Warm Up Right For Your Triathlon Workouts

TriDot Podcast Episode 318

Warm Up Right For Your Triathlon Workouts

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Vanessa Ronksley: Welcome to the podcast, one and all. We are talking about something every athlete does, or at least what every athlete should do. The warm-up. Before you dive into that main set, or hammer out intervals, the warm-up is what preps your body to perform and helps you get the most out of your training. But how much does it really matter? Do we always need to warm-up, and how do those warm-ups change for swimming, biking, kicking, and running? I'm Vanessa, your average triathlete with elite level enthusiasm. And helping us decode all of that today are two of our amazing, and fun, TriDot coaches, Brady Hoover and Brandy Ramirez, both with experience that spans years, and they always help athletes get ready to train strong and achieve their goals. As usual, we will start things off with our warm-up question, head into the main set, and then wind things down with a cool down, where one of these fabulous coaches will answer a question from one of our listeners. Lots of good stuff. Let's get to it.

Announcer: This is the TriDot Podcast, the triathlon show that brings you world class coaching with every conversation. Let's get started with today's warm-up.

Vanessa Ronksley: Here we are on the warm-up, and I think that it is super fun to start the warm-up podcast with my favorite part of the podcast, which is the warm-up question. So today, what I want to know is if your warm-up had a theme song, what would it be? Brandy, let's go to you first.

Brandy Ramirez: Well, it's funny that you say that, Vanessa, because I'm not going to create a theme song, I actually have a theme song for my warm-ups. It's a song that I found a long time ago, and not necessarily even a song. It's called Rise and Swim (Welcome to the Grind) by Colin Blair. And so this is a go-to for me. It really motivates me. It pushes me. It tells me not to be humble. It tells me about that inner voice inside, that's trying to bring me down, and just rise above it. So that is actually my go to theme music for my warm-ups.

Vanessa Ronksley: I'm getting shivers. That is so great. And you legitimately listen to this every time you do a session.

Brandy Ramirez: I listen to it when I do a session. I listen to it when I don't want to do a session. I have sent it to all of my athletes. I tell them, “Let it bring you inspiration.” And I mean, I get into this, I sit in a dark room, I put my headphones on, I blare it as loud as I can, and I really get into this. It is an amazing motivational tool that I use, and I hope everybody else can enjoy it, too.

Vanessa Ronksley: That is fabulous. Thank you so much for sharing your song. And, Brady, let's toss this one over to you. What is your theme song for your warm-up? If it had a theme?

Brady Hoover: Now that you say this, I'm thinking of two, and it's, “Oh, which one is it? Which one is it?” Because they're both, in my opinion, awesome. I'm thinking like, Korn Blind. If anyone knows that song, it starts off very slow, quiet, get a couple riffs on the guitar, because I start my warm-ups nice and slow, and then it builds an intensity, just like the song does. So when I'm trying to blank on his name, Davis there, when he says, “Are you ready?” It's like, okay, now I'm into the plyometric version of my warm-up after I've done my dynamic stuff. So I would have to go with that. Or Enter Sandman by Metallica. Same thing. Starts off nice and slow, and then gets into it.

Vanessa Ronksley: I think that it's very true that you learn something new every day. I did not know that you were a Korn fan. That's so crazy. I love it.

Brady Hoover: Jonathan Davis. I knew it.

Vanessa Ronksley: There you go. That's awesome. So the heavy stuff is what gets you going, which is, I mean, surprising, because I don't think much needs to get you going, Brady, because you're so exuberant in life. My theme song, for my warm-up, it's by an artist whose name is Madame Gandhi, and she's this pro female, really, she's a true artist. Her music is not that popular, I don't think, but the song that I think about all the time is called Top Knot Turn Up. The lyrics are, this song is about getting the work done, hair up in a bun, that's the most fun. And I always have a top knot, aside from swimming, because that wouldn't be very aerodynamic. So I think that this one is definitely my theme song for the cool down. To all of our audience, whether you are watching this on YouTube or Spotify, drop your answers in the comments. And if you're just listening in on your favorite podcast platform of choice, go to any of our socials and let us know if your warm-up has a theme song. And if it does, what would that be? I can hardly wait to see what you have to say.

Announcer: Let's go.

Vanessa Ronksley: So here we are, with two fabulous coaches. We are going to dive into the warm-up, and the purpose, and why we would want to do a warm-up, and if we can skip it all together. So let's kick this off, today, with what's your personal pre-workout ritual? Are you the type of person who meticulously goes through every single mobility move, or do you just grab your goggles and go? Brady, what's your take on this one?

Brady Hoover: Well, you know me, because we've traveled together. I'm up bright and early. So yes, I wake up naturally at 4:30 in the morning, which is a blessing and a curse. But, on the tail end of it, I usually fall asleep at about 8pm, watching TV with the wife. So my morning routine, I need a cup of coffee in the morning. I don't start my workout until 5:30. That's when I got to get it done. So that gives me a good hour to sip on coffee, grab the foam roller, just lightly foam roll the muscles, make my banana pudding. Thanks to Jessica Baxter, she gave me a great idea there, because I don't need something heavy, but I do need a little something. Happy to elaborate on that pudding. And then I'm ready to go out, ready to tackle my warm-up, and get out the door, and I'm going outside, or hop on the bike that's in the garage, or drive off to the pool.

Vanessa Ronksley: Awesome. I think those are fabulous ways to start your morning. Brandy, how about you? How do you get into the groove for your sessions?

