Team SKY Warm-up

By Simon Whiten

Adopting the Team SKY Warm-up may see you performing better this winter

There are a number of winter scenarios where warming-up properly is essential, whether you are racing or training, so why not learn from the best?

Winter road-circuit racing is booming in popularity as amateur riders discover that, unlike high mileage pros they don’t need an off-season to recover and that it’s a great way to maintain a bit of condition without digging too deep. Of course cyclocross riders have known this for years and there’s a few similarities between the two. Both events are short – about one hour – and both are relatively intense. So whilst they are great training, being ready for the effort is very important; a proper warm-up will have you ready to race, not just ride round.

Even more intense is winter track racing. A proper warm-up here is essential as you will have zero time to warm-up during the event.

Also with the mild winter weather here in the UK about to come to an end, we may all be forced indoors for longer soon, spending more and more time on the turbo trainer, but here riders tend to concentrate their thoughts on the workout they are about to undertake itself, and rarely give much thought to the warm-up, even though warming-up properly may help to maiximise the effectiveness of the following workout.

It used to be that an easy spinning, 10-minute warm-up sufficed but that is no longer considered to be enough so here’s how the best do it. You may have seen this warm-up protocol from British Cycling and Team SKY before in the context of time-trials, but it is well worth using for winter workouts and races as well. It transforms your warm-up from being a ‘bit of a spin’ to a proper integral part of your training regime or race preparation.

Being properly set-up for the efforts you are about to undertake will improve your ability to perform them, reduce the chances of injury and allow you to train harder. Just remember it is winter; wear plenty of layers that you can easily remove as you warm-up. Knees are particularly vulnerable in winter, whether outside or just sat in front of you your turbo training cooling fan, so an extra set of knee warmers won’t do you any harm.

This is the Standard Team SKY Warm-Up:

5 min light spinning
8 min progressive to Zone 5 – gradually increase the effort until reach maximum power output without sprinting
2 min easy – to recover from the above
2 min to include 3 x 6 second sprints to fully prime all the musculature involved in cycling
3 mins easy – to recover from the above before the race start

Note that this is identical to the British Cycling warm-up detailed below:

TimeCadenceInstruction/Focus

Here’s an interesting video from SKY’s Shaun Stephens talking about the warm-up in context of time trials.

Team SKY

British Cycling