I haven’t done a ramp test since about 2020. But I already have a pretty high anaerobic capacity and ability to withstand pain so those always overestimated my FTP by as much as 25W.
For the past 2ish years I haven’t done any ‘true’ FTP testing. I currently go by a combination of RPE, FTP workouts, and a couple ‘test’ workouts to find FTP by feel.
So before a VO2 block I might (hypothetical but close enough numbers) be able to do an FTP workout with 70m TiZ at 300W. Then after the VO2 block and the required recovery I can do an FTP workout with 45m TiZ at 315W.
Before, 315 would definitely feel above threshold. The effort would ramp up throughout an interval, breathing goes ragged, increasing muscle fatigue, etc after only maybe 10min.
After, 315 feels almost exactly like 300 did before but the onset of muscular fatigue comes in the final 5 min of a 45m TiZ workout instead of the end of 70m.
Yeah, that’s why I didn’t say it improved my ramp test but that it didn’t improve my FTP.
I’m not doubting your experience, but I imagine that if you can ride at 300w for 70min, you def can also ride 315w for 45min. I doubt much physiological change occurs that contributes to your feeling that it’s easier. It’s probably mental. For example, you just did a block of intervals at wattage much higher than 315w, so you’re now more confident about hitting that.
If you’re not actually doing explicit testing (ramp or otherwise), it’s all just down to feel anyhow.
What I previously said holds for a ramp test. But also for the aiftp estimate, because that’s almost surely just trained on their dataset of previous training calendars with ramp tests
It’s very dependent on the athlete and how well trained they are.
If you are pushing up against the ceiling of what you current vo2 max allows one can be able to do quite an extensive amount of work at that FTP but going 10ish watts higher quickly fatigue.
In that case you need to raise your vo2 max with some specific work before your FTP can increase.
Maybe? I might have been able to do 315 for 45 min but it would have been above threshold. Whereas after the block, 315 for 45min felt like FTP but just had a shorter TTE. I mean I didn’t do any VO2 or other metabolic testing so I can’t say for sure but the feeling above and below FTP (even by 5 or less percent) is pretty obvious.
Even if I had been able to do 315 for 45min before the block, I certainly would not have been able to extend that 315 back out to 70min in the 8 weeks after. Since it was above FTP. But after, it was easy to just add 3-6 minutes every week to my TTE and have it all feel like FTP.
I highly doubt it. Mentality doesn’t really turn a 45 min effort from an all out slog fest to totally manageable. And that 300W FTP had stayed the same all through a summer of racing, anaerobic blocks, etc. It wasn’t until I did a focused VO2 block and recovered that it jumped up. And the same happened the year after. 315 (for example) stayed basically steady all year (TTE fluctuating a little with fatigue) until I did another focused VO2 block and it jumped another 10-15W.
Again, not casting doubt on your experience, but a few weeks of riding higher intensity shorter intervals (vo2 max power) is much more likely to be sharpening you up for a short term peak than longer-term raising your ftp to a new level. Typically, when doing such a block, you would also lower volume to accommodate the increase in intensity.
If it was actually that simple, then there would be little debate in training philosophy, just simply run a ftp block, run a vo2 block to achieve higher ftp, repeat ad infinitum.
Maybe, high level - big picture - thats all training is doing on a macro season-to-season level (progressive overload), but it seems to be more complicated in practice.
Id say your 300w all season ftp that jumped up to 315 after your short vo2 block (and the similar experience the following season) was the product of an entire season worth of training at 300w, not a few weeks of sharpening up. Your vo2 block was more or less a fitness test verifying the gain for yourself. You (or your coach) were smart to hold the ftp constant throughout the season rather than test and change your ftp and all training zones accordingly within season.
Look back at what your saying… Train hard all season, do vo2 sharpening block, fully recover, then higher wattages changes
I’ve pretty much kept volume the same during those blocks.
I totally don’t disagree that it all stacks but I wouldn’t say the blocks were just ‘sharpening up’ or a ‘verification block’. I did 9 VO2 workouts in 16 days, all high cadence, gasping for air, max effort. I’d be shocked if something that difficult didn’t cause some meaningful physiological changes.
But that’s what I’ve been saying. We didn’t hold anything constant. My FTP just was effectively constant. FTP isn’t just some power that you can hold for 45-70 minutes. It’s a functional inflection point that happens to fall in that time range. Sure, I probably could have gone and done a 40min TiZ workout at 315. But all those intervals would have been over threshold.
But in the end, I’ve done less intense times with some VO2s thrown in and while I might have sharpened the top end for racing, my FTP wouldn’t move and I had ~2 years of stagnant FTP despite training and riding consistently. So whether these super concentrated and intense VO2 blocks are ‘uncovering’ fitness or actually creating new levels of fitness it doesn’t really matter to me. I just know that at the moment that’s what it took (and still takes) for me to improve my FTP. And because it’s such a step change that happens within a month of those blocks I’m pretty confident it’s because of them.
