Now with all articles about your PR’s and season match I wonder how do you improve your stats. Do you look for example at your powercurve and trying to hit one or another pr during a workout, even if we shouldn’t get above the watts at the wo, or do you just let youre (hopefully) improved ftp do the work for you cause of higher ftp the higher power during a wo.
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You’re very unlikely to hit many PRs during a workout as they’re designed to be below maximum to allow for repeatability.
You might hit a 5min power PR in a ramp test.
However most power PRs are from races (my 1min PR is from a short hill climb event) or maybe an especially hard group ride - or from deliberately testing that particular duration.
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I hit a lot of PRs during sustained power build for longer superthreshold efforts, also during the ramp test. Otherwise, most of mine happen outdoors,or occasionally during a Zwift event.
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Before I got a power meter on the bike I’d always get PRs on a ramp test. Because of this I always remove the ramp tests from PR Chart. PRs were always being beat after a new FTP value was added to adjust the workouts.
Now that I have a PM on the bike all my power values are broken on the bike, just seems a lot easier to push harder on the bike.
Back when the PR chart used to be a more simple, easily identified list of various time PR’s (and not the to-the-second-across-the-board chart with nothing highlighted like it is now) I would sometimes just check the table for “low” PR’s in comparsion to adjacent ones or old ones and attempt that in a workout (usually provided they were on the shorter side) as just a fun little test to see where I was at. Thinking about it now, I don’t think I’ve attempted that since the change to the PR chart was made. 
I incorporate PR testing into my plan just prior to an FTP test. This would look like…
Usual FTP test to cover 5min and 20min markers.
5s, 30s, 1min done as a separate test during the Thursday or Friday of a recovery week.
For times beyond 20min, I usually rely on the workouts for this. Leconte is a good one to use for testing 40mins to 1hr and 20 mins.
This is a good way to test progression besides FTP alone.
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strava KOMs of the appropriate length 
I could never match my outdoor power on hills on the trainer
should hit PR’s when you test for them, usually a couple days or week after a rest period when you are super fresh if anaerobic, or a couple weeks after rest if you’re testing something of longer, aerobic, nature.
aren’t ramp test PRs still PRs? why remove them?
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Just curious… What sort of PRs do you get on a ramp test? Other than a new peak 1 minute for the ramp protocol, I never set a PR for any duration.
My 1 min PR is over 150% higher than peak 1 min in ramp. My 5 min PR is ~110% of my typical ramp test peak 5 min. Peak 7 min avg from a ramp test is close to my 20min PR (local TT).
I’m generally most interested in longer duration PRs, so I will sometimes look at what it would take to get a new 45-120 minute PR, and if I’m feeling good for a workout that has a chance of coming close I’ll do things like bump up the power during the rest intervals, or add an extra interval at the end.
Since I don’t race, I’ve come to realize that PRs (especially longer duration ones) are subject to a fair bit of manipulation. I’ve recently smashed some power PRs, but I think only a small part of that is fitness, and it is mostly tailoring a workout structure to target those lengths of PRs. This has been a nice ego boost, but since they were not achieved ‘organically’ I don’t think they are as meaningful - they won’t be touched again unless I massively increase my fitness, or target a certain duration PR specifically.
I have started using the Empirical cycling’s FTP test (Kolie Moore's FTP test protocol), which has resulted in more meaningful PRs that are near threshold.
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I suppose they are but it seems like they distort my PR Chart.
Just yesterday I set nearly 200 all time PRs split between my ramp test and a follow up Zwift race. Basically set everything between 2:50 and 24:50.
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