How did you 5w/kg+ riders make it there?

Training
433

You should have plenty of room for improvement as long as you stay consistent with training. I also progressed quickly when I started riding again in late 2018, and while I can’t tell you when your progress will slow, I can assure you it will. It seems to get very tough around 4.5 for a lot of people.

I’d also caution you against being too focused on FTP and wkg. Just put in the training and don’t get caught up in getting too skinny to hit a number. Falling ill and missing training will hurt much worse than a half kilo of weight.

Also, it’s worth thinking about your overall power curve. FTP is one thing, but having good sustained power AND short power are key to racing well, so you’ll want to be sure your training is developing both ends.

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434

I’m guessing all of the “5.0 for 20min” posts are because 5.0 has been tossed around so much as the gold standard of fitness. FTP has always been an ego number for many so hearing 5.0wkg mentioned in awe so frequently on the podcast (and I’d assume it’s inclusion as the top of the A category on Zwift doesn’t hurt) people naturally strive to be associated with that level.

I’m guessing this is a similar mindset that drives people to taper and do openers for the ramp test… and then do a 20min to get a better number… and then the KM Protocol, etc, etc…

435

I can be higher than FTP, or it can be lower, depending on how you’ve trained, how fit you are, etc. The TTE component of FTP is vastly underutilized and misunderstood.

5w/kg with a 40min TTE is much different than 5w/kg with a 70min TTE but it also depends on your goals.

Obviously higher is better on both counts, but if you have to pick between them, I’d say that 4.6-4.8 with a 70-80min TTE is much more valuable than 5w/kg with a 40min TTE, especially because your ability to ride at 95% is correlated with TTE as well.

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Yeah I agree but thats a bit silly because I could come here and say “im actually 10 w/kg…for 1 minute” and my tips and tricks are eat lots of donuts and never do intervals longer than 20 seconds".

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Back to the original post.

HOW DID YOU 5W/KG RIDERS GET THERE?

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Riding consistently and a lot. Over 600hrs in 2019 and over 400hrs of that indoors with almost no time spent in Z1.

2020 I’m aiming for 700hrs and it’s off to a good start. My focus is longer events over the next few years and I have a fair bit of flexibility with my training time so volume works well. My training is pyramidal in structure and I don’t hit serious interval work until 6wks or so from a key event. Lots of Z2, tempo, and some zwift racing or Strava hunting plus long rides depending on the time of year. Typically 6-8hrs during the week days and 6-8hrs between Sat/Sun.

On the other end of the spectrum, I see a fair few guys that train less, but much higher intensity. They don’t typically focus on events much over 2-2.5hrs though and typically have a lifetime of some kind of athletics at a high level.

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439

I’ve been cycling for 3 years now and I have a 5.4-5.5 w/kg. Last year, I had an 4.7-4.8 w/kg. I figured, something gotta change so, being that last year I was 6 feet tall and just under 60 kg, I was too light. So I decide to put on some weight and it clearly payed off.

How?

Lots of protein (pretty sure there’s an article on TrainerRoad) 30 minutes after training.

Leg workouts (in the gym) after cycling workouts.

A recuperation routine that suits you, just try different massage techniques, different food or drinks for recuperation, and different times to go to bed.

Lastly, which is the weirdest one, is to have fun on your bike, it’s the only way to stay motivated for the next interval, workout, or race.

If you’re looking to lose weight, try 1-2 hours steady 60-70% after a workout, not too intense, just to burn some fat whilst improving your zone 2 capacity.

As always, check your diet with a nutrition expert to see if you might be missing some minerals in your diet. The nutrition expert can help you find the perfect diet to lose weight too. From what I heard, eating more fruits and vegetables is the way to go.

Ciao

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440

I’m 41, riding for 15 years, 65kg and currently around 5.2w/kg. I only started approaching 5w/kg last year. I was not an athlete in high school (marching band) and did not show any special athletic potential. I think the biggest contributors are:

1 - Weight management - Hitting 5w/kg is much more achievable for me at 65kg (need 325w ftp) than when I was at 72kg (would need 360w ftp.). Tracking calories and slowly dropping from 72+kg to 65-64kg over 3-6 months allowed me to retain most of my power and not fell super hungry or lethargic. I am now eating a balanced, low-calorie density diet that includes most of the foods I enjoy. The low calorie density lets me eat a lot of volume and feel full while hitting the calorie targets and maintaining or loosing weight slowly. I phased on small changes over time, allowing them to become habits and a new life style. ‘Dieting’ doesn’t work if you go back to the habits you had at the higher weight. They’re the habits that got you to the higher weight. Sustainable life style changes are needed to maintain the lower weight once you’re there.

