but what if we don’t have to pick just one 
I’m deciding to oscillate between increasing FTP and increasing TTE.
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You’re asking the right questions here. It’s why I would train an IPer differently than I’d train someone who has to do a 100 mile ITT which, btw, is about 3h13. So it entirely depends on the event’s energy demands, how the athlete is able to produce that energy, and where they’re coming from.
I once had an overly FTP-interval focused approach. It went not great and a mistake I’ll never make again. But given the psychology of a lot of cyclists, I understand why that approach is taken. Then I remembered the size principle, and everything changed for the better.
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Sounds like a classic time trialer mindset (don’t mean that in a bad way)
I used to do the same thing because that’s all I knew. I thought that you were required to build things up from the bottom, with no intensity in general prep except for FTP intervals. I think in retrospect i was often working at cross-purposes to what i was after jsut because i didn’t know any better.
Compounded by that i think as a mountain biker being a little bit more glycolitic is okay. You might have average power of 270 for a XCO race, but look at the power file and you’re rarely ever cycling at 270 – rather oscillating between 0 and 330+!
Maybe? 
I was kind of playing off what Coach Chad mentioned in one of the recent podcast re: is it better to have a bigger FTP or a bigger TTE. I think the conclusion was that a bigger FTP is always better and that a bigger TTE, after a certain point, is somewhat deceiving/provides diminishing returns.
This is the part that i want to test. if it’s too much at the expense of top-end power, then it’s not necessarily true that it’s always better, rather it’d be a balance.
This is some of hte point of the INSCYD model and Sebastian Weber and they are getting a lot of attention right now, but I’ve talked to coaches way back in the day who said that for MTB in particular, if you’re prepping right, you should expect your FTP to drop a bit as you go into race season and sharpen up the short power. So it’s not really new.
In my own testing, comparing 2020 to 2018/2019, I’ve found that investing more training time at zone2 during base has resulted in same FTP but much better short power. And WKO’s modeled vo2max corroborates that story. Still to prove - that I can take FTP higher on the basis of this “bigger base.” Regardless, at this point I’m sold on a stronger pyramidal approach to base training.
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you sound like you’re starting to get down the slippery slope that I slid down last year. Now I’m trying to fix it this year.
When FTP is lower, means your repeatable power can also be lower. W’ is mostly a fixed number from what I can tell (although i’d be interested to see any references that say different) and intervals.icu says mine is about as good as I can expect. So I thought I’d be fine last year focusing on the shorter end of the power band… all that did was make me fade quicker.
Crazy thing if you listen to TTS, is the Norwegian triathletes, they have relatively low VLamax, but they still need to generate big watts, as a draft legal triathlon bike leg is basically a 10 turn crit, lots of surges, but those guys are hitting MLSS at like 2-3 mmol.
It’s trainable. Mine varies over the season, and across seasons. I like this explanation: https://roadcyclinguk.com/how-to/fitness-nutrition/six-things-need-know-anaerobic-capacity-cycling.html
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Thanks for the link, also mostly proves my argument. What I think i should have written is the peak w’ doesn’t sound like it is quite as trainable as say vo2max.
Key points there too is he’s saying that a higher ftp uses it less for a given power, and recharges quicker
This is the part that has often worried me - it seems like TTE has its own problems and issues. For example, say you do one of Kolie’s FTP tests. You last 32 minutes. Is that actually your TTE, or did you slightly overreach and were actually marginally over MLSS?
Or conversely, you last for 58 minutes but maybe you set a pessimistic target and you were actually a few watts below MLSS…
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Chad’s reasoning was that if you keep extending your TTE with a fixed FTP, your FTP will eventually increase anyway and your TTE will actually be something like Tempo.
Better to have a fixed TTE and chase after FTP gains.
So many weeds.
You can gut check it by feel and also with the WKO modeling.
With the way the test progresses, you’ll know what is sustainable versus not.
The lack of an explicit duration helps prevent over-reaching above MLSS at least in my experience.
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yeah… looks like I had read an article which referenced a study by skiba et al, Modeling the expenditure and reconstitution of work capacity above critical power - PubMed
Which includes this table:
the estimates for my W’ vary between 21-22 kJ, which is at or slightly above the mean from that table, but I also weigh almost 10 kg less than the mean weight of the subjects, so I’m not expecting to gain much in that aspect. Raising FTP seems like more of an achievable venture.
This is my argument.
What good is a FTP with a TTE of 35 minutes in helping you pace a 1 hour time trial? A 56 mile TT where pacing suggests an IF of .85? What’s the purpose of racing with some weird custom pacing strategy, when gauging it against your 1 hour best will work for most people.
Most races are fastest if you negative split, so I would argue that it is therefore better to err on the side of slightly underestimating MLSS than over.
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Guess that’s where training for race specificity comes into play. Most races aren’t 1hr TTs.
Not sure it works like that, in fact I know it doesn’t. For a start there is no such thing as a “fixed” FTP and TTE is even more variable from what I have seen.
What is important it the relationship between to two and it is a not direct / linear relationship. This therefore decides ones focus.
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The viewer question was based on holding a fixed FTP and attempting to grow TTE based on that FTP. Over time, even if TTE is extended at the original power, FTP will organically rise, so that new TTE will now be a <FTP TTE. That was the reasoning behind not focusing on increasing only one metric.
The ‘fixed TTE’, my error, was meant more for testing purposes, but it should also be of a practical length.
Where I’m coming down on it is that FTP/MLSS and TTE is a valid way of looking at fitness, but it’s hard to truly establish practically without lots of actual repeated lactate testing.
I feel like Coach Chad wasn’t taking issue with the concept of TTE - just the practical issues for an amateur cyclist in reliably measuring and tracking it.
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