Road to 4w/kg, what does it take?

[WindWarrior]

@russell.r.sage

I get 1000-1200 calories a day 4-6 times per week indoors. That most likely exceeds what most people do outdoors riding 1-3 times.

I found this funny. A lot of interesting conjecture on both sides. Here is some of my anecdata…

My last full week - last couple weeks had some travel and life interference - a normal training week had 1233kJ, 1400kJ, 1352kJ, 1380kJ, and 1325kJ rides (1.6 hours, and the rest just a smidge over 2 hours). And I’m underachieving versus a lot of the people I ride with on Wed night. Did 1402kJ last night, just under 2 hours. FTP and intensity matter when it comes to kJ, mines about 270 and overall doing more endurance than in typical TR plan so a little more time required.

A couple weeks ago I sold the wheels that came with my Tarmac to a guy. Turns out he is a doctor in LA, board certified in emergency medicine and pediatric care. Probably late 30s, very busy guy. Has a place in Tahoe and wants to do the Sacramento to South Lake Tahoe ride with me. So I follow him on Strava… last month he rode 774.6miles, 49 hours, and 64,024ft climbing. His weeks are filled a few 3+ hour rides with 6000+ feet of climbing, and some ‘filler’ Peloton sessions. I don’t think he understands how slowly 3W/kg peeps climb, relative to his much higher 4+ W/kg

Anyways his last 4 weeks according to Strava, averaged 3 rides/week and 8.75 hours/week. He just got back from his Tahoe place, and did a 4.5 hour / 2904kJ / 7877’ climbing ride in the San Bernardino mountains. Another overachiever the likes of which I find myself riding with, and they are all putting down some big kJ relative to your likely exceeds comment.

[mcneese.chad]

@Vernix

but TR middle age users are pretty slow no?

• As compared to what or whom else exactly?

[FrankTuna]

Plenty of people 40-50 don’t do anything at all, so please don’t bring down folks getting exercise, staying healthy, and trying to get faster.

[Vernix]

@mcneese.chad

As compared to what or whom else exactly?

For instance, a mediocre cyclist like me. I started at 40 (no background in endurance). My first ftp test, the suffertest 4D profile gave me an ftp of 195 >> 2.69 w/kg

[Vernix]

My apologies, not trying to bring down anybody. TR users strike me as a very serious and committed bunch. Most of the guys I follow in Strava AND use TR are pretty fast. I was just very surprised by that statistic.

[Alex_NoCo]

Personal experience is years of consistency. I achieved it with only 4 hours per week, but with 8 years under my belt as a base.

[TRusername]

no worries, I don’t think you were trying to bring people down.

You may not have a lot of endurance-sport background but you might have some genetic predisposition to aerobic performance. My first 20-minute FTP test (after a year of unstructured cycling) put me at a whopping 1.95 w/kg. After 3 years of structured training my FTP is just at 2.8-2.9w/kg.

All said and done, we’re just 2 individual examples compared to how many hundreds of people were included in that graph. The bottom line is I think the average middle-aged male cyclist is probably around that 2.5 w/kg range, the people we see/follow on can skew our view of what is “average”.

EDIT: I should also note that there are nuances with “fitness”. FTP is just one component of fitness, there are people on that bell curve (like me) that have relatively low FTP’s but are very capable anaerobically. These cyclists won’t really look fit on the endurance chart, but in reality they’re fit in another way.

[kjdhawkhill]

@Aeroiseverything

and with just 3 digits

Your FTP has three digits?

Kidding.
Same height, but my /KG side of that equation is significantly higher. Partially due to carrying a few extra layers of insulation, and maybe historically, some unused (for cycling) muscle… Partially because I drink too many empty carbs and don’t eat enough green veggies (or use too much blue cheese dressing when I do).

@N8fyn

I’m trying to get an understanding of what it takes for an average person to get to 4watts/kg as a goal.

It took me about 6 months of consistent training after joining TR to go from 3.38-4.1 after 10 previous years of riding outside with some winter training and a few summer interval rides on lightning days…

My watt gains predominately came from a LV plan, but also trying to get in chamois time whenever I could, commuting (25 minutes each way) , commuting the long way home (60 minutes) and THEN completing an alternate 45/60 minute interval workout (when life allowed). This was before PL and true alternate workouts became a thing so I’m happy to have more options available rather than just the +1 or -2 workouts with the same name.

Absolutely nothing to do with diet, except that maybe I limited late-night liquid carbs when I was planning a training ride in the morning. If I want to progress in W/kg to the next half w/kg, I know I have about 4-6kg of non-functional insulation and maybe 2-4kg of non-cycling muscle, but I want no part of losing that muscle.

Start with an average to above average genetic ceiling. Ride consistently, ride long, ride hard. Hit your intervals. Don’t drink too much beer or eat too much bacon.

The podcast just talked about the consistency part again - it doesn’t mean everyday, doesn’t mean every interval workout has to be an easy hit, it doesn’t mean plans have to be executed to perfection, but swapping out a workout for a semi-epic shouldn’t hurt too much long term. Add as much easy/moderate riding as you can while still hitting the majority of your intervals in the main rides.

[Donoman]

Body composition measurement would be a good idea. Whatever you think is reasonable % fat, you can then calculate what you would weigh if you had that body comp.

For example, I’m at 19% body fat by body scan (a real one). So to me, that means I can probably lose 2-3% without too much sacrifice. If my scan was 10% body fat, forget it. I would probably start eating more.

[ArHu74]

I explained to you FTP is correlated linearly with mass, mass is correlated linearly with height squared therefore FTP is correlated linearly with height squared

[Bgrim]

No - that’s a misunderstanding of statistics.

https://www.trainerroad.com/forum/t/bmi-w-kg-whats-yours-currently/71720/169?u=bgrim

[maxim809]

Hi op. Your question got me curious so I dug into my own data.

Took me 12 weeks to go from Off the Couch => 4.0wkg.

Caveat:
What works for me won’t work for others. Response to training is highly individual.
Please take what I am sharing as a singular, individual, (n=1) anecdote.

A lot of this has to do with genetics, motivation, and what your lifestyle can accommodate.

Starting Profile:

Was in my mid-20’s.
The most exercise I was doing was 1 hour per week, commuting to office work.

5’6
156lbs (71kg)
NOT lean when I started.

How it Started:
Friend invited me do my first 64 mile Fondo one day. I got hooked.

The very next week I did my first 100mi ride, and then I started riding like crazy for the next few months.

Training Plan:
Didn’t follow a plan. Just riding around solo, exploring new roads during all the free time I had.

Went hard up as possible every hill. Tempo or leisure pace on flats. Sprinted out of every green light.

Highly unstructured, and just riding as much as possible.

Nutrition:
On-Bike: I didn’t take food on the bike. I had no clue what I was doing. I didn’t have bottle cages on my first century. I’d stop at gas-stations for chips, soda, and sandwiches.

Off-Bike: Eating as much as possible off the bike. Nearly all of it junk food: McDonald’s, takeout, fast food. Beer, wine, Gatorade. It was convenient, and high in calories. The only bike-related research I really did was watching GCN with my legs up during the Golden Era when it was the original presenters.

Summary:
As you can see, my training was random with no rhyme or reason.
Lots of volume (+20hrs/week), with intensity naturally sprinkled throughout the ride with hills and stoplights.

Power distribution is Pyramidal.
HR distribution is Polarized.

Again, a very lucky situation in my mid-20’s after college. No commitment and lots of free time.

I didn’t take great care with rest, recovery, or nutrition. