Paul Laursen (00:00)

And the key principle in the taper is you reduce your volume, but you maintain or even increase slightly your intensity. And that's really what those are doing, those pre-race primers. It's like you're keeping that intensity up there, but you're not overstimulating, right?

Paul Warloski (00:41)

Hello and welcome to the Athletes Compass podcast where we navigate training, fitness and health for everyday athletes. Today we are diving into a topic that could literally be the difference between standing on a podium or watching from the sidelines. Optimal warmups and pre-race openers. Picture this, you've trained for months, your fitness is dialed in, but gun time comes and you feel sluggish for the first 20 minutes of the race.

Sound familiar? You're not alone. Research suggests that the way we prepare our bodies in the hours before competition can create immediate performance improvements lasting up to 48 hours. We're talking about post activation potentiation, oxygen uptake kinetics, and we'll explain what those are, and the science of priming your system without burning it out. But here's the thing. It's not a one size fits all. The same warm up that helps a crit racer might

hurt and endurance gravel grinder. And a cyclist response to high intensity priming can be completely different than a runners. And for some athletes overdoing it with warmups can actually make them slower. So we're going beyond the old spin easy advice or swing your legs in a running race to explore what the latest science tells us about optimal preparation strategies from the controversial 24 hour openers in the

perfect race day warm up timing will give you the tools to fine tune your performance when it matters most. So grab a notebook because by the end of this episode, you're going to have a completely different approach to how you prepare for the next race. Let's find your performance edge. Paul, let's start with that post activation potentiation or PAP. What are we talking about?

Paul Laursen (02:29)

Yeah. Hey Paul, I think that what we're talking about is waking up, you know, you're waking up the central nervous system at the end of the day, right? So post activation, potentiation, right? So yeah, you're like you're activating to increase your potential ultimately at the end of the day. and you know, I almost kind of even thinking about from moving to

me just kind of waking up here to being, going from kind of groggy Paul to a little bit more alive Paul here at 10 in the morning and where I'm at. But it's like, I know I can kind of go to another level too, right? If I hop on my bike and I start doing some neuromuscular primers too. So there's just, there are these happenings that are going on inside the nervous system to be able to. ⁓

cause those motor units, and that's nervous system to muscle, to fire even stronger. So that's the first one. So when you do any of these pre-race primers, or just like we do in Velocity, where we're trying to activate the larger motor units, the fast-twitch muscle fibers, by pushing into zone six and zone seven, just for a little bit even,

that's the central nervous system factor, but the other one that's also important is what's called the Q10 effect. And I'm not actually sure what Q10 was all about. I think it's, yeah, coenzyme Q10, I believe it is, but it's temperature driven adaptation ultimately. and that's where the whole warmup gets its, gets its name. So actually by being warmer,

we're accelerating enzyme activity, the cross-bridge cycling in the muscles themselves, and that nerve conduction again, which kind of crosses over back to the PAP effect. So both are really important and both principles, getting warm itself and also activating the neuromuscular system are going to allow you to perform

like studies show you will perform at a higher level than had you not done that. And to think about even how that might relate to you, think about where you've performed well in, even in races too, right? Where you've had those experiences in races where you maybe you haven't, you've kind of just due to circumstance and context, you just haven't really been able to have a good warmup. That happens often, but just even think about how that kind of feels, right? Where you almost, that,

you're not really getting going until, 10 minutes or whatever into the race because of that. So, yeah, we'll start with air.

Paul Warloski (05:12)

How does this relate to the openers that we do the day before an event? Is PAP just a part of warmups in general before our events? How does that work?

Paul Laursen (05:22)

Yeah, so the PAP effect is more acute. So we're talking actually something that you'd be doing within the five to 10 minute period beforehand, followed by a rest or recovery. That's more the PAP effect, right? Getting warm, priming the nervous system. That's what you have to think about. Now, the day before or the two days before where that is, I think a lot of it...

Paul Warloski (05:26)

Okay.

Paul Laursen (05:46)

if I'm honest, is kind of coming down. It's psychology. But it's keeping in the principles of taper. And the key principle in the taper is you reduce your volume, but you maintain or even increase slightly your intensity. And that's really what those are doing, those pre-race primers. It's like you're keeping that intensity up there, but you're not overstimulating, right? So it's like...

