Nice work on hitting 5 w/kg! However, miles are not a useful metric as they can vary widely based on climbing versus flat or indoor trainer. Volume is better understood as hours, TSS and/or kj on a weekly and monthly average.
Fair enough. In my case, it’s pretty easy. It’s flat where I live. My average throughout the year is pretty consistent.
806 hrs as of today or 16 hours per week average = 800TSS.
Big change compared to last year was that in 2024 I did virtually no junk miles. 95% of the volume was actual training - intervals, endurance etc. No easy Z1 except maybe once or twice a month, when I was not supposed to ride. Tapering before races was in the form of volume reduction while keeping intensity high. When too fatigued, I just stayed off the bike. This helped me be more ready to do hard work and avoid feeling burned out.
Another thing that I think helped is I kept my fitness above 100 the entire year (in TP), even when on vacation I still tried to do 1h per day on a gym trainer—avoided anything longer than 3 days off the bike.
And when doing efforts below FTP, it was keeping an eye on HR rather power.
Just wanted to share it all, hope it will help someone here. I noticed when you get to higher levels of fitness it get more complicated to keep going and make small improvements.
Great, thanks for the clarification.
I increased my volume 25% in 2024 (nearly 900 hours) with virtually 100% compliance and nearly 0% junk miles. I saw virtually no change in FTP and body weight. My TTE was amazing and my sprint at the end of a race was nearly as good when fresh. However, topped out around 4.2 w/kg (from +/- 4.0 w/kg). I believe I didn’t see much movement in FTP because I never got a proper build because I was focusing simply on volume. That will be the change this winter and for 2025.
I agree. The only tradeoff is strength/bone density, have you tracked these metrics?
Not sure about bone density. But if we’re talking about strengh, my sprint is mediocre at best compared to 2 years ago. But anything below 120% of ftp is great. In fact my Z2 went up when I lost weight. I suspect because of better mechanical efficiency. I can stay at threshold after 4 hours of racing no problem. I don’t fade much even after 4h at 0.8 IF. I do same races every year, and my time improved a lot on all of them.
I suspect you lose something with lower weight, but I think you gain a lot more.
I meant strength in like squats, deadlift, pull-ups ….
Do we have data on hr/wk vs w/kg across TR athletes? Reading this thread I get the sense that many people are around 4 w/kg on very little training, but most 5w/kg athletes are doing a lot of volume. I’d be curious to know where natural talent ends and we have to start working a lot for gains.
Yep, familiar with that thread. But I don’t think it has what I asked for. I’d like a scatter plot of w/kg vs TSS.
It’s a good idea, the issue is that those are not independent variables….it might be more informative for say 4.5 w/kg and up only.
I would love to add more of that sort of thing to the /power page (also weight classes, hours trained etc etc.). Very busy with integrations and so on right now.
You’ve basically set yourself up with the best possible base for a giant build next season. 
That kind of exists. There is a paper which has been linked to on this forum several times, that shows the association between CTL (subacute average daily TSS) and FTP, and the correlation coefficient was around 20%.
It means the other 80% is influenced by things other than recent TSS (CTL). Probably some combination of age, genetics, and long-term training volume.
Got a(nother) link to that paper? I have a vague memory of seeing such a dataset, though IIRC number of athletes reported was fairly low.
I’d guess TR would actually NOT want to publish such data, as it would make it clear that hard work only gets you so far, and some people are just blessed with high FTPs off the couch.
My supposition though is that while some folks can be around 4w/kg on fairly limited load, very very few are anywhere near 5w/kg without quite substantial CTL. (And those people are potential WT pros.)
I was a cross over from another sport and came into cycling at about 4w/kg. With basic training (6-8hrs per week consistent), I can pretty easily achieve and maintain 4.8w/kg (I’m about 73-74kg and at this ftp now - have been for years). I have been above 5w/kg, but for me, that requires 10-12 hours per week, which is not sustainable w my current lifestyle (job and kids).
So yeah, I can anecdotally say that your intuition is right, to be above 5, you need to take it seriously, but can be solidly ‘near’ it on genetics alone (with disciplined training, tho nothing crazy).
Not really, WT is a different tier. I know a couple of young local MTB talents, 5-5.5 w/kg on 10-12 hours. They are nowhere near a WT contract.
Agreed. The public data out there suggests that you need an hour power of north of 6w/kg to be up there with the big boys. To say nothing of the additional fatigue resistance, sprinting, bike handling, etc abilities.
I follow Derek Gee on Strava and see him doing >5w/k early in the season at the low end of his endurance heart rate zone 
I’d consider 10-12 hr/wk to be a pretty solid baseline of training. I’m talking freaks who are near 5w/kg off the couch; seems like you need that to be able to get to 6+ after training.
I can maintain 4.4-4.5 wkg year around on 7-8hrs a week. Not sure what I could accomplish if I were to consistently ride at 10-12hrs a week for a few months. Maybe 5wkg? My lifestyle situation won’t let me do that anytime soon between kids and work…so I may never know!
I just reached 5.1w/kg for 20min after about 4.5 years of riding.
Contrary to what seems to be the popular method on reaching it in this thread - I never once focused on losing weight. my natural weight is around 80kg (currently around 81.5 when i hit most recent power pr) and everytime i tried to track calories and cut a little weight i begin feeling lethargic and lazy and have not motivation to ride easy, let alone train. so instead I just focused on eating super filling protein heavy meals and plenty of carbs for fuel and focus on hitting all my workouts and building power.
for me this is far easier since I feel ready to train all the time when i am well fed. I made the most gains in the last 2 years when in 2023 i did around 15k miles of mostly unstructured training building a base, then in 2024 when i got a coach and did less miles/hours, but much higher effort and more structured rides