I realize the difference between FTP and MAP and I don’t think the two can be equal. What I’m talking about is increasing the ratio by a few percentage points (5?)
I don’t care about other ways to get fast at this point, I’m already 90+% on intervals.icu for 30s and 60s without specifically trying (just random efforts from rides) or training at all for short durations. I think I would benefit most from increased FTP rfor the type of riding I really enjoy (climbing).
Also the Gollnick thing is hilarious to me. I guess I’m gonna just “cycled at 75% of their ramp assessed VO2max 4 times a week for 5 months” then " most of the subjects were working for 1hr at 85% to 90% of their VO2max"
Yes, I did something similar about a year after buying a road bike. Over 4-6 months I kept going longer and longer until I could ride about an hour at threshold. So it wasn’t the Gollnick protocol. It was both easy, and hard. To this day I try and refresh the muscle memory 2 or 3 times a year, and will go out and surf around threshold for 45-65 minutes.
Intellectually yes. It’s that easy. To actually execute that over weeks and weeks? Brutal. It’s a lesson in not just blinding taking lab protocols and applying it to your training. If Gollnick would have trained subjects the way ppl actually trained, it would not have passed peer review, as it would have been just bad experimental design. He essentially treated the subjects like rats.
Understood. And that’s part of it. But don’t forget about improving basic endurance (something you can do even when focusing on improving FTP/MAP ratio), and TTE, something that may change even when the absolute number/range of FTP remains static.
It’s interesting stuff for sure. Riding at 75% map is basically the exact opposite of what I’ve been doing which is heavily targeting “zone 2” but then sprinkling in a regular but small amount of vo2 efforts. I’m almost curious enough to turn myself into a lab rat but like you said it sounds kinda rough.
Well they couldn’t do that at first. They had to start with ~65% and work up from that. At some point they got to 75% and then later to that 85%. But also, they tested again half way through the 5 months and presumably raised their MAP accordingly.
Assuming they weren’t doing other training as well, they would have gotten really good at threshold. But maybe MAP dropped. IDK and I’m too busy to dig through the paper.
But he mentions improving TTE and endurance, as if they are separate things. Any mention of TTE should always be tied to an intensity, ideally. Otherwise I would assume they mean TTE@FTP.
And TTE at different intensities will vary between a time trialist and an ultra endurance specialist, even if they have the same TTE@FTP. The time trialist will rarely ride significantly longer than their target event duration. The ultra endurance specialist will have some really long training rides.
I think by ‘endurance’, he was referring to what WKO5 calls ‘stamina’.
As an example, off the couch after 6 months of basically no cardio, plus inconsistent training before that, my TTE@FTP was still good at ~70 minutes. (My FTP was trash at 2.3 W/kg).
However, my stamina was certainly terrible. So just like MAP is a poor predictor of FTP, TTE is a poor predictor of stamina at significantly lower intensities.
absolutely! It took me months and months, but I was simply attempting to extend time at threshold out to around an hour. And my road bike was only 8 or 9 months old when I started down the path (self training for a double century). Didn’t know what I was doing, just following basic principles (Friel, Carmichael Training Systems, GCN). And complicating everything by doing morning and afternoon commutes, with the longer tempo and threshold in the afternoon.
Instead of Gollnick, a modern, more formal path would be using a 40k TT training plan.
and not surprisingly, vo2max increased for all of them as they were healthy, recreationally active people that had no prior endurance training for the past 2 years:
Not the point of the study, but I’ll claim any healthy individual can go from zero to hero in 5 months. Heck, I did the zero to hero for the DeathRide in 6 months and there was a big training interruption when my dad lost a short battle with cancer. And I was fifty four years old. Just enough “structure” and basic principles to mostly train in flatland and finish 15,000 of climbing at or just below 3W/kg.
Yeah, sorry. I meant them as separate things, so basically the way redlude97 summarized: FTP versus MAP? - #36
I meant TTE as “TTE@FTP”.
So (for me):
basic endurance (in the Coggan Z2 range and up to low-mid tempo (“better” would simply be longer in the short term, higher power at same strain over long term)
FTP
TTE (@ FTP)
MAP
repeatability
other stuff that isn’t interesting for this discussion or necessarily a metric (“how’s your sleep”, etc)
And then Stamina (WKO) is useless.
Makes total sense and although I have not seen this exact scenario in my fitness, I have experienced similar. Also, coached athletes (see above) have reported similar “loose coupling”
absolutely! It took me months and months, but I was simply attempting to extend time at threshold out to around an hour. And my road bike was only 8 or 9 months old when I started down the path (self training for a double century). Didn’t know what I was doing, just following basic principles (Friel, Carmichael Training Systems, GCN). And complicating everything by doing morning and afternoon commutes, with the longer tempo and threshold in the afternoon.
