I’ve been watching my eFTP every day since the feature came out, which was about a week after a ramp test to start HV SSB I. I have been rating all workouts as medium or hard. (Except recovery z2 rides which are Rated easy. Am also substituting long z2 rides on Sundays.
Ramp test was 229. eFTP was 228 for many days. then was 227 for a couple of days. Then jumped to 237 and is 236 today.
My conclusion is that the AI prediction has a fair bit of jitter and is only weakly correlated with the most recent workouts.
You’re not comparing apples to apples here. You don’t know what AI FTP had you at when you did your previous ramp test and similarly you don’t know if you will get the same value as AI FTP predicts now if you perform a ramp test.
@Pamplemoose@ambermalika
Similar experience. When eFTP was rolled out it had me at 317 up from 311 (2%). Which is what I’d expect at week 3 of SusPBHV1 and workouts feeling a bit too easy. Since then I finished week 3 choosing 3 harder Alternates and then a recovery week. My eFTP bounced from 315-317 when checking it each day since rollout, but today it’s down to 313 which makes no sense.
I was once confident in the eFTP but now I feel it’s drifted and I’ll need to do my scheduled Ramp test tomorrow. I understand that the 1% is within the measuring noise of the power meters, but I don’t understand how my eFTP could be lower after doing more work. Ramp tests have been accurate for me for years now and I feel like the eFTP is too low.
Perhaps it’s just me and everyone is entitled to use the new feature as they see fit, but checking your eFTP on a daily basis, seems a little bit overkill.
Thank you for your opinion, that helps the discussion. Trying to understand how each workout and rest affects the eFTP algorithm to build confidence in its estimation.
I don’t understand why I’m not comparing apples to apples. I compare the real FTP in the past against the predicted FTP, after a build program. The goal of AI FTP is that it makes an good estimation of the real FTP. So I would expect, after a build fase, that my real FTP would have risen.
According to TR, the goal of eFTP is to match what you would get on a ramp test, not necessarily a “real” FTP. It’s so it can schedule appropriate TrainerRoad workouts, nothing more, nothing less.
Why would my Kickr read 1-2% over in January and 1-2% under in February.
I think I have improved, since I completed my build program with productive workouts.
My thoughts were, that if you follow a structured plan, you should at least see some improvement in the numbers. Since FTP is the main number here, at least an improvement in FTP. Structured training is supposed to make me better and faster, but I don’t see that in the numbers. I think that’s odd.
This thread has many examples of people not getting the same FTP from AI FTP and a ramp test. How do you know that you are not in the same boat?
Say for instance that you are a rider that consistently will get 1.5% lower AI FTP than actual ramp test result. Then your actual FTP might have gone up now since AI FTP predicts the same value you got on your previous test.
All power meters have a +/- error (usually a claimed 1-2%). Its very nigh impossible to get the set up between two dates exactly the same. Hypothetically they can be different every session. This can mask any small improvement but like what I was saying earlier if somehow they were actually the same, improvement in your TTE and real world speed/time/results give a better indication of your actual improvement.
Excuse me if this question has been answered allready. I sucessfully managed to conduct an AL FTP detection earlier today, resulting in a modest increase of my ftp value. However, in my ftp history under my account my Old ftp value is still listed. Do I have to insert my new ftp value manually?
Thx in advance
My PL was all 1.0(FTP 205) at the beginning and I fed system some free riding records. After wednesday workout, system guessed my FTP as high as 201. After sunday workout, now it gives me estimation of 206.
Considering 4 months of hiatus, just no. I think I have to take ramp test at the beginning of the training. Hope my PLs doesn’t jump too high all of sudden after my low ramp test result.
Just for fun I ran a ramp test today and my estimation is exactly the same as a couple of weeks ago (302), I’ve kept myself at 295 and manually increase my endurance workouts 2% and am doing whatever sustainable power I can do for my vo2 workouts. Of course, at z2 levels I’m not gonna notice a big difference with just 2%, but in a couple of weeks when I start a threshold block we’ll see if that 2% increase is sustainable for me.
Couldn’t help it but compare the AI results with a ramp test for me. I’ve long suspected that the ramp test overestimates my threshold and wanted to see how the result aligns.
Long story short, previous (ramp tested) FTP:
222W
AI:
241W
And ramp:
260W
Significant difference in the results. I’ve been off the bike for a while, gains where to be expected. Now the true question is what will yield better training?
I didn’t see a reply to this, so I’ll answer. Sorry if this was already addressed…but
even though it is called FTP detection, it isn’t really trying to estimate FTP. It is modeling the FTP input that will give you the best intensity anchor for workouts. And with AT, there is a good amount of flexibility on this.
The 20 min test is a rough estimate of FTP as well - assuming we are defining that as quasi-steady-state power in the 40-70 min range. It was designed with the same purpose in mind as the FTP detection - to estimate intensity anchor.
The workouts you should do off that 20 min estimate are different than the workouts you should do off the ML FTP detection. You can use either one and you will get substantially different workouts from AT. Depending on your goals that might be important, or it might not. The good news is that AT handles this issue really well, and outside of a few special cases it probably isn’t gonna matter in the end much which you use. I tend to like the lower PL workouts better than the higher ones, so an FTP setting that keeps me in that 7-8 range for SS or 5-7 for threshold tends to work well. I can get a lot out of high volume at lower PL than that, and still hit a few productive workouts throughout a block to keep inching it up. On my first pass at the FTP detection, this is exactly where it put me. We’ll see out it goes.
Will do that
