Power Profile: Very Low 5s and 1m

I’m going to agree with @Captain_Doughnutman here that you shouldn’t be worrying about weight. Please, please don’t worry about weight. Don’t hit the gym fiercly with the intent of gainig weight, take that energy and target the durations you want to improve. I’m much smaller and lighter than you (5’3", 124lb) and though I used to do a lot of strength training, that was five years ago and I haven’t done anything since. Last year after my last build into race season I was at 17.6 @5s and 8.6 @5m. Train what you want to develop, and your body will follow - not the other way around.

1 Like

Pro sprint star Caleb Ewan is 61kg.

That would make him very very very very light. Anything is possible! :+1:

1 Like

Wow, this is inspiring for me.

Thanks everyone for the info and suggestions. I guess I’ll just keep doing my workouts and transition into VO2Max building workouts as I get closer to a competition I’d like to do well in. My area needs more hill climbs!

1 Like

If you want to boost 1min and 5second power, I think you need to work on more strength and anaerobic efforts vs VO2max.

I am also “very light” guy and my strengths are 5min/60min power. My 5s power doesn’t change much, but when i look at my 1min power before racing and what happens during the racing season, it goes up - it’s the racing. Just by racing couple crits/road races my 1min power goes up. I don’t know if thats just because i have different sport background or because those races have been “quality” sessions for 1min power.

I have also done couple weeks in the past just focusing on these power numbers (5s/1min) and again, the numbers goes up. If you want to improve something, you have to train specific way (in my case it has always worked). For me it has been simple; Sprints.

Strength training would help too.

totally trainable and you should train it; you dont need to become a pack sprinter but having that raw power is important for almost all types of riding unless you are pure Ultra guy.

use it or lose it as others have said though, so start maybe 8 weeks out from when you want to hit it hard for an event and make sure you recvoer well between sessions. it’s taxing.

Brendan

First off, are these numbers from indoors are outdoors? Generally, most people can hit higher short power numbers outdoors often by quite a bit,

Short power is trainable and fairly quickly too if you’re already in decent shape. it also requires some technique at the shorter end.

These numbers are indoors, from TR and Zwift rides.

Anything short where you are (or should be) out of the saddle, you are leaving watts on the table indoors. There comes a point indoors where preserving the bike starts to limit mega watt efforts. At least for me, my 5 second power is about 175 watts higher outdoors. Being able to move the bike while standing plus not being terrified of ripping your bike off the trainer or cracking the framer is worth a number of watts. And if you’re not going that hard, you aren’t at your true 5 second max.

As for 1 minute,I’ve gotten close on Zwift but my highest 1 min numbers are all outdoors on hard group rides, generally on short 1-2 minute climbs I hit while fairly fresh. Again, these are out of the saddle efforts… Races are have efforts like that but I’m not fresh when we hit them.

Once the efforts get long enough that I can remain seated, I don’t see much difference between indoors and outdoors.

Thanks for that perspective.
Yea, I usually try not to destroy the trainer bike. Even though it is an old used “beater” I picked up for cheap. Unless I’m sprinting to the line at the end of a grueling Zwift race. Then I start grunting like a madman and ripping up on the handle bars like their made of titanium :). Completely involuntary of course!! Muuusssstttt WINNNN!!!

I just looked at my last outdoor flat-out minute from a hill climb event in October and I have the following numbers:

5s = 900w → 14 w/kg
1m = 495w → 7.7 w/kg

So this is a decent increase. Still not great, I think, but at least I know I can train these skills.