Yeah…I know ex national champion and he is a beast also. Ergo - if you want to have a huge FTP - become a rower not a cyclist when young.
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Last year in my peak fitness, I am very close to that magic number w/o using TR, this year, enrolled TR, I definitely felt much different after some long rides, I didn’t feel much muscle soreness, even I am still not yet arrived the peak at this moment (damn COVID cancel all my races…), I truly expect TR will bring me over that magic number before the end of 2020. Ride on!
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Nice work… I’m just curious what is the basis for 4w/kg? Is this from a step test? 20min? 60 min?
Off topic, but have to ask… why is that file in /tmp ? /home is for peasants?
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What is your height? I’m currently at 155 lbs (70kg) , 5’11" (180cm) and I think the lowest I would feel comfortable is 145 lbs (66 kgs), so Ive been focusing more on power.
5 ft 10 is 178cm and 5.8333 ft (that happens to be my height.) ^ One of those values isn’t correct.
Well done on the 4w/kg, looks like a good journey to get there and a lot of solid work.
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Thanks for sharing. Sometimes it’s difficult to put yourself “out there” for all to see … and comment
Well done! That’s a goal I’m chasing too, and my road is definitely non linear so I’ll take heart.
A slight tangent question if I may…if I take ftp numbers from a stages power meter…I’m getting closer to the goal. Whilst from a tacx neo i’m quite a bit lower. What’s the gold standard for measuring this? Rider output (ie crank based power meter) or actual power to the road (hub-ish based power meter)?
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Thanks for sharing - super motivating for me to hear. I am 32, almost 33 years old, 5’ 9" and 145lbs and just really got into cycling this year. I was a soccer player before that but after my 5th knee surgery, had to give that up and decided to take up the bike.
Anyways, first FTP test was 177w (2.7w/kg) back in March 2020. I’ve been doing mid-volume and gone up steadily until my most recent test at 221w (3.4w/kg). My hope is to get to 4.0w/kg and I’d love to see this happen in 2020, but it will be what it will be.
Anyways, awesome to see your progress and keeps me motivated that I can get to 4.0w/kg and hopefully beyond.
Ride on!
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Thanks for putting it out there… Inspired to me put all my weight data and FTP test in an excel sheet to review my fits and starts. Fun academic exercise. And a really good reminder that life stress, bad diet and lifestyle can be really really bad for some or all parts of this calculation.
Since we’re not racing right now, I’m just shooting to build an “enormous” motor… I actually added two columns, one for 4.0 w/kg at that daily weight, and one for 4.25… If I hit 4.0 this summer or fall I’ll add another at 4.5w/kg.
Maybe I’ll trim a little beer weight once I decide to target some races (but gravity likely won’t be why I’m not on the podium either way). I’ve got an “easy” 4-5kg I could drop, but IPAs taste so good…
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I was a borderline world-class rower up to youth category but that was 35 years ago. Our training intensity and volume then was brutal, was training up to 9 times a week at age 14 and could squat 60kg 180 times without break (at around 65kg own weight) at age 16 - after 3x100 squat jump warmup! 
havent been in a boat much over the past 30 years but on the plus side I can still reach close to 190 max HR at age 51 and operate at 180+ for a while…
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That is why ex-rowers should be having separate cat-rower in the race season 
If it makes you feel better I am an ex-rower but no-one on a bike has anything to fear in regards to my ability on a bike. But then I didn’t get into rowing until after my prime years playing Rugby and Athletics. Real rowers are animals and can destroy many others in sports which they supposedly specialise in. lol.
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Most interesting point about your readout is that the wattage you are pushing out in number terms does not really change over the time period.
But you have managed to lower your weight and maintain that wattage. Hence “simples” as the Meerkat says, this is how you achieve better W/kg figures.
Would it not be lovely if we could lower our weight AND increase our wattage.
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I am with you on this one. I am also a rower but did not take it up till I was 53 yrs old. But it saved my life.
I was hitting 184 bpm at 63 with an almost blocked heart artery and the exercise saved my life due collaterals. Now 73 and still hitting 170 bpm plus after stent fitted.
If you exercise to the max then this protects your heart against the old age visitudes that are visited upon you
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Alright guys I’m completely ignorant to rowing, what about it lends itself to super high FTPs? Throw some knowledge at me
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I don’t know for sure, (so nothing to back this up but bro science), but I guess it has something to do with training your heart and lungs to provide enough oxygen for your total body (high vo2max). In addition, the muscle fibers in your legs are already primed to do the kind of work you do in cycling (endless fast reps)
If you then move to cycling, you will have more oxygen available then the average cyclist, the muscle fibers have the right composition, so you mostly have to train an efficient pedal stroke, but that might come easy to as rowing also requires timing and stuff like that.
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Now I am so curious about this rowers thing (even regretting I did not take on rowing), is it a common thing to see ex-rowers who are currently doing cycling to be beasts or you are just basing yourself on one or two mates of yours?
Because by the way you guys are putting it all pro cyclists should ve been teen rowers which we know is not the case!!
