A cycling friend I ride with often has been doing Trainer Road Adaptive for a while now. He is performing the prescribed workouts well, no issues completing even the hard ones. He just did another ramp test yesterday - he said he felt great going into it. But it resulted in a 10W reduction.
I can’t believe he actually got weaker over the last few weeks of structured training. I imagine he just didn’t execute the test well for any of a number of possible reasons. Bad day, didn’t sleep really well, stress at work, accumulated fatigue, whatever.
He plans to go with the -10W until the next ramp test. Seems to me he should be at least as strong as the prior ramp test (and likely a little stronger after several weeks of solid TR training). So, leave it as-is.
From my point of view the FTP will help the platform to determine the watts zone, if he is already tackeling good the workout and he reduce his FTP his will be completing his workout easier, unless he feels overtrain, if he was me I leave it the same way. The question here is how he performance his prior test it was the exact protocol?
This is the same FTP protocol he has used in the past (ramp test)… He is experienced in doing the ramp test. So the question is: a point-in-time ramp test result that appears contrary to actual results from TR training over the last few weeks… trust it and lower your future workout stress, or ignore it?
Every ramp test I did, until I stopped doing them, got lower but I got more sustainable and a lot of big pbs last season. FTP is just one metric and if he’s improving I wouldn’t worry about it. There’s lots of discussions on the subject, including a recent podcast, but whilst the ramp test is ideal for the majority and has lots of benefits for them (low stress and easier paced) for a limited number of outliers it either over or under predicts. AT aims to dial those outliers in and ensure that they are training at level which makes them faster, the important metric to me.
i’ve had tests that didn’t go as expected, but after almost two years of structured training i know if it’s really off, or i’m just not as fit. But a lot of that has to do with experience and how workouts feel. If he’s sure he’s nailing the workouts and not barely hanging on, i’d leave it the same for now.
Great point. I bumped my FTP up 20W slowly (5W/wk) over the last few weeks from the first and only ramp test I did about a month ago… because it didn’t seem correct. The Endurance workouts are easy (but to your point they might be closer to Tempo now). But the VO2Max and Threshold workouts are really hard. I can do them. Sometimes mid VO2Max interval I have to stand up for say 30 secs. But they are doable. I assume if I can complete even the hard workouts… that my +20W FTP setting is better for me? My HR stayed consistent during the six four minute 106% of FTP intervals. The little surges in the intervals was when I stood up. The 22 min cool down was way to easy so I flipped to resistance mode and rode at a level that felt good.
Possibly, I am just going on Nates podcast description when he describes dialling outliers with imprecise FTP estimates in through AT. AT (for now anyway) definitely won’t adjust anyone’s FTP values, it’ll just adjust workouts eventually to account for a incorrect estimate, or at least that’s how he described it
I think if you tested too high and found a Endurance workout relatively easy it would be zoned right and not Tempo though. If you found it a little bit taxing it would be Tempo but AT would adapt future workouts so the did feel easy in future. I could be wrong here too though
Hard to comment on your FTP from the power/HR graph, and there can be a learning curve on any test including the ramp test. Also, even with a an all-out effort the ramp test can under-estimate and over-estimate ftp. I’ve had a couple of really low estimates from a ramp test, after a year of doing ramp tests.
I test as much as 50w lower on the ramp than I do on a 8 minute test. 50w is a huge discrepancy so I’ve tossed out the ramp test personally. There is a bigger learning curve to the longer steady supra-threshold efforts, but I’m of the opinion that they have a much bigger potential for growth as a cyclist as holding and pacing these sorts of efforts is a good skill set to have. The draw backs are that they are designed in a manner that makes freshness and pacing practice much more crucial, so the test itself becomes a breakthrough workout if you assume an increase in FTP… that’s a tough sell for a lot of people. If TR can figure out how to test less often or at all and still deliver accurate training zones, they’ll have a winner.