Brandy Ramirez: I think it really depends on the session. So if I'm going to run, I have to get my run done first thing in the morning. And I will, firstly, admit that when it comes to the run, I really don't do a pre-warm-up. My pre-warm-up is walking around the house, getting my stuff done, getting my Carbo-Fuel in me, and my pre-workout, and then down to the curb, and I start my run. When it comes to my swim, that's different. I have to drive to a pool. I don't have a 25-yard pool in my backyard, unfortunately. And that one is very ritualistic for me. I have just a certain way that I get into the gym, what I do, when I shower, when I get into the pool, that one is very much a ritualistic training session. And then when it comes to my bike, 90% of the time I'm on my peloton indoors. And so I would say I don't really have a ritual for that either, other than setting up my hydration on the bike, and then getting dressed, and climbing up.

Vanessa Ronksley: Okay, so it sounds like you're both pretty particular about how you go about doing your warm-ups, if they exist or if they don't. I think that I'm curious about what is the purpose of the warm-up? What's actually happening in our body, when we take that extra time, before we get into the main set? So Brady, let's go to you for this one.

Brady Hoover: Sure, happy to tackle this one. So there's a lot. I could go very deep on that, I'll spare you. But it's what a warm-up, what a proper warm-up will do, instead of going from 0 to 60, is it's going to gradually increase the heart rate, get circulation, and blood flow, and oxygen-rich blood flowing to the working muscles. It's going to elevate your muscle temperature. So think of a rubber band. And a rubber band, especially on a cold day, you stretch it, it doesn't stretch very far. If you hold that rubber band in your hand, and keep it nice and warm, it's going to stretch much more easily. That's exactly what's happening with your muscles. As the internal temperature of the body rises, it's going to boost enzyme activities. It's going to start producing, the body's going to produce synovial fluid, which is like oil lubrication for the joints. It also activates the neuromuscular system. So it's waking up all the senses, the hormones, getting the body really ready. I've noticed that as I get older, the warm-up is even more important than my younger days. Or I coach my kids soccer team, and they're a bunch of 6, 7, and 8 year olds, and they don't really need a warm-up, though I give it to them in game fashion. Like, we'll play Red Light, Green Light, where I can control how quickly they're moving, and then we'll move up more into more explosive, fun games to get them ready for practice. On the hormonal side, if you were to just go out cold and start running or start cycling, you might get this big dose of cortisol, like our fight or flight hormone, which is going to skyrocket the heart rate, give you labored breathing, and you'll say, “What's going on? I'm running at my Zone 2 pace. My heart rate's up in, like, Zone 3 or Zone 4.” That's because you didn't give the body proper time to warm-up. And with a proper warm-up, we're going to be able to go out and do an interval hard, and we're going to be better at shuttling lactic acid out of the bloodstream because of that warm-up. You've taken the time to prime the body to turn that mechanism on. And without that, you take an athlete’s 5k, for instance, their first mile might be fast. Their slowest mile will be mile two, right, because their body has to slow down for all these processes to turn on and start happening. And then their third mile’s, their fastest. So their second mile is actually their slowest, as a result of not properly warming up. In short, it warms up the heart, the muscles, the joints, the brain, and the hormones, and gets everything ready and in unison.

Vanessa Ronksley: I think that if I could throw on a brain exploding emoji right now, that's what would be happening, because I'm a really scientific person, but I clearly do not know anything about what's happening during the warm-up on a physiological level. Thank you, Brady. I think you've changed my mind about how much I'm going to be warming up in the future. That's pretty incredible. That's amazing. Brandy, so, I mean, taking into account what Brady has said here, do you think warming up is more about preparing to perform, or then preventing injury, or do you think it might be a little bit of both?

Brandy Ramirez: It's absolutely a little bit of both. So if you want your body to perform, you need to let it warm-up, nice and slowly, so that you can get that performance out of it. Also, if you don't want to injure yourself, you need to allow the muscles, and everything around the muscles, the joints, the heart, all of it has to warm-up. For me, I love Brady's analogy of the rubber band, but a lot of times I will say it's like a car. So I'm a little bit older than Brady, but for those of us that were around in the 80s, you went out and you warmed up your car in the morning, and you let it start to idle, warm-up all of it. If you didn't, you went out, and you got into your car, and you turned it on, and as you start to go, you don't have a lot of power. You have this chugging starting to happen in your vehicle, and then probably about 10, 15 minutes into it, the car is ready to go, and you can get the performance out of it that you want. That's exactly what's happening within the body. So if you're not allowing that warm-up to happen, you're like that car from the 80s, and you're just chugging along until it gets where it needs to be.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah, that makes total sense. And I think, in terms of the performance aspect, if you watch a basketball player from the NBA, and they're doing a free throw, every time, every single movement prior to that free throw is calculated, and it's intentional, and it's like they're mentally preparing their mind to execute that skill with the exact same precision every single time. And I think it's a mental aspect, too, right? They're preparing themselves mentally to perform that specific skill. And so I think when we take all of this together, we've talked about the preventing of the injury, as well, but if we need to do a warm-up, and our body is expecting that warm-up prior to every session, we're also preparing our mind for what's coming next. And we're making this little marriage between the performance aspect and the mental aspect, coming together to create this lovely execution of a session that will, hopefully, be perfect. So clearly, as we've already discovered in the first, what, 10 minutes here, warm-ups are doing a lot more than we sometimes give them credit for. But this is leading to another question that I've heard a lot, here. So do we really always need to warm-up? Are there situations where we can skip it, like an easy recovery day? Brandi, what do you think?

