I’m sure there are exceptions, but I have yet to see a 5w/kg guy that I wouldn’t consider quite lean and not overly muscular if lean. So, being lean needs to be near the top of the ‘must do’s’. I was just over 5w/kg when I was racing a lot a few years ago, and it was def my lightest weight when I was there - and not a heck of a lot of muscle!
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Maybe. I wouldn’t put a hard and fast rule to it, but I agree it takes more to build than to maintain, but you also don’t necessarily have to ride 25 hrs a week to get to 5. So like I said, it depends.
For people seeking it out, they need to start building to 1, get to 2, maybe do more than that, but what’s the rest of their week look like? You can’t just say, “ride 5-6hrs 4 times a week if you want to be 5W/kg.”
But you’re not going to get there by avoiding big volume and hoping to do it on 8 hours of sweet spot (at least not 99% of people).
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We are probably saying a lot of the same things. When I say get 5-6hrs in twice a week, that assumes other sessions of 2ish and probably a recovery ride in there. 15hrs or more is easily achievable there. I was not intending to say, ride two days per week 5-6hrs and that’s it.
I know at least two riders who don’t go over 4hrs, but they do about 4hrs every time out, and they ride 4-5 days per week.
Volume is key. Single ride volume also matters. What you described in your plan seems perfectly reasonable.
I don’t really think I was mixing up anything. I think you left out a bunch of details in your post about needing to ride 5-6hrs 3-4 times per week. 
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With all the talk of weight - it has me asking questions about if I should look at weight loss to improve performance (a small goal of mine is to get from 4.5wkg to 5wkg.
A bit of background - I am 175cm so 21.5BMI at 65kg and while ‘trained’ peak around 295-300W. I have been structured-ish training for 2 years now just started racing XCO in January 2022.I stagnate around 4.5wkg at 6hrs per week @ 66kg
I find it difficult to push this ceiling and when I do try to do more volume (often including more intensity) I get sick or injured. At the moment, I am trying to work on lower intensity, higher volume to improve my work capacity and learn to better manage training with other things like relationships and work.
This year I have missed around 6-8 weeks of training because of sickness/injuries or badly managed training… My objective at the moment is to improve my training capacity so I can remain more consistent next year.
One thing I have not considered is losing weight!
I am however a little ‘fluffy’. I wouldn’t describe my diet as ‘optimized’ , I drink a good bit of beer. I Believe i could lose close to 5kg while staying healthy - but would this really improve performance at the risk of losing weight too fast and therefore risking training consistency or losing raw W?
TLDR
If no change to raw W - closing the gap between 4.5 to 5 wkg solely through weight loss assuming you maintain a healthy BMI - Would this be a significant performance improvement? Or would you say the best way to improve performance would be to focus on raw W even though you find it difficult to move passed a certain ceiling.
It depends on what you mean by improvement.
Dropping weight, you’d notionally climb and accelerate better… ONLY if you can maintain the power, though.
And that’s a big caveat. Had a club mate who wanted to become a better climber. Dropped almost 20lbs, about 8kg, and rode like trash. Couldn’t sustain power, peak watts were way down, and he looked terrible. And that was from 195lbs.
Preferable would always be more raw W. There’s no situation where it wouldn’t help unless you have to gain a bunch of weight to do it. But even then, if all you do is ride in the flats or TT, even the weight gain isn’t that bad if it’s good weight.
If you do drop weight, go slowly (1lb per week or so) and I recommend doing it in your base period where you’re not smashing out big watts. You’ll have to create a calorie difference, and that will affect performance, especially top end performance.
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I’ll watch the forum while he watches the skies
pretty much spot on: also the long endurance rides are basically not letting off the pedals for the whole duration. This is much different to what some may envisage, and just resisting the urge to stop over so many hours has helped me a lot.
Those 60 min intervals though have been a game changer for me at least. I am lucky enough to live next to the mountains, so this consistutes going all the way up.
Rest - still working on that part 
(aren’t we all?)
What the interesting part is to me for the people who got there is how much time it took and what % gains you made on what # of hours per week?
Example: started at 300w 3,9w/kg, took 3 years of avg. 12-15 hours to get to 5,1 w/kg
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What’s your body fat % now? There’s always so much doomsday talk about losing weight and everything falling apart, but if you’re at 20% and drop to 15%, I don’t think that’s a concern. Sure, if you’re trying to get faster going from 15% to 10%, you probably have to be a lot more careful.
What do the different color dots mean? I see the legend but I don’t understand (I assume it’s a different language?)
BSX is the now discountinued BSX device (step test)
Rolle is a 20min indoor test
Feld is outdoor testing (usually 20min … the last two are a 50min TT and a 60min TT)
20min tests are corrected by 0.95
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This thread reminds me that I find it strange that no-one (or company) has come up with a power ‘score’ which is a more representative value than pure W or W/Kg. For example a 100kg rider putting out 400W would have a higher score than a 60kg rider putting out 250w. Or a 50kg rider putting out 250w would have a higher score than a 75kg rider putting out 300w.
Of course that wouldn’t show any value in the particular power profile, which would depend of race type, course type, length etc, but it would be a lot more valuable than just saying ‘who can do 4w/kg?’ or ‘who can do 350w?’
I hit 5w/kg earlier this year when I intentionally lost weight from around 65kg down to 62.5-63kg. Whilst it was great to hit that number, I felt pretty fragile and was not performing to what I believed to be the best of my abilities. I was not fuelling properly for the work to maintain that either.
I made the decision to put weight on and combine with properly fuelling the work. I have just got back to 5w/kg and am back up at 64.5-65kg and I am performing better than I ever had. It shows on the road and in my numbers. Something to consider.
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Well there has been some interesting work recently looking at the concept of a ‘compound score’, taking your absolute MMP * relative MMP to create a number that is more predictive of real world race results
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Very interesting, thanks.
I am unsure about my body fat - probably around 15 to 20% i think…
Yes - I feel maybe I could possibly hit 5wkg sooner if i lost weight but i might as well play the long game and try to hit it at a sustainable healthy weight.
Perhaps if you didnt lose weight initially you would have hit 5wkg sooner than you did at a healthy weight?
Its just a vanity number anyway! Performance matters more 
Also I mainly ride xco so while being lightweight is important - i think durability is equally
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Great question, I’d like to see this too
My last true ftp test put me at 4.8 at 9K’ in Colorado. But I’m getting older and my snap isn’t there anymore. I do two hard days a week if that and the rest is z2/tempo for hours and hours and hours. I put in 12-15 hours on a normal week, 18-20 once a month and my recovery week is about 8/10. I do most of this on my mountain bike.
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