I would have to look back but I believe it was rebuilding our apps to be on a modern language and plan builder.
The app rebuild was such a time suck and bummer but now it’s so easy to build quickly.
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If your FTP is much higher or lower as a percentage relative to your VO2 max, this seems like an important piece of information that could be used to inform the nature of your training plan’s blocks (not just the target wattage of a workout), especially depending on your specialty (e.g., triathlon vs. CX). Maybe some athletes need more VO2 max training; maybe some could use more base. I think there may be a missed opportunity here for TR.
I’m two months into structured training; my FTP is 65% of my VO2 max/ramp test wattage. Initial training was doable but after my second ramp test, it was confusingly much more difficult. And small decreases to workout intensity weren’t bridging the gap to make workouts doable. I nearly churned out of TR.
I did Kollie’s baseline FTP test. I found the experience of doing that protocol illuminating (got a good sense for what threshold should feel like). Although, I had to reflect on my workout history and failures to ballpark an FTP to conduct the test.
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The whole TR office just got real quiet and started working real fast. 
Those are for threshold.
They are slightly different depending on the zone but it follows the same concept.
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Honestly, if we could all think about these numbers differently, everything would be easier:
- Instead of FTP, call it TR Score. Don’t give it units (I.e., it’s not in watts anymore), just a number. This would eliminate the judgement and self-worth conversations about ramp tests. The point of the ramp test is to know someone’s physiology with respect to TR training plans, not to measure a universal standard (smart people should quickly point out that very few scientists/physiologists seem to use the same definition of FTP, which is a whole different conversation).
- Change progression levels to wide range scores. instead of PLs always being on a scale from 1 to 10, make them on a scale from 0 to 2000. This way, when your TR Score goes up, your progression levels don’t go down. Easier for people to understand, less for them to argue with.
- Improve the ML models so that progression levels represent power level at that energy system. Eventually these should represent your power level in each energy zone/system (when the models improve enough; could be a couple of years). Then, the progression levels improve when you train that system, and decay when you don’t.
With this, you would know what your power is in each zone/energy system, and then you directly focus your training plan on improving the power in the energy systems that matters for your races.
I’m not questioning @Nate_Pearson or the team building these - it’s a multi-year effort on a live platform, so all of these are intermediate steps. For all I know they have looked at this approach and aren’t ready for it yet. I also don’t have any insider info - but if I were doing it (and I’ve done this many times over the years), that’s how I would be doing it…
Disagree. I want to know how the work I do inside or in outside workouts translates to real riding and racing. Can/should I hold x watts during the middle of a 5hr race? How can I best pace this strava KOM, what should my goal wattage be for this TT…etc.
If you develop a new score, the constant question will be ‘how does my score relate to the watts I do on my headunit outside’ and it will only generate more confusion.
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I agree that’s a constant question - but it happens now anyway. One of the main points of this thread is that (some or many) people can’t use the ramp test number to guide their outside or competitive efforts.
And your questions of “Can I hold x watts during the middle of a 5hr race?” etc - are better answered by this:
That was what I was getting at - use the progression levels to measure specific energy systems, translated directly to head units and racing.
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Couldn’t have said it better. TR (Nate and John) have a way of belaboring how difficult and mentally stressful an FTP test is, and that a ramp test mitigates this, but in my experience there are VO2 max and anaerobic workouts that scare me far worse than an FTP test. I’ve only done 2 of Kolie Moore’s FTP/TTE progressions, and neither were stressful. Both were excellent workouts and left me with higher than expected power/TTE numbers. I’ve actually “failed” more ramp tests.
That said, I do think that the ramp test can be a “good enough” solution for a big base of TR users.
However, only if they are willing to adjust future workouts to compensate for potential over-testing, which I suspect happens fairly often. This is something that you don’t have to acccount for with a longer FTP test.
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I missed this thread at the time and dug it out just now, cheers! One for me to muse on come September and UK hill climb season.
Good to point out there is value in the ramp test away from estimating FTP, especially when you realise you have a big set of these standardised protocol self-tests.
I guess with TR’s upcoming predictive FTP they will be trying to validate ramp results. It seems like a no-brainer to take a ramp test and then do a TTE test at that power. If you can’t make 30+ minutes at your ramp FTP then it’s probably too high.
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I believe they said they’d validate it with subsequent workouts. So if your threshold PL is around a 5, you could get a threshold workout that is around 30mins or similar type workouts.
I’m sorry, but people not being able to understand PL’s is just nonsensical, and I’d argue that the lack of “understanding” is entirely on the individual being stubborn and struggling with ego. It’s very, very, simple – your PLs are relative to the workouts you’ve completed at your current FTP. Struggling to understand that just seems insane to me.