Brandy Ramirez: I think sometimes you can skip it. And with that being said, you can only skip it if the body's already warmed up already. So for Brady, he wakes up at 4, an ungodly time, 4 o' clock in the morning, but then he's up for a little bit of time. He's up, he's mobile, his body's moving around. He has woken up. He's drinking his coffee, he's eating his pudding. So there are times where you can skip it. I would say it would depend on the day that you are doing, the time of day that you are doing the workout. You never want to just get out of bed, cold, and hit a training session. But if you've been up for a few hours, and you've been doing things, if you're a mom and you're chasing your kids from point A to point B, that's a warm-up. So if time does not permit, and you can't get a 10-minute warm-up in, and you've already been up for a while, then I say that, yes, you can skip it sometimes.

Vanessa Ronksley: Okay, good to know. Good to know. Now, Brady, how can an athlete tell if their body needs more warm-up time than what might actually be prescribed in their training sessions? So, for example, in TriDot, there's very specific warm-ups that are prescribed for athletes. And what if an athlete is like, “I'm not sure if I'm really warmed up?” What would you say if-- how would they be able to tell if they're not quite ready to get going?

Brady Hoover: Yeah. So it's looking, good question, it's looking for that labored breathing. Am I going out, let's just take a run, for instance, and I'm going out and my heart rate's low. It's in Zone 2. But my breathing feels like it's labored, like I'm breathing at a Zone 3 effort. It's like, “Oh, maybe I'm just not properly warm, warmed up enough.” Or it's an ungodly hour in the morning. No. But if the muscles are still feeling tight and pushing back on you a little bit, it could be a sign that either you're fatigued or you just need a little bit more warm-up. But the body is really, it's going to really dictate and really tell. You know, in TriDot, you're going to have a 10-minute Zone 2 warm-up before your intervals start. Or on the bike, you know, there'll be some intervals in there. But prior to that, you're doing what the TriDot prescribed warm-up is, which it tells you to go, if it's a run, run for two to three minutes, and then do these running drills. So all of a sudden, you're 15 minutes in. If you need a little bit of extra time, and you're pushing the workout to your watch, let's just pause your watch, give yourself a couple more minutes, maybe throw in a stride or two in there, to get that heart rate up. Then go back to Zone 1 pace, let that heart rate come down, the breathing come down, and then see how you feel. Reassess how you feel. But at the end of the day, the body's really going to tell you if it needs a little bit more time, or if you feel sharp and ready to take it.

Vanessa Ronksley: I think that's a really important aspect to note, because I know a lot of us are so time crunched, and so we will just go to do exactly what's prescribed. No more, no less. But what you're saying here is that it's really important to listen to the cues that your body might be giving you on a specific day, and say, “Hey, maybe I need to pay attention more to what my body is saying to me before I start the main set.” And then carry on, if you think that you're good to go. And then maybe take a little pause, like you had said, if you need to. If you think that you might need a little bit more. Brandy, I'm curious, now, in terms of ages of athletes, do warm-up times differ? What do you think about a younger athlete needing less of a warm-up versus an older athlete, maybe, potentially, needing more of a warm-up? Just as Brady had mentioned, you know, earlier with the little kids in the soccer not needing very much of a warm-up at all. Do you think that there's a difference between these age groups and the warm-up times?

Brandy Ramirez: I think there's so much that goes into that, and I'm never really one to want to put labels on age, especially now that I just had a birthday, and I'm a little older. So I would say it really just depends. You can have an athlete who's 26, who has a previous injury, and they really need to focus more on their warm-up, compared to somebody who's a little bit older, who has no previous injuries, and their body responds to a 10-minute warm-up. So I think it's, for me, I would say it's not so much about the age, it's about the athlete in general.

Vanessa Ronksley: Good call. Yeah, I love that. And bringing in that age-old, no pun intended, of course, age-old, TriDot answer of it depends. That makes total sense. I get that. And I guess that this kind of ties into intensity, as well. So does our warm-up need to change depending on how intense the session is, or is it fine if it's just similar right across the board? Brandy, what do you think about intensity and warm-ups?

Brandy Ramirez: I would say the intensity of the training session itself will dictate the warm-up necessity. If you just have an easy, Zone 2, 30-minute run, does that mean that you have to be there for 15 minutes, going through every single warm-up that we have in our amazing database? To that, I would say, no. You could pick two of them, and have a shorter warm-up session, and hit an easy Zone 2. So it, for me, it definitely does depend on the training session itself, what the workload is for your main set.

Vanessa Ronksley: Okay, and Brady, can you give us an example of how a warm-up might differ for an easy endurance session versus a high intensity interval workout? What would you do, specifically, or tell your athletes to do, in that situation?

