I have been using Train Now for the last few years as my work schedule doesn’t allow me to stick to a structured program. My overall goal is to maintain or increase my FTP for the foreseeable future, I turn 59 yo in January . I usually manage at least 3 1hr suggested workouts per week.
Over the last month my AI FTP dropped from 245W to 244W.
During that time I achieved my best ever 30 minute (243W) and 60 minute (212W) power numbers.
Here are the numbers for my last AI Detection period.
I wonder if there is an obvious explanation for my drop in FTP.
So its generally went up from the summer but for the last two tests (AI FTP D) its stayed practically the same (I wouldn’t call 1 watt a drop) and I wouldn’t be worried about hitting a plateau in the short term, most folk do. If it becomes long term you may have to develop a long term strategy to get round it but lot of folk just naturally hover around it (the plateau) and just get better at holding their FTP for longer.
Mentioning the sprint workouts got me thinking. I’ve just finished my third year of using Trainer Road and don’t think I’ve ever had a single sprint workout assigned to me. I’ve always done 16-ish week programs (never Train Now) and usually do two of those per year. From memory, I’ve done programs for XCO, short track XC, XC endurance, and fondo. I guess it’s normal to not have sprint workouts assigned in any of those programs?
As others said, that looks like solid work and progress on just 3 hours per week – and by only using TrainNow (instead of a plan) at that!
It looks like your FTP has generally been going up these last few months, which is awesome to see.
I’d also agree with what’s been said above in that a 1-watt decrease is really nothing to worry about. It’s essentially the same value as it was with your previous detection.
PL increases don’t necessarily mean your FTP will always go up in tandem. If your recent AI FTP Detections have been about 245 watts and your recent best-ever 30-minute power was 243 watts, I’d say it sounds like your current FTP is pretty spot-on.
PL increases do, however, almost always means your fitness is increasing overall. If you’re able to progress into more difficult workouts, you’ll improve your time to exhaustion and repeatability of efforts for the zone(s) you’re training. Remember that there’s more to cycling fitness than FTP alone!
To me, it looks like things are trending in the right direction and I wouldn’t worry too much about this one detection. It’s impossible for FTP to increase infinitely (as much as we’d like it to!), so it’s normal if that number doesn’t go up with every run of AI FTP Detection.
That said, if you start to plateau over the longer term, I think it would be worth trying to see if you could follow a structured plan instead of using TrainNow on its own. Following a proper plan would get you the structure and planned progression that’s often necessary to continue building your fitness up – especially if you feel like you’ve begun to stall when not following a plan.
Hope that helps clear things up – feel free to let me know if you have any other questions!
The usefulness of sprints as part of a training plan was highlighted in a thread started by Dr Coggan back in the short period that he had the privilege of posting on this board.
For the record Coggan had the same privilege as any other user here. His time here was his own choice, by ignoring the multiple opportunities that TR gave him to correct his negative behavior and remain a positive contributor to the group.
why are we sweating an AI FTP drop of 1w? the reality is with a 30min best of 243 (assuming maybe a time to exhaustion of 35min), your ftp might be right or a little lower at 240w if you can’t make it past 30 at 243.
I’m quite happy with the variations in my FTP . Also the 30 min and 60 min efforts I mentioned were not full gas , they were just the result of Train Now suggested workouts.
I made the post because my PL’s made me think I would have an FTP increase this month.
As I’ve tried to explain ( possibly not clearly enough ) I was just intrigued as to why my FTP had gone down this month.
If anybody’s still interested here is a quick summary of the previous month
My FTP went up from 241 W to 245 W
Progression Levels were ….
Endurance 3.1 to 2.5 -0.6
Tempo 2.8 to 4.1 +1.3
Sweet spot 4.2 to 6.1 +1.9
Threshold 5.0 to 5.3 +0.3
VO2 Max 5.9 to 7.0 +1.1
Anaerobic 4.3 to 3.4 -0.9
Sprint 1.0 to 1.0 No change
Looks like the AI algorithm stuff makes it a bit difficult to guess whether your FTP is going to go up or down based on PL changes.
I think I’ll have to do a regular ramp test or 20 minute test to see if I’m working ‘hard enough’ to maintain my FTP.
I have become very suspect of AI FTP. It is what it is. I am would not be surprised if there are limits built into the algorithm that have nothing to do with actual performance. Just keep doing the work - looks like you are seeing improvements across the board. Best of luck!
but for the last two tests (AI FTP D) its stayed practically the same (I wouldn’t call 1 watt a drop) and I wouldn’t be worried about hitting a plateau in the short term, most folk do. If it becomes long term you may have to develop a long term strategy to get round it but lot of folk just naturally hover around it (the plateau) and just get better at holding their FTP for longer.
