How many times have you heard that warming up is a must before getting on the bike? Thousands, for sure. And not only does it make sense, but it’s totally true. Warming up is vital for your body and mind to be able to cope with the demands that come next.
But do you know how you should warm up for trials? Read on if you want to find out what you need to do to get on the bike fully prepared.
#1. Know how to warm up for trials
In the previous chapter we showed you how to
plan your trial season
and adapt the physical work to each phase. In this report we continue to move forward and focus on what happens when we are going to start entering or starting a competition.
We start from the premise that playing a football match is not the same as playing trials. So why are you going to use the exercises you were taught in gym class? Warming up with the same basic exercises as always is a mistake that can cost you an injury. The movements you are going to perform on the bike are specific to this sport, which has nothing to do with any other. That’s why you need to warm up specifically for trials.
You should spend a few minutes doing a trial-specific warm-up that will be shorter or more complete depending on the reason you have for riding. Before every competition, every training session, every Sunday ride you will have to invest a few minutes.
Just as you prepare your bike by letting it warm up instead of starting it up stairs, you need to warm up your body to make it progressively go from rest to action. If you don’t, you’re more likely to injure yourself and you’ll see your performance diminish in the first few moments until you manage to warm up. Wouldn’t it be better to get active without being on top of the bike, with a cold, clumsy body and constantly putting your feet up?
#2. The Three Phases of Trial Warm-Up
Phase 1- Joint Mobility
In this first phase of the trial warm-up, we are going to move the different parts of the body slowly and with a lot of range in all the joints that you will involve when riding, reaching the end of the movement as your elasticity allows. It is important that you do not forget any part of the body that will be involved later on the bike.
The goal is to “grease the joints” by preparing them for action, just like you grease the chain of the bike before riding it.
In this video you can see our proposal on the sequence of exercises that will later optimize your handling of the bike.
Phase 2- Activation of the muscles involved in trial and rev up
Which muscles mainly act on the trial bike? Which ones are we going to use the most?
These are the muscles you need to activate in this phase of the warm-up:
- Muscles that mobilize your shoulders and shoulder blades. You’re going to use them a lot while you’re on the bike. If you don’t move them before getting on, you can suffer from neck problems, stiff trapezius, tense shoulders, etc. To make sure you’re doing enough activation, you can copy the sequence we show you in the video.
- Muscles that mobilize your hips. You need to activate your entire lower body so that your legs and glutes are active when it’s time to get on. This will prevent your knees or back from causing problems at the lumbar level. To do this, you can use the movements that we propose in the video.
- Central area. As we already told you in this article, it is vital to have this area very active
in
order to control the imbalances of the motorcycle and transfer the strength from the legs to the arms. If you have a strong central area, you will have more balance on the bike. A trick for activation in the warm-up is to use a bottle of petrol or water that you can always carry with you in the van next to the motorcycle. If you use it as a counterweight, you can perform exercises such as “farmer’s walk” or “pendulum” focusing on the activation of the transverse, obliques and abdominals.
- Forearms and handgrip. Hasn’t it ever happened to you that as soon as you start riding it seems that your forearms are going to explode and as the race goes on the tension decreases? There are two reasons for this: 1. You need to focus on the warm-up of your forearms because activating them before getting on the bike will make it better to pump the blood from the beginning; 2. Lack of confidence on the bike causes you to end up holding on to the handlebars with more tension and your forearms collapse. The warm-up helps you concentrate and this in turn helps you to be safer when riding. You can use a tennis ball to activate your forearm muscles while you perform other warm-up exercises. If forearms are your big problem, we leave you the article in which we have talked about how you can solve it.
You can watch it by clicking here
.
Phase 3: Mental activation. Time to get on the bike!
Once you have your body active, you have to activate your mind to promote concentration before getting on the bike. Alfredo Gómez has already told us about it In this interview in which he told us about how “races are won before you get on the bike”. That’s why you should get on the bike concentrated, with the focus on what you’re going to do.
Sometimes in competition we leave a lot of feet at the beginning of the races because we are absent-minded or asleep. You must enter the race with your 5 senses focused on that and this phase of mental activation will help you in that.
Before you start riding the bike, spend 3 minutes doing the coordination and balance exercises that we propose in the video to make your concentration greater.
Then get out there and practice short turns, move the bike a little, sink the forks in or get close to a couple of steps. If you look at the professional pilots, they move out of the way at some obstacle to climb it in a thousand possible ways, turning it into a zone simulation. Professionals are always focused, visualizing the moment to compete.
In this article
, you’ll learn how to practice visualization as a tool for focusing.
And that’s it for the keys to the trial warm-up that you should always put into practice if you want to ride better, whether it’s on a Sunday ride, before a training session with the bike or before competing. Because remember that you compete the way you train, so take it seriously and give it gas!
PHYSICAL WARM-UP VIDEO FOR TRIALS
TRIAL WARM-UP INFOGRAPHIC DIAGRAM