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So you want an arbitrary tr score and arbitrary pl levels, no way to match what workout you should be doing to your fitness signature. Sounds like it kind of becomes a big mess, yes, good in some ways, but in many ways just a messy way of doing the same thing as now. What is the end goal and how does this help get there?
Currently workouts are all based on a percent of ftp and are scored to match your pl level and your ftp is how it knows what level to set the values at.
The end goal needs to be kept in mind. Which has two components, your fitness signature and the workouts you should do based on your fitness signature.
The next step with your fitness signature should be a means to better measure the energy systems and different look limits of the human body. Maybe something like w’ and critical power as a way to measure your aerobic and anaerobic abilities.
The next step for workouts should be moving away from all workouts being tied to your ftp. To me the easier first step would be to use your fitness signature to figure out what offset of your ftp for each of the workout types should use and feed that into the workout as your “ftp”. This way the huge catalog of workouts stays the same but can better target the right wattage. This offset may be zero for lots of people but will allow for things like those who are more anaerobic to have higher wattages for those workouts and change around endurance rides to better target just below vt1 (think polarized)
The next step for workouts after that is to have smarter workouts where interval length and wattage targets change based off your fitness signature. This could allow the fitness signature to include information about recovery in that two people who can hit x wattage for y time and be wiped by the end of the interval would recover at different rates to be ready for the next interval. If the workout can factor that in it should be more effective for everyone. This would also allow fatigue level when coming into the workout to be factored in (think Garmin body battery type info) as all intervals would be based on your fitness at that point in time which is constantly changing. This also means the number of intervals doesn’t have to be hard set. The workout could be meant to deplete a certain resource so could add extra intervals or if you fail an interval could cut out some intervals. This is officially much further down the line and depends on better modeling your fitness signature
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I wonder if we’re talking about the same concepts, but using different language for them…
I completely agree - I just didn’t use the term “fitness signature”. Instead I used terms that TR is already using.
No - my recommendation for the PL levels is that they measure actual power levels for different energy systems. A ‘fitness signature’ if I understand how you’re using that term.
Agreed - my specific recommendation was to change the PL ranges so that they measure the different energy systems.
If I understand TR correctly, this is the purpose of PLs - workout selection is based on PL and energy system target, not FTP. Some workouts are still using FTP percentages, but that’s an artifact of not being able to calculate power levels for specific energy, not the current structure.
Basically Xert, but with better labeling, better structure, and a WAY better UI. Agreed, but what Xert has found is that changing the interval timing is very confusing for people, so they change watts instead.
This is some really cool new information. Maybe I’m making a false assumption, but it looks like each threshold progression level is worth about a 2% change in FTP. It could also mean that the progression level range of 1-10 is worth about a 20% difference in FTP, which I personally think is at least twice as big as it should be if you want appropriate time in zone. I guess FTP detection will fix all that.
I still think your progression level algorithm is the best innovation I have seen in structured training.
@Nate_Pearson, I would think with the data you have, that it would be possible to come up with a custom percentage of max 1 minute ramp power for each user (by comparing your FTP prediction with the ramp test result - some of us do like to test). Mine is probably more like 72%, though it took a while to figure that out. I know you’re moving away from testing, but it would certainly help limit much of the bellyaching about ramp tests not being accurate.
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That seems to assume your anaerobic to aerobic power ratio is fixed
That assumes the predicted value is only off because your ratio (see above) and not of for some completely unrelated reason.
Yes of course nothing is fixed. If FTP prediction is accurate it will pick up on the difference and adjust accordingly.
I’m just suggesting a straightforward solution that I think would improve the accuracy of a ramp test for most of us. We can punch holes in anything. It always seems to be the first reaction.
What does this even mean? Seriously.
Your post sounds like you want something completely different than what PLs are meant to be today, which is a measure of how well you can express your fitness in different ranges / zones. Which is actually a great concept, and over time, hopefully will get people to focus less on just artificially high “FTP” numbers, if that means their threshold and below PLs never get above 2.
What TR really needs to put together is an article that articulates what Sweet Spot and Threshold level workouts should you reasonably be able to do, if your FTP is correct (+/- some reasonable %).
We are validating that we can put you at the correct level(s) for your next workouts.
Bit of a difference there.
In most of this thread, people are focusing on Ramp Test without the inclusion of AT. We believe they should be considered as a tool together.
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Ya’ll are inline with our thinking too. It’s just a huge education issue.
We literally have a page in development called “Fitness Score” that shows you your absolute (instead of relative) fitness which is a combo of FTP, weight, and PLs.
This doesn’t go back to the beginning of my history just because we didn’t process that far back yet.
And obviously, this is still in development. I just wanted to let ya’ll know we agree with you but we still have some steps between now and then to get there.
I think it would be cool for us to just give you the workouts you need, then show some absolute progression levels for how you are doing. It might be just one score like this or a few scores.
Just something to show you that you are getting faster.
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