2 - Consistency - I ride 7 days a week now except for special circumstances. 2 are active recovery and I swap them around or shorten workouts depending on whats going on, but I almost always ride for some amount of time every day. 30min is better than nothing, 45 better than 30, 60 better than 45. Riding 5 days a week, with some swapping depending on life events wasn’t consistent enough for me. Also the more indoor riding I do the stronger I get… probably due to increased consistency and efficiency.

3 - Volume - I am normally between 10 and 12 hours a week. TSS is 600-700 for loading weeks. I would not say my volume is very high, but I think a certain amount of volume is required. I don’t think 5-6 hours across 3-5 days would cut it but 20 hour weeks isn’t necessary for me. I have been doing TR Low Volume plans, which is about half of my training load, and for SSBI/II do the 3 workouts on Tues → Thurs and that also worked for the first half of SPB, also LV. I wasn’t recovering quickly enough in the second half of SPB to keep doing the workouts on consecutive days and some ideas how to fit them into my schedule with Z2 or Z1 rides in-between for the next go around. Mon / Fri are normally Lazy Mountain (Z1). Saturday is either unstructured outdoor ride, unstructured Zwift ride or event, or sometimes I do a TR workout that makes sense based on where I am in the current phase followed by unstructured riding. Sunday is also unstructured outdoor ride or Zwift ride or event.

4 - Structure - Last year I was hovering around 4.9-5.0w/kg from a combination of high volume and intensity, but with no structure and plenty of ad-hoc zwift races, fondos, and group rides. Starting with TrainerRoad in the fall added structure and now I am much more picky about choosing which zwift events to take part in, and the ones I choose to take part in make sense for my current training phase, planned training load, and how I’m feeling. I find it very easy to go too hard in rides and races leading to multiple days of fatigue and will now pick events that I can recover from or make sense in the context of where I am in a TR phase. Structure and being fresh to smash the TR interval workouts has helped me set multiple 20min power PRs since last September.

5 - Recovery - Probably like many of us, prior to TR I rode too hard most of the time and not hard enough when I should have been going hard. And I was very bad about recovery during the week and as part of a cycle. I do Lazy Mountain in erg mode on Mondays and Fridays to force me to get in a couple of active recovery / easy days. And I follow the full recovery week in the TR plans in erg mode to also force me to get some recovery. I enjoy those workouts / weeks less than the SS,Threshold,V02 workouts, but I think the results have been great and it is nice not to feel tired and fatigued all of the time.

6 - Mental Attitude - I think a positive mental attitude is super important. I try to go into each structured workout excited to just smash it. If I back pedal or have issues during the last interval I don’t consider that a failure. It just means that I’m pushing myself and challenging myself to get stronger. Over/Unders are hard, they are supposed to be hard and struggling at the end just means I have some lingering fatigue and/or have my FTP set correctly. VO2 is a weak area for me, so having issues with the last couple of intervals just means I’m pushing myself and trying to develop weak areas. But I also need to be introspective enough to determine if my FTP needs to be adjusted, or that I need to tone down v02 power targets, or I need more recovery time instead of just smashing myself into a wall over and over.

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441

Great advice!

442

yeah, watts per kilo is alot to do with weight, another user on here had their 12 year old daughter do an ftp test and tested at 4.6w/kg, still wouldnt necessarily mean they would be slow, but if she has a w/kg that but is only at around just over 100 watts to get there its not going to be super fast just like, someone could have a 400 watt ftp but if they weigh 300 pounds they wont be going very fast either… up a hill anyway… im sure they could power away on some flats, just like we might see that little girl drop us on a climb… maybe… haha

Anyways though, My watts per kilo fluctuates more than my watts do, my weight will change around 140-160 in a year of racing but my ftp stays around 300-330, about 4.6-5.2 w/kg give or take and can hit around 1600 peak power, which also changes throughout the year I’m also assuming because of my weight and what block im in. I grew up racing BMX from around 3-4 and switched to road around 13, I never had any real structure though and just rode until I was tired until I was riding 15-20 hours a week pretty regularly until I would usually burn myself out trying to maintain volume while also racing every weekend, (my dad is a caveman and figured if we just rode more it means more better). I eventually did just burn myself out completely and went back to bmx for a little bit and started to move towards body building with some friends and then power lifting in college, right now im just playing around with the training plans here because I liked the structure I was getting with from strength/powerlifting coaches and how much more progress it makes instead of just endlessly pushing harder.

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443

Quick update from me, after 12 weeks of my usual tempo/sweetspot (In and outdoor) and once per week Z2 ride I tested this morning. I did the Friel protocol 30’ TT averaging 271w 4.9 w/kg.

Having not done any intensity whatsoever it was a shock to the system I can tell you but overall I was quite pleased. I think losing 1kg and gaining 4w will not be a problem to hit 5. As many have said it’s not the be all and end all, in my case repeatability is more important but it’s a good indicator I’m on the right track.

