I’d say useful rather than usable. And also, the most important thing is what one can do in the workouts over different efforts that matter way more than FTP, whatever that exactly means. There is tons of overlap between power zones with the way AT is laid out. So if one overestimates FTP or underestimates FTP, the system corrects for that. It might be calling a workout threshold that is really VO2 or sweets-spot, etc, but the training effect is there. Maybe not an optimal training effect, but still a very good training effect and likely about as good as one can get without a good personal coach or above average knowledge of how to train oneself.
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You say you do 5 workouts per week.
How much recovery have you had?
How much training have you had in prior years?
You could be a fatigue candidate.
As some have said, the devil is in the details.
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Agreed.
Not quite. If your FTP is really 250W, and TR has 225, anything around threshold will not be effective - it will be sweet-spot instead. And the opposite - if your FTP is really 225, and TR has 250, you’ll never be able to complete threshold or over-unders.
I personally depend a lot more on threshold/over-unders to set FTP in TR than testing. When you’ve done a lot of O/Us, you know what they’re supposed to feel like, and you know if you’re doing them at, below or above FTP.
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I was looking at WKO last night and noticed most of the 2018 and 2019 SSB blocks my ramp FTP was say 225, but modeled FTP at 240. What initially caught my eye is current (non TR) sweet spot work is generating decent time above 85% estimated VO2max, but not the TR sweet spot work (0 minutes above 85% eVO2max).
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A ramp test is more accurate at telling you your maximum aerobic power, MAP (tests Vo2 max) and then guesses what your threshold power might be…
If you want to know your threshold power (FTP), then there are more accurate ways to measure it, such as riding at Threshold…
So don’t be concerned when things are different, just be consistent.
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Chad, Amber, Jon, Nate, Pete, and others say on the podcast (more times than I can count): the ramp test measures where you are on that day at that time. It does not determine your self worth or how good you are as an athlete. If you think it’s very wrong or you know you were having a bad day reassess a few days later.
Maybe you’ve hit a plateau and need to train at about the same level for a few more weeks to avoid unproductive overreaching. Maybe you didn’t sleep well or nutrition is a bit off or more life stress than last time or…
If you’re using AT, even if your FTP doesn’t increase on a given test, your PLs will keep the training productive until the next one.
I’ve done the, “that must be wrong, I’m adding a few percent” thing and usually end up adjusting FTP back down, usually lower than tested by the time I find what works after overreaching too far.
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But as I remember your mFTP is ridiculously high percentage of VO2 max. Mine is is 82% so no work over 85% if I do sst, and only some if I do threshold/ou.
Each season my fractional utilization varies between 82 or 83% to 89%.
And do you do sst fastcat style, so sst is up to 97%, of FTP?
The system works better with over-estimated vs under-estimated FTP for sure. Probably because most tend to inflate FTP. Your example is fairly extreme though. If one is within ~5% of FTP or so with the input, which is a pretty big error, the workouts provided are still gonna be effective. You start to trend into tempo with high PL on sweet-spot tagged workouts and sweet-spot in high PL of threshold tagged workouts, etc. But that is still really effective training. Again, maybe not perfect, but perfection is really hard for a variety of reasons.
If a person cares enough about getting fit where that matters, I suspect they’ll follow their numbers enough to be able to adjust. Surely not universally true, but there just aren’t universal answers anyways.
I do my coach’s style SS 
which is 92% and if feeling good I’ll flex that up to 95% based on an agreement with my coach.
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Yeah, that is why it is still important to keep an eye on your FTP and retest when necessary (and apply a fudge factor you have derived from experience to the result).
E. g. I have now reach sweet spot PL 8.6, so I will retest this weekend and cash in the FTP gains a little early.
last 19 minutes and a few second these 2 times. when i reach 175, I know that i can not hit 179, i quit and it is almost at my max heat rate.
5 tainning days, 2 days rest.
I took sis rego after i do a ss trainning.
I have not ride like 5 years, only taining for like 4-5 months
Yes, i and using the AT now. let’s see how it turn out to be for me. Hope it is improving my ability end of the day.
I don’t use WKO and haven’t even really utilised Intervals.ICU to its capacity so I’m no expert on the models etc but this seems curious given SST is a pretty generic training zone.
Was it just that when using the TR SST you weren’t being challenged enough (I assume this is pre-AT)?
Pre-AT and I need to take another look at the WKO data.
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It’s very possible to be sweet spot 10 and have a correctly input FTP.
The point I’m trying to make is that “power zones are descriptive, not prescriptive.” You can still be doing threshold work, even if TR calls it something different. Most important thing is increasing duration one can spend at different power outputs. If you do varied workouts, seek to progressively increase duration at given power outputs, and get sufficient rest, you will get stronger, even if you don’t know FTP. My hot take is the vast majority of TR users and cyclists in general do not know their FTP (even though many claim they do) and that is just fine.
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Fully agree, especially with sst. I would not relay on anything other than threshold levels to set FTP. Sst lvl 10 is 3x30@90 or 2x40. If you have ok muscular endurance and properly setup FTP this should be more than doable for many. And this has nothing to do with FTP bump. On the other hand threshold levels are so strange that lvl 7-8 would be indication that something good is going on, as threshold lvl’s are greatly skewed by bursts over FTP. When it comes to vo2 and short power - it’s so highly individual that I would even bother with finding some relation to FTP other than fully personal experience and feeling.
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Agree, and add that this mostly matters if knowing FTP is important.
The sweet spot catalog of TR workouts (especially) gives a very good training stimulus even with an over-estimated FTP since it entails a lot of work near threshold. If one were using TR, it’s better to over-estimate FTP input than under-estimate it, and I don’t think that is an accident at all for how it has evolved. Sweet-spot becomes threshold, threshold becomes VO2, and VO2 becomes anaerobic. As you progress up in fitness the PLs come back in line with labeled power zones, people then adjust up FTP input and the cycle repeats until a plateau occurs or more likely a training disruption comes in and forces a step back again.
My hunch is the whole ecosystem is most straight-forward to use if PLs are between 3-7 on the SS, threshold, VO2 depending on focus and time of year. The threshold workouts above level 6-7 are more for the TT specialist or someone who has an under-estimated FTP and is really doing SS type work in that case (which is fine).
Things can definitely get weird in general for the extreme ends of the PLs for each power zone. Beyond 10 in SS for example, several of the workouts start to have spikes and almost no break, making them more like threshold workouts unless FTP input is under-estimated. However, the 9-10 workouts are very doable if FTP is input correctly and one has reasonably well trained muscular endurance as you pointed out.
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