Brady Hoover: Yeah, great question. So when it comes to the swim, it's jumping in the water, increasing the cadence, increasing the kick, swim slow to warm-up and ease into it. But the intensity of what they're doing, maybe, say, 25s, or 50s at, I want them building to whatever the prescribed effort is of that workout. So if it's Zone 4, I want them to take a couple of 50s and build up to that Zone 4 pace. If it's Zone 5, I want them building to an all-out effort at the end of the tail end of that 50, so that it's not something that the body has not seen yet. They've seen it briefly in the warm-up. And the same token, let's take a run, like the interval is one at Zone 5. That is a personal favorite of mine. When I see that, I go right down to the track. And my warm-up for that is significantly different than a warm-up for a Zone 2. Zone 2, I might do, a Zone 2 run, I might do the warm-up as I'm running. And as I'm running, meaning I'm like, I look at what my assigned drills are, or sometimes I go, well, what does my body need, today? My gate seems kind of short, today. My stride is not that long. I need some shuttles, I need some bounds. I'll do that in that first 10 minutes. I'll kind of sprinkle that in, those changes of paces. And then I'll just go right into the Zone 2 effort for the rest of the way, watching the heart rate. That interval workout that I'm doing on the track, I am starting out with something dynamic, high kicks, leg swings, sweeping hamstring, dynamic exercises. You're sweeping past your ankle, stretching your hamstring, not holding it, but sweeping through. You can feel that stretch briefly. And then I'm upping the intensity of the warm-up to something plyometric right before I'm getting ready to actually do that 10-minute run. And then I'm also sprinkling in couple of quick efforts to get up to that Zone 5, that 5k, or just faster than 5k pace. Then I'll go about the remaining five minutes of the warm-up, and then my body is primed and ready. So it does change depending on the intensity of the warm-up. I didn't speak about the bike yet, but if you're doing the bike workouts, those intervals that come in that warm-up are specific to the workout at play. So if it is a Zone 5 workout, like 30 x 30s, for instance, you're going to see some short 15-second intervals at that effort, so that’s something your body has not seen when you actually get to that.

Vanessa Ronksley: Awesome. Yeah, that was very thorough description of what to do here. And something that I like that you talked about was movement and intensity. And then you've described some of the drills that you actually do. So I'm curious, Brady, let's just carry on right here. There's a debate, right? There's a debate between dynamic versus static warm-ups. And we've shifted more into the dynamic realm, I feel like, in the present time. So what's the difference between dynamic and static? And then what do you think that endurance athletes need most of?

Brady Hoover: Another good question. So dynamic is doing a stretch, but it's not holding the stretch. So let's try to give you a visual. I mentioned the hamstring sweeps, but that's a hard one to give a visual of. Let's take, we're setting up in a wide stance. We're not going to do a split, but we got a wide stance, and we're taking our left arm, bending over, stretching our hamstring, touching our left toe. And then we immediately come out of that, and then we go, maybe it's a 1-second down, touch that right hand to left toe, come back out. And you do a few of those, that is dynamic. Things like walking knee hugs, where you do a high knee, grab your knee, pull it into your chest, and then immediately release it. You're doing it in a walking format. That would be like an example of a dynamic warm-up, or dynamic stretch, if you will. Where static, or static stretches, you're holding it for 15, 20, 30, 40, a minute. That is a static stretch. Prior to a workout, the science shows that dynamic is better than static. They studied some runners, don't quote me on the study, but I've read it. They were collegiate athletes, I believe, and they were running hill repeats, hill efforts. They had one group static stretch to warm-up and another group dynamic stretch. And those that did the dynamic stretches actually performed better. It wasn't much of a drop in percentage of output. But those that did the static stretch, their output was 1% less from their baseline, because their muscles were too stretchy. Now, I say that, that's in a perfect world, but if you're rehabbing an injury, you just typically have tight calves, or tight hamstrings, in general, you may need to hold a static stretch for a little period of time to stretch that and loosen that up enough. But in a perfect world, dynamic is better before. If you have tight calves, maybe you have to statically stretch those. Sometimes my calves are cranky, so I actually have to, I go in 5 minutes and the calves are starting to tighten up. I got to statically stretch those. They need that, whereas the rest of the muscles, I can get away with not. So I'm speaking from personal experience, there, especially as I age.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah, I feel you on that one. And I just want to ask you, in terms of warming up, do you think that using a foam roller is a better alternative to warming up that tight calf that you might have versus the static stretch? Or is there a trade-off in using a tool like that to help warm the area up?

Brady Hoover: I love the foam roller. I always recommend to my athletes, if they're stretching and they have time for it. I say, if you don't have time for both, stretch. If you have time for both, you want to foam roll and then stretch, because that foam rolling kicks the kinks out. You might feel a tight spot that you don't feel walking around. You go, “Oh, I need to sit on that for 30 seconds and apply gentle pressure to see if I can get that to roll it out.” I say a foam roller is like a rolling pin on-- you're trying to make cookies or something. You're trying to roll that out. What that foam roller is doing, is it's helping to restore our muscles to its natural length, and then we can go ahead and stretch it. So, yeah, in a perfect world, foam roll first, and then head outside for your workout. The problem with my calf is, usually, I don't know until I'm a few minutes down the road, my foam rollers back, I don't want to turn around.

Vanessa Ronksley: And so if you do, just let's carry on with that, if you do feel your calf a few moments down the road, would you actually take time to stop and then give it a little bit of a static stretch there? Is that something you would recommend?

Brady Hoover: Absolutely, yeah.

Vanessa Ronskley: Okay, cool.

Brady Hoover: It feels better afterwards. Or you feel like the hamstrings are getting tight, because what's going to happen is, let’s say if the hamstrings are a little tight, you feel like, I need to stretch it, but I don't want to stop. What can happen without that stop is the tension over time builds up more and more on the muscles, and simply stopping for a second releases that tension, allows circulation to go about the body. Whereas the muscles start to get tense, it could pinch on some nerves, it could turn into some sciatic pain, if it's not addressed, or an all-out muscle cramp.

