He actually gave pretty specific VO2max prescriptions. I believe he said “Go max” - hard start, high cadence and go max. I believe he gave time ranges for different types of athletes as well.
I agree that those VO2max podcasts are really really dense. And yes he doesn’t give exact prescriptions because the prescription would be different for different athletes. He did give ideas in various podcasts about what he’d do with an elite or what he’d do with a masters athlete. In particular episodes #23 & #24 bring together all the VO2max physiology.
If one is interested, I’d recommend purchasing WKO5 even if one only uses 10% of the capabilities. Once you start watching the Tim Cusick education videos you start getting the WKO5 philosophy. It’s usually extensive (increase TTL, time in zone), intensive (above threshold intervals, “raise the roof”). Once I got the gist of that I started understanding better some of the things Moore and other coaches have said.
His coaching business is growing. The coaching company I’m with has been growing. I don’t think that is the reason. Its pretty simple - he doesn’t agree that the power-meter-only ramp test is a good test for estimating FTP.
I believe he’s mentioned that (at least the huge sprint I believe that’s his personal focus for cycling and his main events) which is why the sprinter boi jokes are funny.
I think it would have to be much too low and not get adjusted upwards for that to be a problem.
Failing workouts is also demotivating, in addition to the burnout issues.
For sure I’d rather consistently train 10 watts low than 10 watts high - if you consider a Stretch VO2 workout combined with an FTP ten watts too high, I think that’s a pretty good recipe for blowing up.
But then I’ve knowingly left my FTP 15 or 20 watts too high in the past when I have been annoyed about my loss of form, and forced myself through it for weeks (obviously easier workouts - when West Vidette turns into a hard sweetspot workout you know youre in a bad place). Fortunately drops in form like that usually seem to come back to the baseline fairly quickly.
If that’s an outside effort - your power numbers may be quite a bit different indoors vs outdoors. I’ve got a recent outdoor eFTP of 291 (from a steady 18 min effort) but an indoor training FTP of 276 at the moment (and have done Zwift race efforts to back that up). I find I can do a decent it more outside.
Oh it was a definitely salty comment that I thought was immature of him. You can disagree but he ignored the context of AT that compensates for over testing
If you’re a regular listener to the EC podcast, it should not surprise you. KM (and a lot of others) don’t think very highly of TR for a lot of reasons, many of which are valid and some of which are overstated (IMO).
I think this is a reasonable take, however I think there are factors, such as coaching, training experience, etc that make different testing protocols better/worse for different athletes and situations.
The 8/20/long tests require a pretty good idea of what your FTP is before the test, and require you to be able to pace it well. If people can’t do either of these well, you won’t get a good (or any) result at all. I happen to think that the Emperical cycling/Kollie Moore test protocols are very much in the ‘better’ side of test protocols for people who can pace and/or have a good idea of what there FTP is.
Where the ramp test excels, is being straightfoward for people who cannot pace an effort well on feel, and also don’t have a good idea of what there FTP is. It has real issues in estimating FTP from MAP (or whatever the TR ramp test actually directly measures.) I think for a ‘test that anyone can take with reasonable results’ it is pretty good. For people that really care about the details and participate in “what is FTP” threads there are better options.
I think that for many/most TR users, especially the less experienced ones, the ramp test + AT is likely to be a good solution (for threshold and below workouts). AT addresses several issues, and one of them is the error that exists in the ramp tests results. I think this is better than a bandaid.
Where AT is absolutely a bandaid is in having VO2max and higher intensities specified as a % of FTP. Are there any coaches or physiologists that really say “Yes, FTP is the right thing to base the intensity of these efforts on”??? I guess there could be, but I’d love to hear there justification. I think whether or not AT ends up being personalized enough so these efforts are really based on personal data and scaled on an individual basis. If this is done well, then the intensity is being determined based on VO2 work, and just being described in terms of FTP, as that is the unit TR works in.
