The Art of the Warm-Up, Part 4: Sample Warm-Ups for Endurance and Climbing Profiles

Our extensive series on warming up now turns to the practical matter at hand: creating warm-ups for your cycling classes. We think you’ll be delighted with the next several chapters of this informative series.

Part 1 asked you to consider if you were warming your riders up properly for your rides.

Part 2 looked at the physiological variables.

Part 3 covered the disconnect between perceived exertion and heart rate.

We now put it all together with eleven different warm-ups for thirteen different scenarios. Yes, that includes thirteen profile ideas! We will break these down into sub-threshold rides (endurance), threshold rides (such as field tests and time trials), and HIIT rides (intervals above threshold).

That’s a lot of content, so we will talk about them in separate posts. 

This chapter, part 4, describes how your training objective for the class will help determine your warm-up. In this segment, we provide the first set of profiles that are sub-threshold rides, such as endurance and longer rides, cruise intervals at tempo and sweet-spot intensity, as well as longer climbs (over 8 minutes). 

Part 5 will comprise threshold profiles (longer threshold intervals, field tests, and time trials), and part 6 will include high-intensity profiles. Part 7 will be a summary with a few additional tips on creating your warm-up, including what NOT to do.

Sample warm-ups for various profiles

Now that we’ve given you the basics for the Art of Warming Up, let’s examine sample warm-ups. Keeping in line with cycling and endurance coaches, I break down each training session into three sections: the warm-up, the main set, and the cool-down. In this series, we have eleven sample warm-ups for thirteen different profiles of all intensities.

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