No, your functional FTP as set by any method is static until changed by test, manual edit, or accepting the AIFTPD when presented.
What’s been mentioned and discussed above are “peeks” that people have taken by setting a Ramp Test on their calendar, using the AIFTPD to show the FTP on that day, but usually not accepting the value.
When done that way, it was possible to “see your FTPD” each day. As the system is quite complex, that would lead to some fluctuation up or down of that FTPD value between some days. In no way was this intended function or a desired use, but I tested once per week, while others did it daily, to see what happened.
TR recently set a new limit that the FTPD tool can only be run once every 14 days, even if you don’t accept the value (which was the previous limitation they set). They are trying to get people to leave it alone and only use it when appropriate (2 weeks or more between uses). It is a distraction and raised unnecessary questions with the day to day checks that some were doing.
Maybe this has been discussed before, but so many posts…
anyways…
I mostly have been doing custom wo. Coach tells me what I need to do, i create a wo on TR and do it.
When i did the AI detected ftp when it first came out, the system gave me an FTP that was within the realm of possibilities, or more…within the realm of a rounding error (+1W).
Now, about a month (a bit more) ago multiple things happened. After a recovery week, I had a hamstring running injury (still recovering from it). Then the following week I got sick and was not super well for like a week, so no many wo done. In the span of about a month (a bit more perhaps) i had to skip or failed more than one bike wo, have not done running wo, and any running I do is very slow.
The bikes wo that I have done in the past 3 weeks have been rough. And now I am starting be be concern. My HR is MUCH higher than it should be. This morning I hit 186 @ 95 ftp. The workout was harder than it should. I usually hit mid 170 @ threshold power. This high HR has been the norm on most wo.
Coach suggest me to do a test this weekend since it could be that my power has actually gone down because I am losing fitness. I decided to do an AI test. This AI suggest my new FTP is about 6w higher than now. I was actually surprised by this. Coach is not confident this is true based on my feedback.
Based on how I feel right now I would be surprise if I can get to 125% on a ramp test. The other day doing 2 min @120 was brutally hard. So more than likely my ftp according to rap WILL be lower.
The question is. Is there a known issue while judging the custom wo when it comes to detect the FTP?
No known issues that I have seen stated. I suggest and email to support with as much as you have that is “messy” in the recent history.
My gut says that your current FTP is likely not appropriate, not to mention that it may well be too soon for hard efforts with your comments. But that is a rough guess from the limited info shared vs what you and your coach know in detail.
Yeah… coach agrees with this.
It will be a suffer fest for sure…
I will try my best and I will go all in… but my confidence level is VERY low based on how the HR has been acting up on lower power.
I feel the same way… the hard efforts have been MUCH MUCH harder…
at SS it feels ok… hard… but doable.
Well, it can’t hurt to get the data at the very least. Questioning it is worthwhile no matter what.
Based on all the TR marketing (specific mentions of time way, performance issues and such mentioned on the cast in particular), I think it’s reasonable for people to use the tool even if there have been “problems” in the recent past.
As ever, contacting them with any questions (especially if the results seem contrary to expectations) is worthwhile so they can review and either clarify the results, or dig deeper to see if there is anything wrong on the TR side.
This and your prior comments would lead me to suggest skipping test, dropping FTP a fair bit with a reasonable guess, and gear down to Endurance level workouts for a short time to see how you are rebounding. It all sounds like you are pushing too hard with not enough actual recovery from all that you’ve been through up to now.
All these fancy tools and widgets are great, but sometimes you just have to step back and make a call to adjust based on feel (and that seems like everything is just too hard at the moment).
I have my doubts about the accuracy of this feature. I did a check the other day & it gave me 233 up from 228 which I honestly think is at least 10w too high to begin with. I think the issue is coming from doing far more outside rides recently on 3 different power meters but my training workouts are on the trainer & regardless of the reasons, I can’t push the same wattage indoors. I’ve pretty much ditched any training plan for this year & am going to try to do 2 TR workouts per week via TrainNow so we’ll see how this works out. No A races per se but I’ve got a 100k SS mtb in July & an XCO the preceding week. After that, I’ll be KOM hunting on my local trails. Just not feeing motivated to train specificity so I’ll likely stick with VO2max work & I really need to push out my muscular endurance. I’ll be using PL’s to track progress with occasional AI FTP checks to see where the machine thinks I’m at.
