Hi everyone, I recently listened with fascination to episode 62 featuring Chris Blomfield-Brown about time trial warm up, or activation as I’ve learned is the preferred them, and how the right protocol can really boost your performance.
From what I gathered, he described the protocol to be something along those lines:
Start by riding very easy at a high (ish) cadence for about 10-15 minutes
After that you can do between two and three efforts where you slowly ramp up the power over to course of maybe one minute to threshold power and then hold it for about two minutes after that. Once this effort is done, stop completely. The idea being that in this moment the body has more Oxygen than it can consume and so it stores the excess in the muscles. Repeat up to 3 times for optimal muscle oxygenation.
Once this has been completed you stay in the activated state for around 10 minutes so the activation should actually happen fairly close to the start of the event.
He was then asked by Ronan if this can be applied to other sports as well, namely running and rowing, to which he said yes.
At this point my interest as a former high school track (mostly 3k steeplechase and 5k) and cross country (around 3-7k in length) runner was really piqued. Now I’m questioning if I activated in a sub optimal way all my youth of competing.
My activation, we called it warm-up of course, was something as follows:
Maybe an hour or so before a race, we’d start by jogging really easy for about 20 minutes. We usually did this in full track suits including jackets, even in summer. Seeing to TDF riders activate with cooling vests on and hearing Chris say that you want to keep your core as cool as possible, I’d file that as the first mistake.
After that we’d do some stretching and some drills
Finally some strides. Those would normally be some acceleration runs
We’d be finished typically with around 15 to 20 minutes to the race start.
My thinking after hearing the episode is that we should not have worn the full track suits, finished the activation much closer to the start and maybe even start with the drills as to not have a lot of time in between the easy running and the strides.
Does anyone have with running or cycling activation protocols? I’d be also curious to hear any past experiences.
Former middle distance runner - I was thinking the same thing when listening. Add it to all the things other things I did wrong back then. While I didn’t completely waste my talent, I certainly left a lot on the table
Yeah, I’ve had those same thoughts over the last years. From most likely running the easy stuff way too fast, jumping from 60km per week to over 100 during a training camp and wondering why I got injured to probably being 10 kg underweight …
Quick little update. I’ve now tried the protocol three times in total and I think I’m sold. The first two times were for a Strava segment hunting session on my way home from work, the third time was for the last time trial of the season.
Here’s what I’ve settled on:
Start with 15 min, 125 average heart rate, 88 average cadence and 157 Watts NP
2 min @ 153 avg heart rate, 92 average cadence, 231 Watts NP
2 min break with getting off the bike
2 min @ 151 avg. heart rate, 92 average cadence, 221 Watts NP
2 min break with getting off the bike
2 min @ 146 avg. heart rate, 83 average cadence, 210 Watts NP
1:30 min break with getting off the bike
Since I did the warm up on the road in the absence of having rollers, I rode to the start line really relaxed for about 3 minutes and had about 6:30 min to my staring time.
The time trial itself went really well, I did 301 Watts NP for 22:24 min, which is very close to my all time best. Considering that I did not have time for a lot of training beforehand, I am really happy with the result.
To paraphrase what was said in the episode “I did not really feel the activation, I just had really good legs“
Thank you for the update. I was hoping that this thread would pick up some life and to hear others’ anecdotes. I find the “complete break” concept quite disarming and weird, especially when on the road and having to find a safe place, pull up, wait, get going again. Would just slow pedalling/glass cranking have the same effect?
That’s definitely a question for Chris Blomfield-Brown, so I can only speculate, so here it goes :
From what I understood from the episode, the idea behind the complete stops is as follows; there’s a supply and demand kind of relationship between what the muscles ask from the respiratory system and what the respiratory system can supply. There is also a lag between when more (or less) Oxygen is requested from the muscles and when it’s supplied from the lungs. The idea now behind the stops is that as you do the 2 minute interval ramp, you’re requesting more and more Oxygen. Initially, we have a situation of high demand and low supply. That’s why you should also ramp up slowly as to not get into the situation where the lack of Oxygen leads to you using anerobic energy to bridge the gap.
Eventually, your rate and depth of breath increase enough to supply the requested Oxygen. We now have a situation of high demand and high supply, everything’s great.
Once you stop completely, you have a very small demand for Oxygen but because the respiratory system lags behind, still a rather high supply. As a reaction, your body then stores the extra Oxygen in the muscles which can then later be used for extra power.
Now, to finally (speculatively) answer your question, I’d guess that soft pedaling would still kind of have the same effect. You’d still go from a high Oxygen demand situation to a low Oxygen demand abruptly. This should, in principle still have the desired effect, although probably not to the same extent as stopping completely would.
As always, the only way to answer these kind of questions would be to actually test them but I currently don’t have an Oxygen saturation sensor on hand
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