In Reply To:
Horner - I don't believe him. Top level athletes can be secretive and prone to providing misinformation regarding their training and racing routines.
Your second point really makes no sense. Because I can jump on the bike and produce high power instantly, this somehow shows that the necessity of a thorough warm-up is a mental thing?
Do you TT? Do you have any experience with different warm-up strategies for different length races? Performances to compare?
Personally, 45 minutes on the bike, mostly easy but varied with and with some high intensity, is what I need to produce a sustained maximal effort.
Horner isn't the only pro who didn't overdo warm ups -- Chris Boardman often would do ten minutes or less, and he was a pretty good tester.
More to the point, what few studies I've seen on the subject have confirmed the importance of warming up but raised questions about the needed duration. For example, one recent study of 3K TTs found that both hard and easy warmups significantly increased oxygen uptake in the early part of the TT, but only in the first kilometer (
Med Sci Sports Exerc 2005; vol 37, no 9, 1608-1614).
That would suggest that the body is pretty quick to get up to speed, wouldn't it? So what's wrong with suggesting that preferred warm up routines are mainly personal preferences?