Vanessa Ronksley: Awesome. Well, that's good to know. So it's okay, everyone, to stop your watch, and stop in the middle of your session, if you feel you need to relieve some of that tension, or pressure, that's building up in your muscles. Good stuff. I think that I'd like to get a little bit practical here and then look at, I know we've talked a little bit about what to do for a swim, bike, run, but I do want to dive a little bit deeper into that. So let's start in the water. Brandy, what are your go-to tips for an effective swim warm-up? And, I'm really curious, do you suggest warming up on deck before hopping in the water, or is it just okay to dive in and get going with a swim-specific warm-up?

Brandy Ramirez: I would never suggest just diving in and swimming. No. The yoga instructor in me is going to say, definitely do some stretching on dry land, before you get into that water, for sure. And it also, everything is always going to be dependent on how much time you have. So if you have just all the time in the world to make sure that you're stretching appropriately before you get in that water, then I say, that's great. If you're like a lot of us, who are juggling so many different hats, and your time is very limited, then I, personally, when I get into the water, taking the shower, doing all the stuff, then getting into the water, I'm going to use the pool wall for a lot of my stretches. So cross body arm stretches, stretching out my shoulder, putting that arm against the wall, and just really leaning into it. I stretch out my calves on the wall inside the pool. So I put my toes up, my heel down, and then I press my hips into the wall of the pool. It's going to stretch out my calves before I even take off. So I use the pool itself, not just the water, for a lot of my stretches that I'm going to do before I even take off.

Vanessa Ronksley: That's an awesome idea, actually. I’ve never thought about it. Now, I'm going to ask you a really vulnerable question here, Brandy. Do you actually warm-up before you get in the pool?

Brandy Ramirez: Not when I'm-- no. The answer to that is no. So my warm-up, and I'm sorry, but a lot of women get this warm-up. My warm-up is usually trying to undress. We're taking off that sports bra, right, we're stretching all over the place in the gym, in the locker room. That's where we get a lot of our warm-up. So, no, I don't. And it's also because of time. I don't have a lot of time with my 11-year-old, and work, and everything else.

Vanessa Ronksley: I hear you.

Brandy Ramirez: If there's a good yoga class before, then, yeah, I'll hit that yoga class before I jump into the water.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah, I do have to admit, as well, that I think out of the three disciplines, the one that I'm least likely to do a pre-warm-up, before the actual warm-up, is the swim. And I don't know about everyone else, but the walk from my car all the way down to where I have to get to go to the pool, it's a good five to seven minutes of intensity. And then you have to put in, as you said, Brandy, all the things that have to happen in the changing room. So it takes a good 10 to 12 minutes for me to get from car to pool. So I classify that as my warm-up. Sorry to all of you coaches out there, who might be listening, and saying, “That is not good advice, Vanessa.” But anyways.

Brady Hoover: I’m guilty of that.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah, okay.

Brandy Ramirez: I'm very diligent though, about stretching in the water. Once I get into the pool, I'm going to do my stretching. I'll even do a couple warm-up laps, and then I come back to the wall, and if anything's not feeling good at that moment, I'm going to do the stretching again.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah, absolutely. I do the same thing. I will hop in the pool, do a hundred meters or so, and then assess and see what needs to happen before starting the actual warm-up that's prescribed. Let's move, here, into the bike. So in TriDot workouts, for example, there's a pretty standard warm-up, and sometimes, there is a slight variation in the difficulty or what the athlete is being asked to do. So I'm not sure about you, but when single leg drills show up on my workout, I may stop smiling for a minute when I see that. It's just not my favorite thing, which I know means that I need more of it. So I always do it. But I'm just curious, do you suggest to your athletes that they warm-up before getting on the bike? Brandy, what do you say about the bike?

Brandy Ramirez: Yeah, I say, definitely, if you have an athlete, and you know that they have preexisting injuries, or anything, they definitely have to. For me, I always have this weird twinge in my right foot, and so I have to be very proactive about making sure that I'm stretching that out before I get onto my bike, because if I don't, it's going to bark at me throughout my entire ride. So if you have an athlete that has a preexisting injury, then I say, yes, definitely have them stretch out whatever it is that might be affected on that bike. But a lot of the time, my workout warm-up is my warm-up, not my, like, let's get down into down dog and do dynamic stretching or static stretching.

Vanessa Ronksley: So I totally get that. But after hearing what Brady had to say about all the physiological effects that happen as a result of warming up, I'm thinking I might start to do a little bit more before I hop on my bike. Now, Brady, I'm curious. There's classic warm-up drills that appear in TriDot workouts, and elsewhere, other platforms of choice, things like spin ups, single leg drills. What systems are these targeting, and why do we do them all the time? Brady?

Brady Hoover: Yeah, so that gets into muscle fiber. Yeah, that gets into muscle fiber types. So prior to getting on the bike, I'll spend 75 seconds, I'll stretch out my hips, I'll do some sweeping, where I'm envisioning scraping gum off the bottom of my foot, to activate my hamstring, because I find if I don't do that, I tend to overuse my quads, and I don't pull back on the pedals enough. Yeah. And then we get onto the bike, and we start our 10-minute warm-up, and in there, we're prescribed single leg drills, or spin ups, high, up to 120 rpms. What that is doing is it's using aerobic system and then anaerobic system. It's switching from Type 1 to Type 2 muscle fiber types. Type 1 being those large, fast twitch muscle fibers, the ones that we can-- when you see a bodybuilder, and they put on size, that's all Type 1. Type 2 is your endurance muscle fibers. And those come into play when you're spinning at 80, 85, and above RPMs, and you feel the difference. If you drop below a cadence of 80, it feels more muscular. Your heart rate drops. You feel like the legs are going to give out before the heart and lungs. Whereas if you increase the cadence, the legs don't burn as much, but your heart rate increases, your breathing increases, and the power is exactly the same. If you, say you've got it on ERG mode and nothing changes, you notice one feels harder than the other. So it's tapping into those different energy systems. Now, TriDot will prescribe up to 120 cadence. And I tell athletes that, yes, 120 cadence is nice, but if you are someone that is new to the sport, your natural cadence is 80, it's going to be hard to get to 120. You're probably going to be rocking in there and your core is collapsing. You want to get there, eventually, and it might take a few months to get there, but you want to bring that cadence up over time. And there's ways to do that. But how high should you do that spin up? You want to be in control. You don't want to feel like you're bouncing in the saddle, that you're rocking back and forth. You want to keep a static upper body position, and you want to spin as fast as your legs will let you where you're still in control. The moment you start rocking from side to side, or your transverse abdominals are collapsing on the side, that's where you want to pull back, because you're just reinforcing bad movements at that point.

