trying to push it too hard too early will make the beginning of your ride not feel great, and that will set the tone for the rest of the ride,” says Kendra Wenzel, head coach at Wenzel Coaching and co-author of Bike Racing 101.
Ideally, she says, you want to give your legs at least 15 to 20 minutes to ‘wake up’ before hitting the first big effort of the day, or you could miss out on untapped watts. (Depending on your age and the ride you want to do, warmups can last a full hour—but most experts recommend 15 to 20 minutes as a minimum.)
There’s also the injury prevention factor: Warm muscles simply function better than those pushed into tough efforts right away.
“Cycling is such a low-impact sport that even if a cyclist doesn’t warm up ideally, it’s unlikely that they would become injured just from lack of warm-up at the beginning of a ride. However, if they were going to do something very intense like uphill sprints in big gears, the risk could go up,” says Wenzel.
Here’s how to warm up, not matter what kind of ride you’re tackling.
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