How much if any do you do before and after a ride?

..A ride where you need to shower afterwards...

Warm up on bike 2 miles slight decline from home, easy 150 watts, 105 bpm.

200 to 300 watts, 125 bpm until about mile 7. Legs don't really feel ready for power until after about 20 minutes.

Cool down: 200 to 300 watts for final 2 miles, then slow circles in front of home until hr under 100.

Every ride ends with 15 minute yoga routine and or dog walk.

The warmup seems to occur naturally with a slow pace at the start. I don't do a cool down but stretch regularly, particularly hamstrings and quads. I also use a Fit Stick roller to roll out knotted muscles.

If it is cold out I run about 1 mile on the treadmill before I ride. Otherwise nothing.

For races, I'll warm up on a trainer. Typically, the shorter the race, the longer the warmup. For crits, the cooldown is usually a lap or two of softpedaling. For road races, it's generally an easy ride back to the car.

For just rides, I don't have a set warm-up/cool-down regimen. It's usually just taken care of by riding casually through town on the way out to or back from the open road.

Pre & post warm-up warmdown

Quote:

Originally Posted by boshk

How much if any do you do before and after a ride?

..A ride where you need to shower afterwards...

Quote:

Originally Posted by berner

The warmup seems to occur naturally with a slow pace at the start. I don't do a cool down but stretch regularly…

For me, that’s a ride of minimum of ten miles, and my commute is a minimum of14 miles. I only warm up, and then ride at cruising pace to the end. When I first started a training schedule for a century, I noted at what mile I spontaneously realized I felt completely warmed up, i.e. I did not consciously look for it, and it usually occurred at about 6 miles. My basic riding routine is:

no real warmup. i spin mostly downhill on the busier streets and the ride starts at a quiet place maybe 2km away.

warm down? usually roll back home in pain and waiting to collapse

Try to start on flat ground to warm up. Always a stretch routine at the end.

It takes me so long to "warm up" anymore that I rarely put forth the effort. I just HOPE the ride doesn't start off to hard and try and hang on until I'm functioning properly. Always do a mile or so of light spinning to cool down. Seems to pay off the next day.

Most day to day workouts, I do a 20 min warm up & 10 min cool down. I'm pretty religous about this for any ride in which I put out serious efforts, whether an interval workout or just a lively ride with friends. Every now and then if I'm going out on a casual/easy ride, I might not formally warm up or cool down.

For a TT, I do a very specific warm up on a trainer for 35-40 min and a 15-20 min cool down.

Interesting. When I raced, I usually managed to get right about 6 miles in just by riding to the venue. When I moved to the suburbs and had to drive, a lap of Central Park was the same 6 mile warm-up. However, normally it seems to take about half an hour, which even at a modest 14-15 mph is more than 6 miles.

Last Sunday, however, it took more like 40 miles to find my form, but that may be largely attributable to the fact that it was mid 40's when I left the house and I'd insisted on wearing shorts.

Might as well have come out of my own head. Depending on the climate and the terrain, it can take me 20-40 minutes to warm up. I sorta try to limit the output on the last 2-3 miles heading home, but I seem to fail at that more often than not.

I recently added a 10 minute cool down ( or until heart rate drops to a bit above resting rate) after hard rides. I had a scary incident where I blacked out after a 25 mile max effort in very dry/hot conditions..

Apparently I have been lucky the past 29 years of riding and avoided the combination of dehydration and little/no cool down. I always knew that you were supposed to cool down to flush out lactic acid and recover better but it never seemed to matter much and I would be lazy and not always do it.

What happens is all the blood will stay in your legs if you sit down or stand in place and low blood sugar from improper eating before/during the ride and dehydration,thickening the blood, can knock you out. When you are fit your heart rate can drop pretty fast and the heart will not be able to circulate the blood to your head. The bottom line is eat right, stay hydrated and Cool down so the blood can flow back out of your legs to the rest of your body. As long as you do those three things you should not have problem. Please google something like "blacking out after a hard workout" to make sure you get the facts right. Apparently this is fairly common.

I now build in a 2-3 mile cool down on hard efforts. I usually do out and backs so I will go out 14 and back 11 and cool down for 3 or something similar.

When you work out your veins and arteries while dilate to allow more blood to circulate in your system as your heart pumps more blood (otherwise your blood pressure would increase too much). When you stop your workout, for most people, the veins and arteries will contract as the heart slows down, but for some, they stay dilated as the heart slows down. This drops the blood pressure and can lead you to pass out. The "passing out" is the way your system tells you to lie down so the blood can go back to your brain.

I'm the lucky type that his veins and arteries constrict is synchronized with hear rate drop. Had my blood pressure checked as I was doing a stationary bike work out until I maxed out last Winter. My BP stayed at around 140 until I went all out, where it climbed to 180 and HR at 177. My HR dropped nicely with my BP.

I'm 54, I personally never do cool downs, warm ups or stretching. I ride twice daily 20 km which takes me about 45-50 minutes each time, depending on winds.

No warm up. No cool down. No stretching. No muscle rolling. I decide how long and far I want to ride and do that at the pace I feel is right on a given day. From the get-go. Except for a sore prostate on one or two occasions when I needed to optimize my saddle, I have never had a cycling related use injury. Crash injuries sure, but no use injuries.

This is pretty much what I do as well. Never thought about warming up before a ride, prolly would though if I were racing - which I dont.

Mine is quite similar. I find my legs much more effective during the ride if I warm up properly and less soreness later with adequate cool down. Also find that the cool down leaves me in better shape immediately after a long hard ride. Rather than just collapsing, I'm adequately functional.

Same goes for running.

If you don't need to warm up beforehand or cool down after, you aren't doing it right.
Seriously, though, "warming up" is meaningless unless one intends to do something strenuous. Riding around for twelve hours may be exhausting, but it's not necessarily ever strenuous.

Before ...

Eat breakfast
Change into cycling kit
Gather up cycling gear and try to make sure I've got everything
Then either start off from wherever we are, or drive to the start ... and go.


Cycle 100+ km (those are the rides where we need to shower afterwards).


After ...

Shower and maybe stretch a little in the shower
Eat
Carry on with housework or homework or whatever.

I ride with a group that goes pretty hard right out of the gate.
So I do a 20 minute light spin on the trainer before each ride.
No cool down.

I'm generally not riding that hard anyways, but I will take it easier for the first couple of miles. A few miles from home I'll also wind it down a little. Much of this happens naturally due to the nature of my neighborhood (lots of stop signs and brick streets).

I'm warming up right now...