Vanessa Ronksley: I am really glad that you brought that up, because I think this is something that's really important across the board, is that it's really, it's so valuable to maintain proper form so that you're actually activating the appropriate system that you're supposed to be activating. And if, as you said, if this is part of the warm-up, and we're now starting to rock from side to side, or bouncing up and down, like, those tiny muscles are that are controlling those types of movements, they may very well get injured, especially as we age. These things, if we're not quite warmed up, and we're starting to have these intense lateral movements, that's going to affect a lot of things that we don't want to have affected. So I appreciate that you brought that up. And it's always a good reminder to keep proper form before trying to achieve the highest level of spin up that you're trying to get, for example. Now, Brady, let's move to the run, which is your favorite part. What is the best way--

Brady Hoover: That is my favorite part.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah, I know. We all know. What's the best way to warm up the body before we hit the pavement? You had mentioned what you do in the morning prior to your runs. But what would you suggest to the everyday athlete, who may or may not have running as their favorite discipline?

Brady Hoover: Yeah, so there's a couple of ways to go about this. Depends on where you live and what the temperature is outside. If it's warm outside, 2 to 3 minutes of easy jogging. And then TriDot is going to prescribe running drills that are -- the intensity of those running drills, they're on a scale. If it's a Zone 2 workout, those running drills aren't going to be super intense. It's going to be what the body needs to accomplish that workout, whereas if it's higher intensity warm-up. So you might not see any warm-up exercises where your body is leaving the ground. Think like A-skips, think like bounds. Think like A-skips, bounds, split jumps. You're not going to see that in a Zone 2 workout. You don't need it for that workout. If you're running threshold, above threshold, you're going to need those higher intensity drills, and that's what TriDot is going to prescribe. So it's nice to go out and do 2 to 3 minutes of easy jogging, and then doing those running drills. Now, I live in Massachusetts, so it's rather cold in the winter, so my go-to, if it's cold, is I don't go for 2 to 3 minutes outside, I want to warm-up my core body temperature. I'm doing jumping jacks, or, usually, I'm jumping rope in the garage, real gently. I know some people jump rope, and their heart rate skyrockets. So it's relative, too. Warm-up in the garage, warm-up in the living room, get a light sweat going on, and then go outside. And at that point, I can do my dynamic stretches. I can do my running drills, that are prescribed based on the workout, and then go about the rest of the warm-up. That's how I would tackle it and suggest.

Vanessa Ronksley: I think that's really important to note, is that for every run workout, the warm-ups change quite drastically. And the thing that I love about TriDot is, you literally open up the app, you see what the warm-up is, and you don't have to think. You just go, and you do the drills that are prescribed to you, because they are going to coincide with what's being asked of your body in that session, just as you said. So I love that. Brandy, or Brady, whichever one of you, I'm curious if there's any specific drills, or mobility moves, that you swear by, prior to doing the 2 to 3 minutes jog. Is there anything that you do, or you ask your athletes to do, to get them going?

Brandy Ramirez: There's something that I do, specifically, for my athletes when it comes to drills. For my athletes, every Tuesday, I prescribe an easy run session. And that run session is actually not even a run. I will take the run drills, and I paste them into that workout. And I tell my athletes that I want them to not only watch those videos, I want them to slow those videos down, so that they can see the way the body is moving. And then I want them to replicate those movements in slow motion. Because I think one thing that happens with athletes is they watch these videos, which are amazing, and they're so detailed, but then they go out, and they try to execute it exactly like it was. If you don't have the correct movement and the format down, because it all comes down to form, then you're just creating poor movement. So make sure that you are really focusing on the form of the movement to create good muscle memory so that your body is moving the way that it should be. And also, if you slow it down, you give your body a lot of time to warm-up instead of just doing, like, leg swings, and now you've hurt your sciatica, because you threw your leg to the side too far. So I always tell my athletes to move with intention, and start slow, and then build up.

Vanessa Ronksley: That's an awesome coach tip right there, from Brandy. Thank you so much. Brady, for treadmill versus outdoor running-- I know that you go outside, but I live way up north. Not way up north. I guess there's people who live way further north than me, but when the sidewalks are covered in snow or ice, I'm not stepping foot on them in a running shoe. So I often do run inside on a treadmill. Do you approach warm-ups differently, if you're running treadmill versus outdoors?

Brady Hoover: Good question. Treadmill at home, or treadmill in the gym, that would be a little bit different.

Vanessa Ronksley: At home. Yeah, I guess.