And I’d say, this isn’t just something I’ve come up with on my own. It’s a pretty well regarded way to train to increase your FTP. That once you’re well trained, riding at FTP doesn’t do much to increase your FTP but VO2 workouts do. Just from a couple days ago here’s a post by a coach elsewhere on this forum describing the same kind of periodization (3rd and 4th paragraphs): Sweet Spot Progression - #3430 by kurt.braeckel
I’ll disagree with the first part - you can absolutely raise VO2max with a concentrated block of it, the physiological adaptation of improved stroke volume being the driver if you aim to train that. Improved stroke volume sticks with you, and thus if you continue to train at/near threshold levels beyond the VO2max block, your FTP gains will stick, and indeed “level you up” for future seasons. It’s not merely a function of improved max aerobic power temporarily raising things up short term. I have plenty of experience with this, both personally from an athlete perspective and also from training other athletes through blocks like this, and I didn’t make this up myself.
With respect to volume, I don’t agree that you need to drop it in terms of volume as “time on the bike”. In concentrated Vo2max blocks, I generally hold volume (time in the saddle) about the same as an athlete is used to, but will drop the intensity of those rides some. So high-level athletes with big FTPs, might ride 50-55% for their endurance volume during a Vo2 block, others I’ll target 55-65%, but the point is “low endurance” which reduces overall training stress. But to me that’s not the same thing as volume reduction… semantics in play here obviously.
That said, I usually won’t have people doing their peak longest rides during blocks like this. So if a guy does regular 4-6 hour rides, I might have him do ONE 4 hour ride at the end of the block, and the rest 3hr rides as his “long ride” for that block. But I’ll have plenty of easy volume even on interval days to keep overall hours up.
Finally, you ARE correct that you can’t repeat this block after block. I have never given more than one concentrated VO2max block in a single season to any of my athletes, and I can only think of really one very specific circumstance where I might do that. More typically, what happens is we do the Vo2 block, their FTP goes up, and then we spend several months/the rest of the season “bedding in that gain”. And this works. Time after time, I have athletes who come out of a base period of endurance, sweet spot, and tempo at the same level they ended the last season at, and then we can build on top of that.
At some point, yes, concentrated VO2max isn’t going to pull the same gains out of someone, and then you have train other things. At that point, you’re getting close to squeezing blood out of the proverbial turnip, and I only have one athlete that I’ve worked with for going on four seasons where I don’t really expect substaintial FTP increases to happen without doing some interesting things with his training… but his FTP is 405W when he’s in shape, so… For the rest of my athletes? The approach works and works very well (with the exception of my super-masters guys in their 60s and 70s).
I feel like you just agreed with everything I said, but said it as if it was something a little different.
You’re saying you do a vo2 block then maintain it with more traditional training throughout the season, basically a ‘reverse-periodization’ approach. Whereas standard periodization would build into the vo2 block, which peaks the athlete for the key event -typically towards the end of the season (since race importance builds towards a championship in normal sport circumstances).
As you said, in the off-season, you’ll build back to hopefully somewhere near peak ftp of last season (because of progressive overload), but thats more reasonable attributed to the entirety of last seasons work changing your body, rather than a concentrated blocked of a few high intensity workouts.
Maybe it feels like youre really saying something different, but we are saying the same thing in a different way. The reason why you cant keep doing vo2 blocks is because the body just doesnt adapt to changes that quickly, so even if you keep throwing that high quality intense work, after the initial quick and noticeable adaptation (what im calling the short-term gain / peak fitness for your A event), the body just cant keep absorbing it and growing stronger.
It’s not reverse periodization… it’s just periodization for specific athlete needs. It is still Base - General Prep - Specific Prep. “General prep” in this case being raising functional threshold power through increased stroke volume and FTP training. Specific prep being whatever the athlete needs for their goal event. The term “reverse periodization” assumes everyone needs to do short power training to prepare for races or “sharpen the blade”. As a function of raw numbers, there are far, far fewer multisport and cycling athletes who need a block of 5 min power and anaerobic power training to prepare for their goal events than there are people who need to improve their ability to climb for an hour at the end of a 6 hour event. So let’s just call it “periodization”, because I don’t enter into VO2max training with the intent of raising some specific performance parameter. I am training to improve cardiac stroke volume, which has a whole host of performance benefits. So no, I don’t think we’re saying the same things at all in this specific regard.
The concentrated block is the driver for the step gain in the first place, but yes, you are correct that the “bedding in” process that happens after that is key. You can’t just do VO2max and then stop training and your FTP is magically higher… but the VO2max adaptation and improvement is the entire driver for the process. There is a reason people stagnate after some period of time when all they do is mixed block periodization touching on max aerobic power work here and there along with tons of threshold/-ish training.