Yeah, you're, that's in a condition athlete that's done a lot of training for that. It doesn't even phase them, right? They can do, and especially on the bike in a concentric contracting situation, not eccentric like running, but in the con concentric cycling sort of situation, like it's, it's just a, you're bringing blood flow through every, all the large fibers. You're priming the central nervous system. You're giving yourself a little bit of a hard workout, but you're keeping the volume low.

So that's context versus the context is just before the race, you're giving it a little bit of a primer to actually perform well. Not too much, but just something to say, I'm warm and something to say, I'm going to activate here strongly very, very, very soon. And studies have shown that if you do that, you're basically, well, we'll get to the oxygen kinetics, but that's another effect actually that happens shortly thereafter as you get.

you get more oxygen into those larger motor units too.

Marjaana (07:11)

So if I think back my youth track career, we used to always watch what the top athletes were doing and they would always wear like a track suit and then they would run a little bit, do some strides and jumps. And so they were essentially doing the post activation potential.

the Q10, they always would wear track suits. And then when they were ready to race, they would take them off. Like they were nice and warm. So

Paul Laursen (07:45)

Those

are great observations. And again, there's always this branch or this slide. We go back between what's actually in the literature and the science, and then what are people actually doing? Again, remember, it's always what people are doing that usually wins, and then us geeky scientists come in and try to explain it all. So you're absolutely right though, MJ. Wear the tracksuits. It's always have warm muscles.

Marjaana (07:55)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Paul Laursen (08:10)

So, and again, I always go back to my darling daughter, Kaya, who does her swimming races, right? Like sometimes you'll go to a venue and maybe it's an outdoor race or whatever, right? And all of a sudden she's getting cold. Well, I know, look, let's put some warm clothing over top. Just, you you're gonna do a sprint event, whether it's 50 or 100 or 200, but it's, you you've got to, it's very, very short window. So.

you want to keep those muscles as warm as they possibly can be before you're going to be going into all out mode. And we know started, if we've ever done an all out kind of effort in a cold, if you're too, too, too cold, you just, you can't, you actually like, there's nothing in there. And so, so yeah, so you need, you need that, that warmth for blood flow and because the muscles themselves are going to contract.

at the rate that you want them to for those high power efforts.

Marjaana (09:07)

Mm-hmm.

Paul Warloski (09:09)

So we have both kind of psychological and physical openers the day before or a couple of days before, and we have the acute warmups that right before our event. Should athletes test their warmups during training or is there a way to predict which individuals need which kind of specific protocols?

Paul Laursen (09:33)

Yeah, that's a good point. You know, I think it comes with experience, honestly, but I think that's really to the heart of your question, right? As you become a more experienced athlete, you start to know these things. They're just part and parcel of what you do and you'll know that you need to be warm before most races. mean, if we're talking about a hot race in Houston, well, maybe not, right? Like it's kind of, you don't...

Paul Warloski (09:40)

Mm-hmm.

Paul Laursen (10:00)

have to worry about it ⁓ at that point because the environment is warm already. But if you're over here in Revelstoke where I am, where it's winter right now, time of recording, yeah, you've got to maintain that warmth. So experience kind of helps you with these sorts of things. the context changes everything. Know that you need to be warm, but think about your environment first and foremost before you make that decision. I think that's kind of the key.

There's no one protocol. And probably also the warmer you are, the less you have to do on those primers. There's something that will come a lot easier in terms of pushing those big powers in the warmth environment. But again, if you're in a cold environment, you might want to do a couple more because you're going to get the heat generation from the higher or doing more of those primers.

Marjaana (10:32)

Mm-hmm.

Paul Laursen (10:55)

So let's take a velocity primer kind of situation. Marjaana usually does three for us. So if I'm doing that in a hot environment, maybe I'd only need two of those and I'd be ready to go. And if I'm gonna be doing those outdoors in a zero degree environment, I might need to do like five or six or seven of those to really sort of feel I'm good to kind of go.

Marjaana (11:18)

I would still do like in the warm environment. I think there's a little bit of a difference. In a warm environment, would maybe do like a easy steady run much shorter than I would do in the cold environment just to get more warm. But I would still do those primers, those short efforts.

regardless of if it's cold or warm. But yeah, maybe I would shorten the steady warm-up.