Just a shame there is no racing for the foreseeable future. Normally I would begin to move to more polarised training with VO2s and over/unders but given the lockdown I’ll look to maintain my current level for a month and see where things are…

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Robert, I’m curious about this, since you actually seem to know what you’re talking about.

Like most guys I want to get to 5W/kg. I just started training again this January. I used to be a cat 2 and did all my training back in the day without power. I’m 42 now, weigh 73.4kg, and I’ve been training probably on average of 8-10 hours a week for the last six months, with a few in the 12 hour range and several 2-4 hour weeks due to being sick a few times or just ebbed motivation due to covid + rain. My wko5 models my Vo2max at about 70 right now and my mFTP at 344. On Saturday last week I did a 5min test at 440W and then a 20min test at 366W. I closed that 20min test at 472W for the last 45s, so I think I could’ve milked a few more watts out of the 20min test. I rarely feel that good on a bike these days. It was one of those days. I used to race at about 158lb so I could probably lose about 2kg. I haven’t been doing any Vo2max training lately so I feel like I have some decent improvements I can make in that department. Wko5 says my mFTP is at 83.4% of vo2 (possibly + or - a few tenths; I don’t have computer in front of me). What would you think I can get to if I train optimally? Obviously I could increase volume. I’ve really not been doing much over 2.5 hours on any given day. But would doing a vo2 block help most? Or extensive aerobic? Intensive aerobic? Also especially interested in how you determine vo2/liters of oxygen requirements for given wattages at threshold or max aerobic efforts.

Thanks!!

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Post a larger pic of your PD curve and summary stats (FRC, TTE, Stamina, phenotype, height, etc) if you want a more detailed answer.

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I am 188cm of height and weigh between 85 and 88kg - barely any fat, mostly muscles, i feel perfect and I dont see any way how I could loose weight without sacrificing muscle mass… which I dont want.
Have been doing TR workouts since late 2018 improved from 180 to now 242 FTP, which means barely 2,75 W/kg…

seems disappointing, but I guess with my height and weight there is not much to do as a 40+ year old.

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Will do in a bit here when I get home. Thanks!

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Hey now don’t be ageist against yourself! I’m 42 and improving. Maybe not over what I did/could’ve done at 27yrs old, but I’ve added 25W to my 20min test from early October and after 3months with no training at all, I started at like 309 in January, so I’ve gained almost 60W since then. Planning to gain a lot more too. 40 is the new 30 bro!

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I’m 178.5cm, Time Trialler phenotype. Looks like FTP is 83% of Vo2. Ignore the yearly PMax and mFTP. I have no idea where that FTP comes from and that 1432W PMax is a number I’ve only come close to a couple times so I think it was an aberration.

Basically all my metrics are low except my 5 and 20min efforts. Just started using wko5 at the end of March (although I’ve used TrainingPeaks for a couple years so I guess it imports all that data, but I haven’t raced or done almost any group rides that entire time). I know I could pump up my FRC pretty quickly, and fill out my curve significantly with targeted efforts… TTE is low, as are my shorter efforts… really I just haven’t really filled out my curve. For example, my 1min PR was set on the way to doing a 1:39 segment KOM, so I think I could do probably 620 or so (anaerobic (and NM) has become my weakness as I’ve gotten older). My 60min suffers mainly because I haven’t done a single race or group ride this year due to Covid. My 10min (371) was set en route to my 20min best effort. 400W for 8min is just an average that includes my 5min best effort. Everything between 1:40 and 8min was part of that 5min effort, and it shows: I’m only at about 6.1w/kg starting at 2:20 or so, but then I basically keep it there all the way through almost 6min. So obviously I could do way more for pure 2 and 3min efforts. Blah blah excuses, but really the bottom line is that when I try to set new bests, I’ve focused mainly on 5 and 20min efforts and not much else, nor have I done much in the way of volume, sprints, or long max efforts.

I assume I would benefit by feeding the model better data by really targeting a variety of durations to max out my curve? It sounds to me from some good posts here that I really need to work on increasing my TTE to make my FTP more of a meaningful stat. Would extensive aerobic/lots of SST intervals be a good way to do that? What exactly determines your TTE?

Thanks y’all, sorry for the lengthy posts!

@RobertK as well

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Yeah I would whack out a 10s max sprint and a long effort around 35-45 minutes and see what shakes out. The delta between your current Pmax and year Pmax and the giant hole in the 20-40 minute range isn’t doing you any favors in figuring out what’s up.

451

To answer these kinds of questions, find a really good coach. When you’re trying to eek out those last few percent on limited training volume, you need someone who has worked with a lot of riders in similar circumstances, can look at your tool set, and prescribe (what hopefully) works.

Also “optimal” is going to depend on a lot of individual factors. Maybe something like INSYNC could help?

452

+60w since being 309w January?! :scream:

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