Next year will be my 4th year of training 3rd year of racing, this year has been my best year yet, with some good Time Trialing results, and some good CRIT results at the end of the year.
My volume this year has been 10.5 hours weekly average, I commute 5 hours a week but some of the commutes are turned into interval sessions. My training has been very focused almost all the time on the bike is specific with alot of of Vo2 Max training this year.
Now down to my question, can FTP increase year on year with similar training volume? I can’t increase my volume any next year (New baby coming), am I destined to stay at the same FTP or does the affect of year on year accumulated fitness help in increasing FTP?
Does anyone have experiance in this?
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Sure it can. There’s a long term benefit from having years of training under your belt. Plus every time you increase your FTP all your workouts get harder, so even though the volume and TSS is the same you’re getting a higher training stimulus. There will be diminishing returns so at some point you will plateau, but might take a while if you’re lucky!
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After 4 years of perfect training perhaps a couple more years of smaller and smaller gains. Perhaps you are at your ceiling. No one knows.
One thing that I’ve noticed after decades of training and racing is while FTP (and most metrics) top out one awesome and brutal race characteristic to have in my quiver is durability and repeatability. Having move matches later in the race is the name of the game amigo.
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Thanks, Yep I totally get that, I have seen in the past couple of years my FTP plateau around April but I still get better at racing thoughout the rest of the season and that is as you say mostly due to being strong at the end of the race when others are fading, so understand well that FTP isn’t necessarily king when it comes to racing.
However, while I do some racing, my main focus is Time training so training wise FTP is king there. (Obviously aero too but that also takes time).