And you can, like when you do the primers, depending what you've done, what your fatigue levels are, but like on, on velocity, you can kind of feel where you are. Like the first 10 seconds is always pretty hard, but then second and third gets easier. But those are also really good gauge on like what's, what's to come. How am I feeling today? Cause some, some days you just carry much more fatigue.

Paul Warloski (12:25)

So to talk about the day before openers, are there specific intensities and durations that work best for those day before? And should we do them the day before or is two days before better?

Marjaana (12:40)

I loved doing them day before.

Paul Warloski (12:43)

Yeah.

Paul Laursen (12:43)

You do them day before, MJ? Yeah. I think either or is probably fine. I don't know if there's, I think there's lots of ways to skin the cat on that. don't know if there's, but again, that's, again, with the principle of taper, you wanna keep the intensity maintained or heightened, and you want to reduce the volume, so don't wanna do too, too much on day one and two before. That's the key factor.

Marjaana (12:45)

day before.

Paul Laursen (13:11)

And of course, also not too much intensity too, right? But anything from just those two minutes at VO2 kind of thing, you could do that. Or even two by two at VO2, or between zone four and zone five, somewhere in there. You're stimulating, again, the VO2 slow component, and you're trying to just increase the...

recruitment and the temperature and the oxygen grab at the larger motor unit level. So, yeah. And again, and probably, you know, priming the central nervous system. And then it's psychological as well. It's just like, it's keeping you feeling good.

Paul Warloski (13:48)

Mm-hmm.

Marjaana (13:50)

That's why I love doing them the day before because you've had a taper and you're starting to feel like your fatigue has dropped and your fitness form is good. I just enjoy them because they feel easy. Usually, if I've done things I feel really good and I enjoy that feeling. But I only do one or two, not too many, just to be oh yeah, I'm there.

Let's go.

Paul Warloski (14:22)

You're ready to roll.

How do we find that balance between going too hard and activation for the day befores?

Paul Laursen (14:34)

a lot of it comes down to feel and, that you could also potentially, look a little bit at workout reserve. I was talking to Andrea about this, right? With workout reserve and how the, recovery element of workout reserve. And if you haven't, if you don't know what I'm talking about, check this out on Athletica.

where it's basically, looking at, we've talked about it before and we've had Andrea on the podcast, but you're looking at the maximal mean powers and the window to that in terms of what your profile sits at, right? So inevitably, all of us, get to a race and we have a profile, a power profile, a pace profile. When I say profile, I'm talking about how fast you sprint versus how long you go and the power and the pace that's associated with each one.

of those what we call maximal mean powers or maximal mean paces. And it could be 10 seconds, it could be two minutes, it could be three hours. But we all have an individual amount of a profile that we've done from our training in the past. And ultimately, that shapes the recovery curve that you have. And I was just learning about this from Andrea in the talk here just prior.

And it's basically the, you're looking at the speed of that recovery should relate to the speed of the energy systems that are being engaged. So if you're doing those primers and they're between, it could be anywhere from 10 seconds to two minutes, they are recovering at a very fast rate, hopefully because you've done all your training sort of behind that. And that's a really good thing.

Of course, you went into this without any training, well, they wouldn't recover very fast, right? But they should recover at the profile level that you've already prepared for. And if you're doing an Athletica program, you should have a nice mix of all those various different maximal mean, pace, and power elements. yeah, and again, that should give you almost the confidence, too, that you should be able to, you know,

you're fully recovered because you even recover in the given session very, very quickly. to figure this out, do your own, like go check your own power or pace profile on Athletica and have a look at how fast your workout reserve is kind of recovering thereafter. And if you do, what's prescribed, which is usually between two to three of these little primers in the couple days before, then...

that's one little way to give you the confidence to say, that was just the right amount and then not too much. So you have sort of the mathematical algorithms that are behind you to give you that confidence. But otherwise, Paul, a lot of us, just, we're using feel too, right? Like Marjaana was kind of just describing. So you have both with Athletica.

Paul Warloski (17:20)

Yeah, yeah.

Are there metrics that we should be looking at heart rate kind of things to know? You know, do we want to get our heart rate up into that kind of race level zone? Is that a good place to go?

Paul Laursen (17:28)

Heart rate's a good Yeah.