Brady Hoover: In the gym, I got room to move around, and actually do some bounds, and do some angle springs, whereas if I'm at home, and I'm in the corner of the garage, like you just mentioned, yeah, I'm thinking of what can I do in this space to warm-up? Because just jumping jacks, I can't even swing a jump rope next to my treadmill. A-skips are a good one, because you don't need a lot of space. You're just standing in place. It's nice, with an A-skip, to get that forward lean going, too, but it's one of those drills that you can do standing in place. And I saw a great video, on Instagram, of an A-skip slowed down, as Brandy mentioned. Here’s this version, and it almost starts as a marching drill with high knees and sort of builds. And then here is, like, if you've mastered it, here's what it then looks like. And either one of them is correct. It's just which one is right for you and where you're at right now. Over time, yeah, you're going to develop those neuromuscular connections that you can do those A-skips like you're watching on the YouTube videos, and you're like, “Oh, they just look so good.” Or you’re seeing the ones where they're doing them in unison together. What are some other good ones that you can do standing in place? 90/90. You can do that seated in place, to open up the hips, spending 5 seconds on one side, dynamically going over to the other side, setting up in that 90 position, leaning forward, 3 seconds down, 3 seconds back up. Okay, that's 6 seconds, not 5. And then switching sides, just to get the blood flow going, and get those fluids released, so you know you're warmed if you're confined to a small space.

Vanessa Ronksley: Okay. So you're thinking it's more so the space that you have, as opposed to the terrain that you might be running on. Like, just do the drills. Use as much space as you can. I know when I'm running inside, on my treadmill, I actually do my warm-ups in the living room, upstairs, running around my house. There's a loop that I do, running around, and then I'll do all of the drills in the living room before I go downstairs into the gains cave, I call it, onto my treadmill. So that was super helpful to break things down for each sport. I'm wondering-- now, in TriDot, for example, does every athlete get the same warm-ups, or are they personalized the same way that the sessions are? Brady, have you seen a variation in these warm-up drills that are requested of different types of athletes?

Brady Hoover: I have. So what TriDot’s going to prescribe is the right warm-up exercise for the right individual, based on age, genetics, all of those things, all of those factors. So I've seen the same workout for two of my athletes. Let's just say, I like running so much, it's 3 x 6 minutes. It's cruise intervals, 3 x 6 minutes at Zone 4. One athlete's got A-skips in there, and the other one's got walking lunges, or something like that, where they're leaving the ground, but that might be a warm-up for that younger athlete, but that might be a power exercise for that older athlete. So they might be doing a walking lunge, or a walking knee hug, or something along those. So they will change on age, on experience level, which, at first, I thought they would have all been the same, but I'm like, how cool is this? It's really personalizing the warm-up to the athlete, based on their abilities, and age, and just everything we're accounting for.

Brandy Ramirez: That's.

Vanessa Ronksley: That's awesome. I love that they change, so that it is more personalized for each person, depending on their skill set, or where they are at in terms of their level. I like to say aging is leveling up. Not aging up, it's leveling up. So whatever level everyone's reached, you might get a different drill. Brandy, how does this benefit an athlete's readiness or performance over time, in terms of the warm-ups that they are going to do for the disciplines?

Brandy Ramirez: So the warm-ups over time, and with each discipline, obviously, each discipline is so different. But to Brady's point, earlier in this conversation, when he's talking about the way the body responds, the hormones, all of those different things, to be able to execute this, get the body in this readiness, in this function, over time, you're going to perform at a much greater level. If you're actively doing your warm-ups and then executing those training sessions, you're going to get a higher score in that training session. You're going to get a better result because of that training session, from the warm-up.

Vanessa Ronksley: So this question has been asked thousands of times. I know it has. And we seem to need to have to repeat this question over and over. So, Brady, is the warm-up part of the workout time or is it separate? Because everyone just wants to know, when do I start my watch?

Brady Hoover: That is a great question, and I can see why athletes ask this. It’s because it's incorporated into your swim workout, it's incorporated into your bike workout, but the 2 to 3 minutes easy jog in the running drills are not incorporated into the running, the 10 minutes of the running warm-up. You see the spin ups, they're in your bike warm-up. The swimming drills, those are usually, the prescribed drills are usually part of the swim itself. So if you're pushing the watch to Garmin, and it's a 10 minute swim warm-up, it expects you to go through those swim drills that it's prescribing. Same with on the bike. Now, when it comes to the run, you're doing 2 to 3 minutes easy jogging, or if you're like me in the winter months, jumping rope, jumping jacks, and then going about your warm-up drills, whatever they may be, and then you can hit start and go out on your run.

Vanessa Ronksley: Okay. So for the run only, that's where you do the warm-up first, and then you head into the Garmin, or the workout that's pushed to your watch. Okay, that's good to know. Now, for all of those people out there who are hardcore about tracking every little metric possible on their watch, do you recommend tracking those warm-ups for data purposes, or is it just fine to keep them off the record?

Brady Hoover: It's such a little blip that it's fine to keep it off the record. But if you want to get really specific, like, I want to do my A-skips for 30 seconds, and then do 30 seconds of B-skips, log it as a strength exercise. It's still going to get an NTS score in TriDot, and you'll see the metrics there. You'll see it's barely anything. But if you must track every single movement, just don't log it into run, because then that warm-up will pair to the run workout, and then you'll create another file, and you'll say, “I have two run workouts here.” And then you'll be like, “How do I connect these two?” Save yourself the time.