With FTP in the ramp test being calculated from 1min max effort this is exactly what rowers train for - an elite rowing competition goes over 2000m which is a max effort over 5-7 minutes depending on boat category and wind with the last ~1min of the race often being an all-out sprint which sometimes ends in passing out at the line (similar to FTP ramp tests). Elite Rowers are often tall and heavy (muscular) so you would not expect them to be good at riding up steep long hills or enduring multi-hour rides. BTW my FTP calculated from max 1min effort (in a ramp test kind of environment) is way more than I can possibly do over 60 (but not neccessarily 20) min…
In Belgium there is a TV Show called “Container Cup”. The format of the show was simply put: 32 professional sporters had to finish a series of seven sporting events, organised in a container, in the least amount of time. The closing event was 3 km of cycling. The olympic rower Tim Brys did go harder than some renowned pros:
| Competitors | 3K cycling |
|---|---|
| Wout van Aert | 03:45.41 |
| Mathieu van der Poel | 03:55.24 |
| Bart Swings | 03:55.75 |
| Greg Van Avermaet | 03:59.19 |
| Thomas De Gendt | 03:59.75 |
| Tim Brys | 04:02.93 |
| Toon Aerts | 04:04.06 |
| Yves Lampaert | 04:08.08 |
| Victor Campenaerts | 04:10.85 |
| Remco Evenepoel | 04:10.92 |
| Oliver Naesen | 04:14.58 |
| Jolien D’Hoore | 04:30.70 |
| Thibau Nys | 04:38.42 |
Full disclosure: the event was executed on a simple spinning bike so we’re talking about absolute watts and not W/KG.
Jan Bourgois, an exercise physiologist at the University of Ghent gave some context to this phenomenon in a news article https://www.ugent.be/ge/bsw/nl/actueel/nieuws/roeiers
Translated with DeepL:
Consternation in the Container Cup. Rowing driver Tim Brys left behind in the cycling test renowned hard riders such as Remco Evenepoel (vice-world time trial champion) and Victor Campenaerts (holder of the hour record). And yet that doesn’t have to come as a surprise, as science shows.
Completely surprised was Tim Brys, an East-Flemish Olympian from that discipline, not with his result. “Cycling is part of our fixed training package. Because we couldn’t row for a long time due to the virus, we trained more often by bike, with rides of around 200 kilometres. I don’t even think it’s excluded that a rower could make it to the finals of the Tour of Flanders, although we were trained mainly on basic speed rather than explosiveness. Time riding and track work are better for us. The New Zealand rower Hamish Bond has even beaten George Bennet (pro rider at Jumbo-VIsma, nvdr) at the national time trial championship”.
The French sports newspaper L’Equipe concluded after a study among 26 disciplines that rowing is the toughest sport. Anyone who will rage Brys in the Container Cup will understand that conclusion. “I went to extremes on the bike and the rowing machine. I also wanted to show what we rowers are worth. We are used to going through the pain barrier again and again. If you don’t want to die, you can’t do anything in my sport. After a race, bystanders often have to help the athletes out of their boats and carry them to the podium. They have gone so deep that - literally - they can no longer stand on their legs.”
Model athletes
Nice bonus of that hard labor: rowers are model athletes. “Thanks for the compliment. We are complete athletes, who have to let legs, arms and torso work together in harmony and are therefore nicely in proportion.”
Move over, cyclist, triathlete and swimmer. At the top of the hierarchy is the rower, according to Jan Bourgois. He is an exercise physiologist at the University of Ghent.
and as an athlete, coach and scientist has more than 40 years of experience in top growth. “I wasn’t surprised that an Olympic rower like Tim shone in cycling, running and rowing. Together with the shorter distances in cross-country skiing and the biathlon, rowing is one of the most demanding disciplines on a purely physical level. These are three sports that train the energy-generating systems to their maximum. Former rower Tim Maeyens kicked a phenomenal 560 watts during a cycling test, which is close to the best pro rider”.
On many paramaters peaks rowers, Bourgois judges. “Such as maximum oxygen uptake. Once upon a time, a heavyweight rower reached seven litres per minute, the highest value ever measured. Their lung ventilation at maximum effort runs up to 200 litres per minute, while other athletes are between 120 and 150 and the amateur athlete around 100. The cardiac minute volume at maximum effort in the average person is 20-25 litres, in a well-trained endurance athlete runs up to 30-35 litres and in a top rower up to 40 litres. Rowers combine these top values with a high muscle mass and a heavy load on the anaerobic metabolism. The extreme acidification that 400-metre specialists such as the Borlées have to endure for 40 seconds, oarsmen have to endure between six and seven minutes. And which kills ordinary people. Simply put, rowing is dying.”
Brys and his colleagues thus combine the characteristics of a sprinter like Usain Bolt with those of a half-fondler like Kevin Borlée and those of a 1,500-drawer like Hicham El Guerrouj. Says Bourgois: “From a purely physical point of view, rowing - together with cross-country skiing and biathlon - is the toughest sport. With all due respect to other disciplines, but scientifically, rowers are the best and most complete athletes”.
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