Totally, yeah. And again, if you're doing like VO2 primers, you should just touch on that VO2 segment, right? On rep number two or three, if you're doing two or three of these two-minute efforts. So you should just touch on that at the end, and then you turn it off. It's like, I'm not gonna do an excessive amount, but it's just like, just enough to start breathing heavy, get the heart rate up towards 90 % of max, that's great, good enough. And and like MJ was saying,

It should feel easy and that fact that it feels easy is giving you the confidence that you've done all the work, everything, everything. That effort was like fully aerobic, which is, which is the whole purpose of the training in the first place. Right. You're doing an aerobic event and you've trained the aerobic system optimally and now you get to express it.

Marjaana (18:27)

I think the biggest mistake is that people, they try to do two months a day or two before. And we've talked about taper so many times, it can be challenging, right? Especially mentally, to just let go of the training and trust that you've done enough, hey, it's in the barn. ⁓ So, I mean, like sometimes...

when you start feeling good, you're like, this feels really good. I want to do a little bit more, right? But I think that's the biggest mistake people do is that they train too much leading up to the race week. They are at the race venue. They are like, you know, ready to go. They are feeling good. They see other people doing long rides. They're like, ⁓ I should probably do a long ride. And you know, it's the snowballs. So I would say if you like, try to do the

the day before, activate and practice it before. Before your last long weekend preparations, try it out the day before and see how that feels. But yeah, the biggest mistake is to do too many of them or too hard.

Paul Warloski (19:40)

Yeah, so definitely keep it light. Touch on VO2 max and go rest and be ready to go for the next day. that, that's what I'm hearing. Yeah. So let's talk about the race day itself. When should athletes do their race day warmup relative to their start time? When should we start the work?

Marjaana (19:49)

Mm-hmm.

depends on the race.

Paul Warloski (20:03)

Yeah, I was just going to say, really depends on what kind of race you've got.

Marjaana (20:07)

If you're doing a big marathon, where there's thousands of people, it's really limited what you are able to do. I would still try to do some kind of mobility. If you can run a little bit before, do that with some strides and then get in your your coral butt.

Yeah, it's really limited. And then you have these neighborhood events where you can just park and go run and you're at the start line. So that's when you can practice your warmups. But what I usually do, let's say that it's a 10K run or half marathon or something. I always try to, at least do a 10 minute run and then do some strides and then do some mobility just to kind of...

mostly probably just to feel like I'm ready and get warm, but that's about it. For marathon, I still do the same, but I try to sit down a little bit, not stress too much about running.

like running warm up before. So at this point I kind of have the routine going. And even like before Ironman, I do run a little bit and then kind of get heart rate up and do some mobility, but mostly it's meditation.

Paul Warloski (21:14)

Mm-hmm.

Paul Laursen (21:34)

Yeah, so I was just gonna say Context is everything so it totally depends on the race that's in front of you So if you have a high intensity race, then you definitely want to have a high intensity primer beforehand if you can Andy Jones has sort of shown this ⁓ we'll touch on it now, but basically it's there we're improving your what's called your vo2 kinetics and You know if you're if you're in the Olympic programs and stuff, they're always looking at

that ideal warmup beforehand, sprint cyclists, think track and field runners, right? And you're ultimately, want that whole priming effect, that you're basically telling the cardiovascular system to deliver oxygen within that zone four to zone, zone four and above level, right? So zone four to zone five, that's all you can, that's the top cap of your cardiovascular's kind of capacity. But you almost wanna push in there first.

And when you do that, what winds up happening is you open up the capillaries around, sitting around the larger muscle fibers, motor units, fast twitch muscle fibers. And when you've got that larger capillarization opened up, then you're gonna basically facilitate the aerobic metabolism capacity of those larger motor units, right? Fat burning, mitochondrial,

usage and if you don't, again, it's back to the situation where you're almost the cold athlete, right? And you're using part of the race to get into that. If short duration matters and performance over that, again, I think to my daughter's sprint swimming, she's gonna be of benefit if most of that is done aerobically. Okay, so all your short distance events, 5K. ⁓

and your high intensity rate from the beginning, 5K run, you want that primer in there beforehand. And it needs to be ideally within the window of five to 10 minutes, you're still going to get that potential happening with the VO2 kinetics, speeding the VO2 kinetics, turning on aerobic metabolism more earlier than anaerobic metabolism, glycolysis.

Marjaana (23:44)

Are you?