I haven’t read the last 500+ posts, so with apology for asking these questions that may have been answered:
Does AI FTP detection work on Non-TR outdoor riding, particularly where this riding dominates weekly TSS? [this is particularly important as spring/summer riding is here in the northern hemisphere)
Does AI FTP work on Non-TR indoor workouts (e.g. self created using Workout Creator or substantially modified TR workouts in intensity)?
And I guess I knew the answer before they sent it, and it does make sense.
So Although I have struggle with the WO recently and my HR has been too high, I have also been completing most wo. Thats enough for the machine to suggest positive adaptations regardless of the HR. And for the most part this would be fine.
There is some room for improvement tho. I thing a HR baseline might be helpful to understand than even tho I have completed the wo, I have actually struggle to finish.
With this i mean, that if I am doing SS or Threshold and my USUAL HR is of a max of 175 and suddenly they detect a HR of 185 at SS, then that means that probably I am struggling and not completing the wo right. There is a huge difference in finishing a wo and struggle to finish.
I think I have mark most of my recent wo as very hard (and use intensity on some, and sleep in others if I am ask for a reason).
I know the HR varies so much with conditions, specially heat, that this might be close to impossible.
In any case, just a suggestion… I think there can be some historical data that can be correlated to lose of fitness or that maybe your ftp has not gone up, but down for whatever reason.
Yeah, I agree that while secondary, HR has some potential value here. From Nate’s more recent comments, I think TR is headed in a direction that may included it with respect to workouts on one side, and HRV on the other side. That one data point may not be the only actionable item, but when combined with the workout data, your survey response and such… I’d hope that workout/plan adaptations as well as the pending Red light / Green light will leverage this to some degree.
Outside of that, I still think a personal gut check is still valuable and we can manually use the Alternates options at the very least when we suspect that the TR AT world may be off base for whatever reason. We are still far away from a set it and forget it training program, so taking at least a partially active approach to manual tweaks seems worthwhile to me.
I have a ramp test scheduled for Monday. I am just going to use AI FTP detection. Does it make much difference if I do the FTP detection a day or two early?
I ride early in the morning so would prefer to put an alternative workout in advance so I know what I am doing on Monday morning rather than it being a surprise!
I guess I’ll share my experience as well.
So far the AI detection has not been too accurate for me. Month ago it only suggested 1W FTP rise but I decided to go ahead and ignore and did the ramp test anyway to get 4W increase. Then for the past 30 days I had a solid block of VO2 Max work with some rides on my gravel bike without power meter and HR only and topped off with Barry Roubaix 62miler without PM. After couple of rest days it was time for ramp test and AI suggested that I actually went down by 2W. I ignored the suggestion again and did a ramp test that yielded 11W improvement.
Is is possible that rides without PM are confusing FTP AI detection at this point?
Have you ever done a 20min FTP test at approximately the same timeframe as you did a Ramp Test? if so, any difference in results? . . .
There’s another potential source of difference for your Ramp Test “consistently” being higher than what AI FTP is showing. The Ramp Test is actually an anaerobic threshold test and not an FTP test. Nate/Chad found “on average” that amongst 7,000+ athletes that 75% of your anaerobic threshold results from the Ramp Test is a good approximation for many of their FTP. However, there are 2 places where Ramp Test results can be way off:
If you have a phenotype and train as an endurance rider (long end of the power curve), then your Ramp Test results will likely be low (FWIW: in my case 10%+ 20-30W)
If you have a phenotype of and train as a sprinter, then likely your Ramp Test results will exceed your actual FTP. As soon as I saw your post below, it seemed obvious why your Ramp Test results may exceed your actual FTP:
One final comment: Differences <5W, and particularly 1-2W, are irrelevant and may not be real. There’s extensive discussion of lactate threshold curves on Training Peaks. Once you understand this subject, you realize the imperfection in all tests in measuring FTP accurately.