I don’t think the purpose/function of AT is to correct a bad ftp.
People in the bleachers keep saying “the ramp test is not as accurate as xyz” but the people at TR have access to all the workout data. They have said multiple times, the ramp test is the most successful predictor of being able to complete their workouts at a given ftp than any of the other tests. Hard to argue when you don’t have access to the data they’re looking at.
I think the purpose/function of AT is akin to Wahoo’s 4DP test. It’s recognizing that the following things are true:
FTP (even a perfectly set one) does not tell you exactly what you can do in every zone.
Your ability to do various workouts in the different zones does not always improve at the same rate
Example: I’m doing LV base. I’m doing 2 SS and 1 O/U each week. Wouldn’t it make sense or my ability to do SS workouts improve faster than my ability to do O/Us? This isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.
Yes. I joined TR in December 2017 and did an 8-min test. My first ramp test was a month later in January 2018. And I agree - AT shouldn’t be fixing a bad estimate, HOWEVER the ramp test is far better option for someone new to testing or someone that has never paced a longer test or done any 20-min sweet spot intervals. TR’s FTP estimate will both be welcome, and confusing for some, once it rolls out.
When Intervals first hit the scene, I had to adjust the eFTP Min Duration to get good results on long field tests (40-65 minute). Back then it estimated something like a 300W ftp on a 29 minute TT effort at 284W and David explained that I had high short power so we extended that min duration to help out the model.
Now it seems the Intervals model has changed and improved. That same 29 minute TT has a 278 ftp estimate, using what I believe to be the default eFTP Min Duration of 180 seconds (Settings > Power Settings).
6 minutes. TR gave a 245 estimate. WKO model jumped +12 from 233 to 245W. Xert shows breakthrough effort but dropped threshold power from 220 to 218
@mcneese.chad what is your eFTP Min Duration set at? Curious if my 6 minute vs your 6.5 minute is explained by that setting.
On “low” ramp tests - tests that give a low ftp estimate - TR and Intervals estimates are close, for example a March 2019 ramp test both TR and Intervals estimate 233W, while WKO models at 245W from some long efforts a couple weeks earlier.
Well, I kind of see AT as a hacky way of fixing the inappropriate use of FTP as the basis for assigning VO2max and above interval intensities.
However, if FTP estimation works well, we go from FTP tests + AT, to just AT. I think that at some point with AT rather than think about it as ‘never testing’, it is rather that ‘every workout is a test’. I still think that basing all these estimates on non-maximal efforts is going to be problematic, especially at the higher intensities.
While I think there is a meaningful physiological definition of FTP, I can also see how TR’s estimated FTP + AT can be good with a notable mismatch there. If they have data that show that estimated FTP + AT training plans is leading to more gains in more people than the previous way of doing things, that is more important that the estimated FTP being ‘correct.’ I think the best case is estimated FTP is ‘correct’ and results are better, but FTP correctness much less important with AT.
This is how TR assigns all intensities, and VO2+ workouts are generally in a fixed range of %FTP. Yes, I agree that TR assigns VO2 intensities ‘wrong’.
I think AT is a bandaid for this, as I I don’t think progression levels are enough to capture a PD curve and assign appropriate intensities at the different interval lengths. Maybe it will be eventually, but I from what I have seen of PL I don’t think it is there yet.
AFAIK Intervals doesn’t estimate, unless I feed it an initial value. I rarely use Intervals.
Haven’t done any short power work recently, so using a longer time period in WKO and ignoring that Xert and WKO are not the same on HIE/FRC and mFTP/TP:
WKO: 1235/16.0/268
Xert: 1236/28.9/262
I’ve long been thinking Xert HIE is a little to high, but I don’t use it much either. But WKO’s dFRC routinely drops below 0kJ on hard/short efforts, so it seems a little low. Fun with models.
and David explained that I had high short power so we extended that min duration to help out the model.