Paul Laursen (23:44)

So

yeah, makes a difference.

Marjaana (23:46)

Are you saying 5 to 10 minutes of total work or 5 to 10 minutes before a race starts?

Paul Laursen (23:52)

five to 10 minutes before race starts and just like to the level of exercise, finishing at the level of exercise where you're huffing and puffing, keeping it simple, right? Because you don't worry about, you're usually too nervous and stuff to deal with heart rate and powers and paces and all that sort of thing, right? Especially at the race itself, but if it's a running race, can you find a hill that's nearby where you could run up just to get that?

Paul Warloski (24:09)

you

Marjaana (24:13)

Mm-hmm.

Paul Laursen (24:21)

or could you stride out for, you know, where you're kind of reaching, you'll see runners and stuff that are doing this. Well, why are they running so fast just beforehand? Well, they're probably a pretty elite runner and they're going to be running at the front of the pack and they're doing that because they, you know, they're well and truly trained and they know that that's not going to damage them, but they're going to actually get back to that level really, really quick and running the first bit in aerobic metabolism.

Marjaana (24:29)

Mm-hmm.

You can actually kind of see this sometimes on velocity sessions. The first set is always like, we're all like struggling and like, I would love to hear what people are thinking during the first set because it's hard. And then most people, kind of like, the second set is always like, ⁓ yeah, here's my legs. Right? So this is like, it's a perfect example of how better the second set.

Paul Laursen (25:00)

Mm-hmm.

Totally. Always.

Marjaana (25:20)

can go when you're truly warm and already reaching the VO2 max intensity,

Paul Laursen (25:26)

Yeah, that's right.

That's right. So then let's flip the other context, just finish this one. Like, what do I do before my race, right? So now I'm an Ironman triathlete, right? I've got a long day ahead of me. And honestly, unless I'm one of the elites and my swim is so important for me, fine. Then, no, we're kind of back to this primer sort of talk that I was chatting about. We actually, it would be benefit of benefit.

to do some sprints and whatnot in the water before I have to sprint out. if, you know, that's the majority, like that's 1 % or less of the listeners here. So otherwise, it's just like you were kind of saying, MJ, meditate, chill, yeah. It's gonna be a long day out here, let's find my position. And yeah, and you just know that that first little bit is gonna be a little bit challenging, but you're gonna move into your pace, because you've got, we've got,

10 hours plus to be out here, whatever it is.

Paul Warloski (26:26)

I know in the cycling capacity that there's a massive difference between what kind of warmup we need for a cyclocross race. It's going to be 30 or 45 minutes and, the cross race, we need to get our heart rate up to, you know, race levels and be ready to go from the gun and a gravel race, you know, they often start fast. So need to get a little bit of a warmup and get a little bit of a priming action in.

But for the most part, you just need to warm up in the first few miles. with triathlon, does it make, and this is from my ignorance since I don't do triathlons. Do we want to handle warmups differently? If there's multiple disciplines, do you just, you warm up for the swim and get ready for that? You don't need to worry about the bike or the run.

Paul Laursen (27:11)

Totally.

You don't know, you can't. Like, yeah, the swim's gonna take care of everything, right? Like it's, cause you're, yeah, you're moving, you're getting warm, hopefully, unless it's a cold water swim. But I mean, man, I've had some nasty ones in my history. In my days, they didn't cancel events, even if you're swimming in 10 or 11 degree water. And I had one with that and I can just remember.

Paul Warloski (27:17)

Yeah.

Paul Laursen (27:40)

Some people actually wore their wetsuit. They continued to wear their wetsuit on the bike phase. They were that cold. And they were fine. They removed their wetsuit after they finished the 40K bike in an Olympic distance triathlon. it's like that's how, know, like temperature really matters, right? And that just highlights it. So in ice cold water triathlons, you find out real quickly ⁓ how much temperature matters.

⁓ as an effect because the DNFs are off the chart in those situations because people can't believe how they just can't function under being so cold, being hypothermic, but you can't. So it really drives home the fact that the temperature effect is just so important for exercise.

Marjaana (28:13)

Mm-hmm.

Can we talk more about the cold water swims? I was listening to Jörgen Miele, who is the safety chief of Norsemen and he's done some research on swimming in 10 degree water. They actually did a research study on the Oslofjord. got, I can't believe they got volunteers to show up and...