Agree with all of this. I just think maybe what you think of as VO2max training isn’t the same as what I do. I delineate between training maximum aerobic power vs. training VO2max specifically. I will give people a VO2max block (if I think they need it) as part of their general training. So yes, 1x VO2max block per year with one purpose, and then training 2 or 3 or 5 or 6.45min power may also happen as part of specific training. Two distinct training stimuli with different purposes.
Pretty much this. I think that level of detail is missing the forest for the trees. I don’t mean that in a deprecating way, but that I’m not sure it’s possible to actually train one without the other, so they may be conceptually different, but the training is one in the same.
Yeah you are likely to improve 5 min power by training VO2max intervals (in the way that I do). In fact, I test 5 min power before and after the block as a proxy for that because I’m not hooking my athletes up to a metabolic cart. But I also test 20-min power OR FTP/TTE after the block as well. I firmly believe you can improve VO2max MORE by doing those intervals in a specific way, and then you can improve 5 min power MORE by doing THAT training in a specific way. So I would agree, you can’t really train one without the other, but you can emphasize central physiological adaptation or performance by changing the way you execute the interval, in my opinion.
As you noted, it’s the sum of the parts that leads to the performance improvements, and “all roads lead to Rome.” That said, I’ve had repeated success with myself and my athletes with this approach over the years, and better success on myself training this way for several seasons than other approaches as well. And as I’ve said, I didn’t just make this up on my own.
Does doing threshold/ss for say ten weeks help to build ftp up? My fractional utilisation is 71%! If I could get my FTP (227) up to 85% of my 5 min power (318) I’d be very happy.
It is hard to give straightforward answer to this question, it will be always “it depends”. Also, I am not coach, all my experience is based on my own.
Anyway, looking those numbers, they seem to quite similar to mine after 3-4 month of structured training. At that point I was able to grow FTP 2-5% per 6 week block, using TR SSBHV plan and these plans have improved considerably since then, containing combination of SS + Z4 O/U workouts like you are planning.
If you are indeed beginner, it is very likely you can grow your FTP quite a lot in the couple first years. If you are younger and/or genetically gifted, you can grow likely even more. I started training at 40+ and I am not particularly gifted.
It’s been several years since I’ve done lab testing, but my last 2 tests showed this fairly dramatically (tests were about a year apart at a similar point in the season), . With the same weight, my absolute and relative v02max ticked up slightly, my power at vo2max increased at a slightly higher percent, and my threshold power went up double digits. I was in good shape both years, but the 2nd year was after about a year of significant volume increases. This was in my early 50’s, so happy to see the actual v02max not drop year over year. The increase in power at vo2max could be a lot of things, but ultimately shows an increase in efficiency. Bottom line, my genetic potential probably didn’t drop much over the course of that year and I was operating at a significantly higher percentage of my genetic potential at the time of my second visit.
It would be interesting to get back in the lab today. My threshold is as high (or slightly higher) than it’s ever been and my durability is significantly improved after several more years of increased volume (I retired a couple years ago, so have really been pouring it on). I suspect the tests would show a reduced vo2max from 4 years ago, but operating at an even higher percentage. No way to beat father time, that vo2max potential drops as we age and you can only offset it with more training for so long.
Can’t be bothered to find it now, but there is good evidence that this isn’t necessarily true, because here you are comparing like for like.
When you compare between people, there are pros with lower Vo2s that simply have a naturally higher fractional utilization and there are some with higher Vo2s with a lower utilization. The very top are high on both.
Your statement is implicitly assuming that “fully trained => same utilization for different people”.
Even for shorter efforts where fractional utilization may not matter as much, anaerobic contribution does and so again comparisons on pure Vo2 alone aren’t perfect.
What can / do you guys use your VO2 Max number for?
Is there a training utility to help with what sort of intervals you elect to use when training?
Or is there a benefit to giving some context to training zones?
I’m curious to understand how I might improve my training and ultimately my fitness if I undergo a lab-style VO2Max test (this thread has sparked my interest and there are a couple of facilities local to that offer this type of test)
Thanks! Went from starting a year ago at 160ish (probably under-trained) to 227, but with only bouts of consistency that 227 has been a plateau since Feb. Illness, work travel, etc… Have definitely got faster and think AIFTP is under-estimating it slightly but I also know I don’t do enough threshold/TTE to truly hold that power! Need to find time to do a long threshold session when I am fresh enough.
For low volume, “right” being along the lines of focus on 2x Thresh/SS a week and do VO2 1x every 1-2 weeks? Do weekend outdoor rides on top as well, or bundle a workout in to an outdoor ride when it’s a busy week.