Vanessa Ronksley: Good call. Okay, and then one last one, here, before we head down to the cool down. And this one, I think, is where we're asking this question for the busy athletes, those who don't have time to squeeze every last bit of training into their schedules. So Brandy, what should we do if we're time crunched, and we don't have enough time for both a full warm-up and the full workout? And as we've heard from all that's been discussed already, it's very clear to us that the warm-up is highly important, and it's something that we need to do. So can we shorten it a little bit, Brandy? What do you think?

Brandy Ramirez: So I always say that half a cup of coffee is better than no cup of coffee at all. And so for me, I'm not going to want you to skip the warm-up. I would tell my athletes, go ahead and do a warm-up. Generally, you're going to have a Zone 2 portion of any part of your workout. I would actually shorten the Zone 2 portion, and then hit my main set, and have my cool down. So that's the way I would tell my athletes to do it. If you have an hour-long workout, but you can only be there for 30, 35 minutes, do a quick warm-up, do a little bit of the Zone 2, then hit that main set, and then do a little bit of the cool down.

Vanessa Ronksley: Okay, so that's pretty straightforward. Brady, would you agree with Brandy on that one, or do you suggest something different?

Brady Hoover: I would totally recommend that. When my kids were really little, I often only had 40 minutes. Because I was leaving the gym, I was headed right to the pool, or using the indoor track and maximizing my time, and it’s like, I only had 40 minutes before I had to leave and go get the kids. So I would do exactly what Brandy said, and it would actually score pretty well, on the TrainX side, if I hit my interval time at intensity. So, yeah, you've hit the meat and potatoes. You could get away with that in the development phase. Don't make it a pattern, if you're in a race preparation phase. Here and there, okay. But more is more is better, if it's prescribed, at that point.

Brandy Ramirez: Later that night, I would totally recommend doing stretching and rolling out, later in the night, if you didn't have a chance to get that entire warm-up that you wanted. This way you're not going to have achy muscles or anything else like that. Get a stretch in before you go to bed.

[Transition Sound Effect]

Vanessa Ronksley: Welcome to the cool down, everybody. This question is from an audience member, and also a podcast host, whose name is Vanessa. So I am hijacking my own cool down, because I have wanted to know, when you're doing an FTP test on Zwift, if any of you have seen that warm-up, it is intense. It legitimately takes you so much Zone 4, a 5-minute interval of Zone 5, which to me, that just seems way too long, and just looking at it legitimately makes me tired. So do you suggest doing that specific warm-up, or do you suggest doing something else, like the classic TriDot warm-up, which includes spin ups and a few Zone 4 repeats, or do you suggest something entirely different? Brady, I am throwing this one to you.

Brady Hoover: That is a great question. I know that workout that you're talking about. I have a few athletes, that do that one, that have asked similar questions. Like, “I feel like I'm leaving time on the table because I'm a little burnt out after that Zone 5 interval.” I say, whatever your body needs is the warm-up you want to do. You want it repeatable. So if you're doing the Zwift FTP test, you want to do that Zwift FTP test every time so that you're comparing apples to apples. If you do the TriDot suggested warm-up, with the spin ups and the 3 x 1 at Zone 4, and then taking 10 minutes, and then going into the FTP test, that's the one that you're doing every time. With that being said, how much does that 5-minute Zone 5 hinder? It depends. Seasoned athletes, seasoned cyclists, it's not really-- it's going to get them nice and warmed up. If you're a beginner athlete, that Zone 5 might take a lot out of you. I used to think, like when I ran a 5K, that I only had so much time at a certain pace in my warm-up. The shorter the race, or the shorter the effort, the longer warm-up you actually need. If you're running a marathon, you don't need a really super long warm-up. But if you're doing an FTP test, a 5K test, a 5K race, you need a longer warm-up, because the intensity of that session is a lot harder. So with that being said, I would do three minutes at what I was going to race at, after I got smart. I mentioned earlier in the podcast, where you would go out, and that was me, that was classic Brady. I'd go out, I'd run. I won't tell you the pace, but I would run a fast pace, fast mile, and be like, I got this. And then I get to that second mile, and it's like, I hit my red line, right? I'm working just as hard, my heart rate hasn't changed, but I've all of a sudden slowed down 15 seconds, and then I get to mile three, and I would take off again, and the heart rate wouldn't change, and I'm like, “What is going on?” And that's when I, that was before I started coaching, and going down that road of learning and learning about the sport, how the body works, all the different energy systems. So that 5-minute warm-up that's in Zwift, that's there to turn everything on. So yes, it's very daunting, and yes, it's very intense. It's doable, and it won't impact the 20 minutes that fall after it, if you do take that really 10-minute Zone 1 recovery, you should be fully recovered, and you can hold that same wattage, if you've been in the sport for a little while. New triathletes starting out, that five minutes might be, that might really hinder them. So do what's right for you, and just make sure you're doing the same one every time. If you start with the TriDot one, and you do that for six months, and then you want to do the Zwift one, then stick with the Zwift one after that so you're comparing apples to apples. Yeah, that's the best way to go about it.

Brandy Ramirez: I also think it's so important that we touch base on the point that we do say ‘it depends’. ‘It depends’ is huge for us at TriDot, because we're not static. We don't see athletes as one whole. We see each one of them as individuals. And so that's why us, as coaches, Vanessa, as a coach herself, as an athlete, we always say ‘it depends’, because it does depend. And we don't want to give a one-size fits all answer to our athletes and say this is the way that it should be. We have to be very mindful that we are talking to every individual athlete as an individual athlete, and so they have to listen to themselves, and their bodies, and their coaches.

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