Paul Laursen (28:33)

Yeah.

Marjaana (28:53)

They wanted to find out if 10 degrees Celsius is too cold for 3.8 K swim, which is the long distance swim. And it turns out, no, it's too cold. they actually, like their participants got hypothermia even with the wetsuit. So, or some of them did, they got really, really cold. But so they determined that 10 degrees, it should be

Paul Laursen (29:15)

Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Warloski (29:15)

Thanks

Marjaana (29:22)

half distance swim. And then they also have found that, and this is the reason why they spray in a Norseman start. So you jump off a ferry and in the ferry, they actually spray all the participants with cold water, especially the face, because when you dive into a cold water, you get that diving reflex and that can cause arrhythmia.

So they want people rather have that diving reflex in the big ferry instead of when they jump the five to six meters down into the black deep fjord. I'm trying to hype myself for this because I will be one of those people. So yeah, they sprayed them with the cold water and then they need to make the jump. And some people...

Paul Laursen (29:54)

You

Paul Warloski (30:04)

It sounds that way. ⁓

Marjaana (30:17)

They don't, they decide not to jump because it's just mentally. I think it's pretty big deal. It's scary, right?

Paul Laursen (30:25)

It's really scary.

Marjaana (30:27)

So if you know you're going into a cold water and my first Ironman was in Norway and the water was cold. ⁓ I did a little bit of warm up, but still like I went in, started way too hard and a few hundred meters in I was like hyperventilating and I'm like, what is happening? So.

Just be mindful that you might not want to sprint in in the cold water, but just like get a slow start and get warm first in the water.

Paul Laursen (31:03)

Hmm. Yeah, I had this, that experience, the cold shock and it's real. It actually happened. So I was, we went for a summer hike to the glaciers and there was this beautiful, you you can just imagine summer day at the top of, you know, 2000 meters, 6,000 feet. And, you know, but it's a glacier fed lake, right? Where we're, where we're kind of camping. So I was like, oh yeah, I'm going to go for a swim. I'm going swim from this side to the...

Marjaana (31:10)

Okay.

Paul Laursen (31:32)

to the other side of the lake, small lake and back. So I dove in and I just started swimming and then I got to the end and then I started coming back and it was just like all of a sudden it was like my body turned into cement and I couldn't, I could hardly move, I could hardly kick anymore and I could hardly move my arms. basically there was like this loss of the ability

despite my desire to go as fast as I could, but my drive was just all of a sudden turned off. And it was the scariest thing, because now I'm stuck in the middle of a lake in this sort of situation. And of course, my family's not going to really want to dive in and come and save me. So I kind of flipped on my back and made sure that my,

Marjaana (32:09)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Paul Laursen (32:20)

my airway was kind of clear and I did a little bit of like just a sort of a slow float and backstroke the rest of the way because I was quite alarmed that I was going to go under sort of. And then when I got to the end, I told my family what had happened. It was not good. ⁓ Yeah, but it was super scary. So it can happen to Being as trained as you want, if you have that cold shock response, it's very dangerous.

Paul Warloski (32:39)

That's pretty scary.

Marjaana (32:50)

Yeah, imagine like when it's 5 a.m. and it's dark in the Norwegian fjord and hundreds of people in the water. Not a good situation.

Paul Laursen (32:57)

Hmm.

Yeah.

Paul Warloski (33:02)

Wow. And when is your Norseman? Wow. Okay.

Marjaana (33:04)

August.

Paul Laursen (33:08)

you

Marjaana (33:09)

you

Paul Warloski (33:10)

some definite training for that.

That's gonna be an adventure. should we think about caffeine intake at all? And should we think about caffeine timing? Is that something that we should, know, is caffeine a good tool for us at this point for warmups?

Marjaana (33:34)

drink your coffee early enough so you can use the bathroom after.

Paul Warloski (33:38)

Yeah, that's definitely

true.

Paul, do you use caffeine before an event? Yeah.

