Hey Kjdhawkhill, I get what you’re saying, and you’re not the only person on the forum who’s thinking this way. “If my FTP is 10-20 watts, higher, TrainerRoad AI must be giving me workouts that are 10-20 watts higher”.
I’ve said this a few times, but the AI doesn’t know your FTP and isn’t basing its recommendation on it. In our system, a lower FTP will give you longer workouts with fewer watts and more TIZ compared to a higher FTP.
I went into your account and looked at what Saturday’s threshold workout would be at 302 vs 328, which is what we wanted to set you at.
Best 10 Minute vs Planned Workout
At a 302 FTP, you’re doing 309 AP.
At 328 FTP, you’re doing 310 AP! Literally one watt difference, even though you’ve got a 20-watt FTP difference.
This is what I’m talking about when I tell athletes to look at the actual watts you’re doing rather than the FTP.
For NP, at 302 FTP, you’re doing 312 NP.
And 328 FTP, you’re doing 321 AP. This is mostly because we’d have you on an hour workout at 328 vs a 90-minute workout at 302. That’s still 10 watts below your best 6 week 10 min NP of 331, but 11 watts above what you would do at 302.
If you look at the images , you can see that the 328 threshold is keeping you right at recently power that you’ve done, but in a VO2 max workout and only predicting it hard vs the very hard you put.
The 90 minute workout does have you do a little bit more power from 60-90 minutes, but it’s not the sort of power that’s going to push your FTP up like the other workout.
You’re at 3.1 watt/kg. Because of that, we recommend you work on raising your FTP through higher watts rather than longer TIZ.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Note: This tool is underdevelopment to help athletes better understand the wattage of their workouts and how it compares to what they’ve done recently. We’re trying to release it ASAP.
