Kolie Moore on the ramp test

Training
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I had a short convo with Brennus a couple of months ago:

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Too low. You would complete the workouts, and feel great about yourself, celebrate with a recovery drink and a banana.
Too high. You would soon fail a workout. You would feel a failure, and commiserate with a Big Mac and a cream doughnut :nauseated_face:

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46

As TR has stated many times, and also emphasized in the workout texts. Use some judgment on your workouts! If sweetspot feel too easy, then increase the intensity. Too hard decrease it.

VO2 max, the workouts literally say go as hard as you can as long as it is repeatable for all the sets.

It’s not magic, and it’s not like they say this is your FTP - you have to train at exactly 100% intensity level.

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Interesting point.

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As I was trying to stay awake at 2am feeding my 6mo old, I was listening to EC podcast, and I think I remember Kolie saying if he took the ramp test it would give him an FTP 50-80 watts too high. Maybe I am misremembering due to my lack of sleep, but I would be really curious to see him put his money where his mouth is on that one (if he really did say that).

Since no one asked, I think the ramp test overestimates my FTP by ~3-4%, but I still think it’s useful.

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How’s a noob supposed to know what is too hard and what is too easy?

I think they do literally say that this is your FTP (ramp test result) and that you are to train at a certain percentage of that FTP.

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Conveniently, I just did a ramp test during my lunch break.

Intervals.ICU, Garmin, and my ramp result (75% of 1 minute max) are all within .3% of each other. I can also hit all my workouts with those targets (only a 1% improvement over my last ramp).

I think the ramp works just fine for me.

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52

Why would it surprise you? TR is one of his main competitors. He has a coaching business. Plus he’s always talking about how he thinks canned plans are no good it’s not necessarily a “jab” towards TR specifically (but it could be) it’s a recurring trend in his beliefs. Individual athletes should be individuals and if they want to be coached it should be on a one to one basis. He wants to grow his business and good on him for doing so and getting after it.

If you listen to all of his podcasts he’s not a fan of one size fits all no matter who it is (TR, Fascat, CTS, Zwift, etc.) and he does not give out a lot of specifics either.

His rationale for not saying “Here’s how many intervals you should do for VO2” and “Here’s exactly how much Z2 you should do each week” or "one legged pedal drills are stupid (j/k I added that in) because he wants individual clients for his one on one coaching to get individualized instructions based on their specific needs, training history, etc.

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53

I don’t know. I am not a TT rider, I race XCO/XCM and I am rarely at a steady state for more than a couple minutes at a time.

I don’t know what that means.

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CBJFan can


The world is wide!

There are no fewer than five VO2 workouts in the TR library even more challenging than Sage Peak, no one with a public profile has completed them. Respect to TrainerJoe83 for trying though :face_vomiting:

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Intervals.icu uses a default 3min max effort to estimate eFTP (in pretty sure its 3 but could be shorter). You can change it tho bc it will over estimate riders with big low end power. For example, I have big low end power (3min power at 7.5w/kg) and if estimates my eFTP to be 5.5w/kg. In reality, mines just under 5 (about a 10% over estimate).
This suggests I have big vo2 and score high on a ramp test. A 20min test gives me a much more accurate result for an idea of ftp

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And this is the main point of why ramp test is not a good ftp test. It might work well to track ftp gains in athletes with relatively low training experience who are simultaneously seeing increases in ftp and vo2max, but it is going to never capture a change in ftp when vo2max is constant (because by construction it is always a fixed percent of your vo2max power).
I think the majority of people on this forum who come saying I know I feel stronger but didn’t improve (or had some trivial increase) on their ramp and experiencing just that, no change in power at vo2max.

The solution is to just base training zones on power at vo2max (MAP) which you actually get off of a ramp test rather than using it as an estimation method for ftp. It takes away literally all of the error. The caveat is you cannot then tap into the wealth of studies on ftp /lactate threshold training to give your training plans scientific credibility

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I used to do Lamarck (4x 10m at FTP) two days after a 20m FTP test to get a “feel” on the new FTP value. Maybe I should start doing that again; last ramp test saw an increase from 202W to 228W and the following workouts were just too hard. Reduced FTP to 215 and workouts are now challenging but doable.

The thing about 20M tests, beside pacing, is the mental effort (at least for me). The Kolie Moore test would be similar in that I think, any experiences on how (long) mentally hard those tests are?

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Have you not listened to his podcast? Lots of specifics. Look at the latest WKO webinar that he did for specifics on how he customizes training for athletes:

This is all next level stuff compared to TR. They aren’t even in the same league and not competing for the same customers.

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For all the ramp test haters who think a 20 minute test is “better”


“95% of 20 minute power is accurate for less than 1 in 20 riders”

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If you had a 20 minute test and a 3 minute test, then you’d have better than a ramp test AND using some correction factor on the 20 minute test.

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Now I think you’re trying to be difficult on purpose? There’s ample guidance along the way. If you pay attention to the workout texts and prompts as you are doing a workout, you will be in a good place to judge that. It’s really not that hard.

The one issue I could see about taking the ramp test FTP as gossip, is for pacing out in the real world. Then I do agree that reality will come back and hit you like a brick :rofl:

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I can’t be bothered to watch. What’s the “more accurate method”? Just for fun.

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It says it took the estimate from a 6.5 minute effort. I don’t know if that is good or bad :rofl:

More my point, I seem to hit my targets for my workouts with the results I get. That is my only goal for testing. I usually use the Garmin estimated number as that seems to be safe and (for me), close enough.

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There is nothing wrong with 20 min test, the issue is 95% for majority of the riders. The conclusion is that 90-93% works better for many people. 20 min test is also an estimation and percentage should be personalised to an individual.

Edit –
My personal view is that disabling erg mode and doing workouts by feel resolves all the problems. If I have signs my FTP is up, I just go harder during workouts and maybe test somewhere during the training if I feel the need (usually rather to check TTE than ftp itself). I do not have multi year experience but can easily feel my FTP. And also I have learnt to do not care at the moment, as I do not see any particularl benefits to fine tuned FTP as it fluctuates. And the only purpoise for FTP are the threshold workouts, for work below and above FTP it does not matter at all.

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