Paul Laursen (33:40)

Yeah, always for sure.

yeah, yeah. So it's like, there's a, and again, back to the central nervous system thing, right? Where we started with the PAP, it's again, you're doing, again having that neuromuscular impact, right? So it's like, there's like this blockage of the adenosine receptors in the brain that cause for your feeling of fatigue so that,

you ultimately can't feel as much fatigue when you have those receptors blocked. And that winds up increasing central drive. So yeah, your whole nervous system fires a little bit faster. I don't know what the stats are on caffeine or coffee usage in the Western world, but I would imagine they're pretty high. And that's what everyone is.

is grabbing that alertness, right? So I think most of us are drinking a coffee right now, I see you Paul. So yeah, if you are not using caffeine yet in your race performance, then that's a real opportunity. The window is usually about an hour before is a good time, even about 30 minutes to 90 minutes is probably a

Paul Warloski (34:41)

Yeah.

Marjaana (34:42)

Thank

Paul Laursen (35:07)

just a fine window anywhere in there that you can get that into you. And I can remember some of the literature on this, but they were saying that you only get so much of a caffeine hit from coffee. And there are these competing, what are called, I believe, methylxanthinines, which is the molecule that winds up blocking the adenosine receptors. So you get like, there's a bunch of ⁓ methylxanthinines in coffee.

But if you just want the kick and just want the pure caffeine, you should go to the pharmaceutical place that's nearby. You'll find a product like NoDose or equivalent, and it's just like pure caffeine. And they usually come in 100 milligram tablets, and you can take those. I think the maximum dose that you're going to see a benefit at is usually about 300 milligrams. So if you go beyond that, you could overwhelm

Paul Warloski (35:43)

you

Paul Laursen (36:04)

the system. So I wouldn't go over that. And like the advice we give so many people so often, you want to don't do this for the very first time. You know what I mean? Never tried this before. You've never had caffeine before. And now you're going to go and take 300 milligrams. You're going to just be... It's a recipe waiting for disaster, kind of waiting to happen. So yeah.

Paul Warloski (36:16)

Thank

Marjaana (36:17)

you

Paul Warloski (36:27)

You may.

You're gonna be flying instead of riding a

bike or, yeah.

Paul Laursen (36:33)

Yeah, so you do want to kind of practice these in key sets beforehand and start small. Like, start with half a tablet if you've never had this before, and then try a full tablet and try two. But use these in key sets that you're doing. Key sets, we're talking about like interval training or moderate interval or like moderate intervals kind of thing, race pace kind of stuff. And see how you feel.

Marjaana (36:34)

Yeah.

Paul Laursen (37:01)

and see if you get a little bit of a bump in your performance. Check out your heart rate response to these as well. And yeah, there's a lot of potential there for priming the nervous system, which is what this podcast is really kind of all about.

Paul Warloski (37:15)

how soon before, 30 minutes, 60 minutes before.

Paul Laursen (37:19)

Yep, yep, 30 to 60, 30 to 90 is probably a fine little window. And then it has a half-life and drifts off sort of shortly thereafter. And then that's why, so if you're in an Iron Man or a marathon, you're kind of redosing every hour or two kind of thing.

Paul Warloski (37:41)

So do we want to give any kind of...

protocols, I guess, about how we do a running warmup. You know, if we have a short event of 5k, what should we do?

Marjaana (37:53)

So I, I start with maybe five, 10 minutes, just the easy jog. Then I'll do some squats, some lunges, some leg swings, some light body weight, strength training. just like one set of 10 repeats. I like to do like this lunge matrix, which is.

forward lunges, sideways lunges and back lunges. And then I finish off with a little bit more jog and three to four strides. And maybe a one or two, a little bit longer, like one or two at the race, one or two minutes at the race pace, depending on the race and where I am. But that is usually also what I use on everyday running. Like I try to do some

combine strength and mobility moves and then I start slowly running.

Paul Laursen (38:52)

And the only one I would add on that, and I've seen this in runners, some great, we have a great photo actually, one of our Athletica athletes doing this on the line, and it's actually like, so if you're stood on that line waiting for the gun, you can actually do some like counter movement jumps almost, like some maxable jumps just to kind of prime the nervous system there is another good one. ⁓ Just to keep.

Paul Warloski (38:51)

And what about for a long?

Hmm.

Marjaana (39:16)

Mm-hmm. Always.

Paul Laursen (39:19)

If you have to sprint from the get-go in a 5k, maybe get your position on a, say, it's a cross-country race or whatever. So that's just some counter-movement jumps is another good one.

Marjaana (39:32)

Yeah, dance.

