Wow this has been some of the best discussion I’ve seen on here in a long while. Thanks everyone.
If you’re 60+ then honestly I’d say that’s fair enough. From what I understand, there’s not many gains to be made there at that age, and as you mentioned the cost of recovery from going all-our can be quite high, so it’s more about maintenance.
you can either make gains (newbie getting start late in life), or hold the line to stop the age related aerobic capacity losses! Use it or lose it!
Yep agreed, and just to clarify I was thinking in terms of absolute VO2max (L/min). I’m sure there’s plenty of gains to be made in other areas even if VO2max doesn’t see major improvements.
In your defense, the custom workouts from Team Gold say
To get FTP, assuming you’ve ridden at least ~25 minutes, just manually select from the start of the test interval to where you stopped in workout analysis - the average power is your result.
I think the ~25 minutes bit is probably a typo, that should be ~35 minutes.
Might this be age related too? Have seen Adam Myerson say he now does fewer intervals as a masters athlete. I know I don’t recover as fast anymore
Not sure if that’s a typo or not. I’ve been thinking time of whole workout so that’s what I’m going to correct in the future.
The other thing still confusing to me is that Moore’s article says take the average of the “entire test,” not just the start of the intervals until time or TTE. So I’m wondering where the first 30 minutes came from since the article also says do a “long and thorough warm-up.” Nothing specific in the article about what that entails.
Need to go back through this thread to see what Alex says when putting the workout together.
He put it together such that if you made it to the ramp (25 min) you’d get an FTP bump. Problem with the test Alex designed is that the protocol isn’t really aimed at determining FTP in the same way a ramp test or 20 min test is. It’s a feel and then sustain as long as you can, analyze in WKO5 or similar engine and determine FTP. So Alex’s write up doesn’t really match the intent of the protocol. (I appreciate what he did here, though! This is an excellent thread.)
My guess is that it falls into the category of “do the minimum to achieve adaptation” and is not age related.
He stated it in the context of now that I am older I do x-2 instead of x intervals. I can’t find the reference though.
Well age and recovery also plays a role.
KM talks about the protocol in relation to “target FTP.” So Alex’s workout perfectly matches the intent of the protocol assuming the rider is attempting to target a small increase in FTP. If you’re just testing the feel of your current FTP and/or TTE at your current FTP then you’d want to bump the intenstity of Alex’s test down a couple percentage points.
But I agree with you that you should be riding to feel anyway, so I’d definitely recommend using Alex’s workouts in resistance mode and taking the target wattage as what it is: a loose target rather than an exact power prescription. Used this way it’s close enough for someone planning to feel how their current FTP holds up in a longer test as well as someone hoping to achieve an FTP bump.
Yes, that’s the point: you go into it having a target FTP. Alex’s test puts you above that FTP for most of the test so you can take a average and get a number. That’s not the intent.
The intent is target an FTP, put down that power (not 102% of it) for as long as you can and push up or down if you can.
Alex’s test kind of turns it into a 20-min test or ramp test where you’re seeking an average power to get a higher number. KM suggests getting the average and confirming FTP based on a WKO PDC. It’s a subtle difference, but there is one. The first time I did it, I ended up with an average power 5W higher than my actual FTP.
You can accomplish what you want out of it, but it’s not really the same intent as the EC protocol IMO.
My point is, if your target FTP is 102% of your last tested FTP, then it matches the protocol. Most of us don’t do this workout expecting no change from our last time.
From the KM article: “If you want to use my tests but aren’t sure where your target FTP is, a 3- to 8-watt increase is a reasonable starting point.” That’s where Alex arrived at the 102%.
I think where we aren’t seeing eye to eye is the way you’re explaining it, it’s as if you set your TR FTP to your target FTP before doing the workout. Alex assumes we leave our TR FTP as is, but our target for the workout is a bit higher than that. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable assumption for most folks, including the ones KM coaches and prescribes this protocol to.
Could be that. I think the point I’m more driving at is this test is less to discover your FTP and more to validate an estimate, feel FTP that day and determine TTE. The only reason I bring this up is to discourage people from using it who think it’s going to work like a ramp test: ride till test is over, test spits out number, train.
Most everyone regularly in this thread knows that.
100% agree. In that respect this protocol has the same drawback as all other FTP tests that the ramp test is trying to replace: it’s useless without a reasonably accurate target. But as you say, I assume everyone on this thread agrees that if you have a good idea of what your FTP is this is one of the best ways to test it!
Except for the key fact that performance above FTP is only loosely correlated with FTP itself. 20-minute, 8-minute, and ramp tests all assume a fixed relationship between supra-threshold performance and FTP, to varying degrees of success.
With a fixed-length supra-threshold protocol, this is precisely why an accurate FTP estimate is required going in. I don’t know about others, but ~105% FTP can “feel” vastly different based on my current fatigue / recovery, what sort of intervals I’ve been doing lately, etc.
Whereas FTP always feels like FTP, it’s just that if I’m fatigued or out of practice I know I can’t hold it as long - so whilst it helps to have a number in mind going in for a KM test, you should be able to feel it out on the day.
The TR ramp test also requires a ballpark figure too. My first one went for 40+ minutes because the initial estimate was off by ~30W, even though I bumped it up a bit from what was suggested.
Yeah, good points
See what you are saying, but what are you basing your 5 watt lower ftp on? I think 5 watts is within margin of power meter accuracy and day to day variance, don’t you think?
I’ll let Kolie answer, from this thread:
When I look at WKO5 after these tests, FTP generally ends up lower than my “feel” tested effort. I also round up to the nearest 5.
While in the area of PM accuracy, it doesn’t make sense to me to write off a 5W difference in training FTP to PM accuracy when I know my FTP is probably closer to 270 than 275, and yes, I do believe a 5W difference can be significant. Not end of the world, but significant enough to care. Otherwise, why do we even test?
My latest test, I held 284 for 27 min before stopping. I was over FTP by feel at the end of it. Looked on WKO5, inflection point was 275-280, mFTP 278. I will train at 280. If I went by average of the 25 min test I’d be at 285, which would be too high for me right now. That’s why I think 25 min is probably too short to determine FTP or not just based on average power, especially when prior TTE is out at an hour or more.
Longer test is better I agree for sure. I would rather have my ftp underestimated by 5 watts than over. But I think just the way you feel day to day could cause a 5 watt swing just as easily as power meter accuracy. I am not a coach nor do I play one on TV, it was just an observation. Tim cusick tells his athletes to round to nearest 5. They are training levels and changing intervals from ftp based on 280 vs 285 is probably not going to matter in the overall. Level 4 is 90-105%, if you did your intervals at 95% is a range between 266-271 from either 280 or 285. This would seem to still be in the right ballpark. This obviously gets harder as you get to 105% but then then you are training in a range and can adjust based on the workout. If your ftp is set correctly you can feel those days when 100% intervals are more prudent than 105%.
And adjust accordingly. That is all I was saying.