How to tell if FTP is correct without taking anything resembling an FTP test

Training
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He did.

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IMHO he did. Ditto for Friel (see my quote from his Training Bible, which I think is crystal clear). A lot of people seem to have glommed on the “hour power” characterization, though.

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I looked a while ago for a clear statement that FTP was an estimate of power at MLSS from and authoritative source (ie Coggan), and was unable to find anything clear.
If you can point me to one I’d love to see it, as the “FTP is exactly 1 hour power” is still commonly stated in various discussions.

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Have a look at the quote from Friel’s Training Bible I quoted above. I couldn’t say it any better, I think. By the way, the reason why I only included a quote for Friel is that I couldn’t find my copy of Coggan’s “Training with a Power Meter”. If I had it handy, I would use this chart (taken from Hunter Allen’s website, Coggan’s co-author):


Clearly, Level 4 = Zone 4 is defined via the lactate threshold, and time in zone is given as 10–60 minutes. (AFAIK Allen switched from Zones to Levels to indicate that these are not sharp, but fuzzy. I don’t quite get why Levels are a better name, but anyway.)

I would argue that these two books are the most common entry-level books on structured training for cyclists, and I think both are quite clear. The reason for distinguishing between AnP and FTP seems superfluous to most and could be confusing, but if you have some academic background should be easily understandable.

Then their definition deviates from Coggan, and the scientific literature uses Coggan’s terminology.

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Sorry I’m tired and grouchy, but you didn’t really look IMHO. Do you own a copy of Training and Racing With A Power Meter? Why not? Preferably an earlier edition because the 3rd edition will probably confuse with its simplification in blue.

Tell you what, use Duck Duck Go to search for it using a verbose set of terms like this:

near the top is a pdf manuscript from March 2003, written by Coggan and only Coggan. It predates the book.

Give that a read, heck you only need to read the first two pages, and come back explaining why “FTP is exactly 1 hour power” is wrong and annoying to read.

I think some people get confused by the definition “100 TSS = cycling for 1 hour at threshold” and some magazine/blog writers either didn’t understand or decided to oversimplify and write a fluff piece for non-technical cyclists.