Paul Warloski (39:32)

This is just jumping

in place. Okay.

Paul Laursen (39:34)

Yep.

Marjaana (39:35)

Basically.

Paul Laursen (39:35)

Yeah.

Yeah. You'll see. And if you watch track and field events too, you'll see, you'll see track and field athletes that are, they're doing the same.

Paul Warloski (39:44)

What about long distance marathon? Basically the same thing, a little bit less.

Paul Laursen (39:49)

Yeah, not as important, right? But maybe if you're elite, then maybe getting that position off the start is. but yeah, and you'll see, like you go to big, big event 10Ks and stuff in the cities, you'll see athletes, they'll sort of have their place where they can kind of do their primers right off the front. they're like avoiding one another and stuff, because they're kind of doing it in both directions, before they heading straight down that.

the main road, main central road around the big buildings and whatnot, the tight sort of space, but that's what they're trying to do. So I don't think there is, I think like we always say with training, there's more than one way to skin the cat with this, but the principles are really quite simple at the end of the day. And the number one is like get that PAP effect where it's like some sort of essential nervous system primer. And we've given you all these various different examples and way to do that.

Number two, be warm. That's a really, really key one. If you're not warm, the whole system from central nervous system nerves to the muscles themselves are not going to contract optimally to what you're wanting. And then number three, if you can also get a little bit more aerobic metabolism involved, is the whole VO2 ⁓ kinetics.

So can you just get to that VO2 max state around five to 10 minutes beforehand? That's going to be like icing on the cake because now all of a sudden you're all, the whole system is kind of primed for aerobic metabolism and you'll slow down the anaerobic metabolism off the gun. So yeah, you're going to be,

Yeah, kicking goals with that. And maybe, last but not least, is more icing on the cake might be optimizing the caffeine intake too.

Paul Warloski (41:44)

That's a good place to stop. are going to include some studies in the show notes. So take a look at those if you want to dig in a little bit more deeply into the whole picture. Marjaana, anything else you want to add?

Marjaana (41:57)

Well, I just remembered that our friend Cindy always says she needs longer warm-up, which I don't know any studies per se, but as we get older we might need a little bit longer than 10 minutes of warm-up.

Paul Laursen (42:14)

yeah, I'll give you one last anecdote. If you are an elite, and again, Cindy is getting, fitter and fitter and fitter. It's just incredible to watch her progress. Remember when she started in Athletica, she was really not doing too much and now she's top, top, top in our age group. And again, like so many of the examples, if you're patient, you will eventually make patient and consistent, you make good progress year after year.

But on the long warmup, I'm thinking back to the work I did in the Australian Olympic program. And I can remember, I'll name it, was Michael Rogers. And he was just a fantastic cyclist in the Tour de France and Australia's top time trialer for a long, long time. And he was doing warmups minimum of 90 minutes. Like he would not, he wouldn't even show up if he wasn't gonna be doing a 90 minute warmup.

out on his bike before he was gonna kind of do a time trial, right? someone at the top of the game would be doing that, going that long, right? You can imagine, right? But if it's an aerobically demanding kind of sport and, an eight hour day is just a part of the job, then doing 90 minutes beforehand is, you know, relative is to him is quite low.

So everything, as we always say here, is relative. Like that might be not you at all. The listener probably isn't. But that's how long it could potentially be. And probably the fitter that you get, probably the longer ideal warm up you're going to want for yourself, to Cindy's point.

Marjaana (43:39)

Mm-hmm.

Interesting, I thought that would be maybe a Perimenopausal thing, wanting a little bit more time on aerobic intensity to warm up. And the young bunnies can do it, like, crank out from five minutes on.

Paul Laursen (44:06)

Well, I- no, I just- I-

Yeah,

maybe. But I would just say, I think it relates to just how fit Cindy is. Like she's, yeah, I see how much she's training and just, yeah, she's just incredible.

Marjaana (44:17)

Yeah, okay.

Paul Warloski (44:23)

All right, thanks for listening today to the Athletes Compass podcast. Take a moment now, subscribe, share, and let's keep navigating this endurance adventure together. Improve your training with the science-based training platform, Athletica, and join that conversation at the Athletica Forum. For Marjaana Rakai and Dr. Paul Laursen I'm Paul Warloski, and this has been the Athletes Compass podcast. Thank you so much for listening.