I’ve also had a few low ramp ftp estimates, something like 190 when I was doing 90% intervals at 220. Feel that I understand why, but the explanation doesn’t matter. Like you I tossed out the result and manually set ftp to something reasonable. However after a couple other low estimates, I simply stopped using the ramp test rather than come up with my own multiplier (higher than 75% one-minute power). The flip side are those people that see the ramp over-estimate ftp, and if they accept estimate will end up way over target especially on over-unders and threshold efforts. AT improves things a bit, but you can be hard headed and game the system and end up digging yourself into a hole.
A couple days ago I stopped at LBS to get my derailleur adjusted, and the owner wanted to talk with me about 20 minute tests. He races bmx, has a wall of trophies, and a 2000W initial kick and 200rpm repeatable top end cadence. Perfect for bmx I guess. I show him my Saturday 10 minute pre-test pacing effort at 290W, and he says “I’m going to target 400W for 20 minutes” I say laugh and say go for it, lets see how soon you blow up. So he pulls out Garmin Connect and sees his all-time 1-min power is 550W and bravely says “I’m going to target 380W for 20 minutes” I’m like, dude, look at your 20 minute all-time best, its not even close to 300W! Awkward moment lol.
The ramp test is just a tool to hopefully put a person in the right training zones so that they complete workouts, and allow them to progress their fitness. It is one way to attempt to estimate FTP. For some people it is somewhat accurate, for others it severely overestimates or underestimates someone’s ability. It also is just a snapshot in time of how well someone could perform on a given day, with so many factors such as fatigue playing a part.
With all that being said, if your friend is completing his workouts, I would not fret over the 10 W decrease, and probably keep the FTP the same. If he starts struggling, then bump it down.
Also, be careful with constantly manually bumping up your FTP…5W per week=20 watts in less than a month.
I stopped doing ramp tests when this happened to me. I had objectively improved in terms of the type/difficulty of workouts I could do, but got a lower number from the ramp test.
In the short term I bumped FTP conservatively (5w). Longer term I read some great threads on here and worked up to doing long threshold efforts (I used Unicorn +1 as an FTP proxy after a threshold progression using TR library workouts). I then read the closed (IIRC) Empirical Cycling podcast thread… and now use Kolie’s protocol as my FTP test at key points in the season (maybe only test 3 or 4 times per season now).
Off the couch and on a pro team in no time! Similarly I have heard friends and co-workers claim 350-380W FTP at 140-170 lbs with no results (or data) to back that up. When I dropped one of them (relatively easily) on a climb a few years back I started understanding the disconnect and the absolute ego we attach to that number.
My all-time PEAK fitness was maybe 4.2 W/Kg, when you’re claiming 5+ you should be able to easily lose me on a climb… jus’ sayin’
LOL I showed him the 10 mile canal TT leaderboard Canal TT | Strava Ride Segment in Rancho Cordova, CA and said “I’ve done club TTs with the KOM holder, he was an age group world f***ing champion in duathlon, and did 371W for 20 minutes. And his Strava KOM effort is titled ‘After 20 years of trying I finally get the Canal TT Record. So happy’ so what do you think about targeting 380W now LOL?” Above threshold you can argue limitations for a handful or two of minutes, and then reality always wins and you blow up.
That guy’s attitude takes me back to HS swimming; every year the entire team would swim all of the non-relay meet events one after another. My teammate, a sprinter, was hyping up how he was going to sprint the entire 500. The distance swimmers were doubtful. iirc he posted an ok time though; definitely the hard way to do it though.
Doesn’t seem quite as outlandish as this guy; though.
School of hard knocks guy, and his events are measured in minutes. Kinda hard to wrap your brain around training for 1 or 2 minute laps, and scaling that up to 20 minutes or longer. He just needs to go out and test his theory.
I say laugh and say go for it, lets see how soon you blow up. So he pulls out Garmin Connect and sees his all-time 1-min power is 550W and bravely says “I’m going to target 380W for 20 minutes”