- As world Hour record holder
and European time trial champion
Victor Campenearts of Lotto-Soudal warms up
for the opening time trial of the Giro d'Italia,
I thought I'd go around and ask a few coaches,
maybe a rider and a sports director,
what a warm-up protocol is in 2019.
How long do they do?
What do they do?
How long before the start do they stop?
Do they do cool downs?
(energetic EDM music)
What's the science, first and foremost,
behind doing a warm-up?
- You have to activate all the systems
that you need for the time trial.
That's actually for the warm-up, that's the case.
And we have a whole protocol for it
with also foods included in it, with bottles included, bars.
So there is a whole time schedule
until the moment that you go off the roller,
that you are ready to go to the start
and to do your time trial.
- [Host] And does a warm-up for a time trial
differ if it's at the start of a grand tour
versus if it was the last day
or if it's a different length of time trial?
- No, no, no, not at all.
Normally and the only difference is that you have now
before a grand tour, you are already
two and a half days upfront, you are here.
You can see the parcours already
without the fences are on the roads.
So you know already what is coming up,
more than that you do it
when it is during a certain stage race,
or during
one of TTs during a grand tour.
- [Host] And in terms of the warm-up that Tom,
for example, will be doing for the opening time trial today,
how long is it and what are the efforts like
that he'll do during that warm-up?
- It's not going to be too long.
It's around 20 minutes.
He will do some sprints.
He will do some blocks of efforts.
So, yeah, that's around 20 minutes and then he's ready.
(hypnotic music)
- Time trial warm-ups, eight kilometers today.
What will be your protocol to get yourself going?
- Pretty short one, like 20 minutes probably.
Starting easy
and progressing for, let's say, 10 minutes.
A little bit easy and then the last five minutes again
and some shorter sprint intervals.
And then I hope my body is ready to go deep.
- [Host] And does that protocol change
for a shorter time trial versus a longer time trial
or in the first day versus the last day?
- Yeah, definitely.
For the short one it's necessary,
otherwise it hurts too much,
but probably for the long one, it's possible
because it's an easier start,
that I don't even go on the rollers.
I just go to the start line and--
- [Host] Really?
- Yeah, yeah, it's possible.
I mean, I don't even think in Paris-Nice
without any warm-up on the rollers, to go on the start.
- [Host] And what about the difference
between the road and track?
Obviously, world champion on the track,
you do multiple events
so the warm-ups must be completely different for that.
- Not really actually.
The prologue compared to a warm-up
for a points race or whatever, it's pretty similar.
I mean, it's a short race also.
You need to be ready from the start,
from the very start to react on attacks,
therefore the warm-up is the same.
It's pretty much 20 minutes, 25 minutes, the whole warm-up.
You finish 50 minutes before and then you go in.
But doing the omnium, if I have one standard warm-up,
probably I don't do a warm-up for a second race,
because then I'm in the mood and I just go on
and if I start sweating, I stop.
So, one time to hurt, it's enough.
- [Host] And finally, cool-downs obviously something
that we didn't see in the peloton 10 years ago.
Now, most people are doing it.
Are you one for cool downs?
- No, not really.
I still see a lot of people who cool down,
especially after mountain stages or even after sprints,
but the last year, the last two years was Orica.
They said now after the finish line starts recovery.
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- Today, it's warm,
first thing.
Second thing is that they did a recon in this afternoon
because the road was not closed this morning,
so they used the afternoon to do the recon.
So that means that they just finished the recon
few minutes ago.
So it's not really necessary to do a long warm-up.
Okay, so as you can see,
the riders they are going to do a warm-up 25 minutes
and then they stop,
and they have five minutes to change clothing,
to put the helmet on,
and then another 15 minutes to go to the start
because today is far away.
So, 25 minutes on the rollers.
Just about five, six minutes,
warm-up on the rollers.
Then they do some progressions.
Then they rest a little bit
and then they do
two accelerations of between 10, 15 seconds.
- [Host] And you, of course,
were a successful professional yourself.
How have warm-ups for time trials changed
since the early part of your career?
- I think a lot.
I mean, I remember in the past that we were doing rollers
for almost one hour and sweating us crazy.
And now, you know,
we really think about the irritation of the riders.
And we don't really want that they lose a lot of liquid
so we use the fans,
we use the ice vest,
to try to keep the temperature of the body
as low as possible
but to warm up the muscles, that's the goal.
- I don't know about a warm-up.
I think I need a cool down.
I'm once again like a through Brit abroad,
with a burned forehead and burned neck
so I'm going to get into an air conditioned car.
I hope you enjoyed this video
and learned something about how the riders in 2019
warm up for time trials like today.
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just down below this video.
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we got some of the latest time trial tech for you
just down here.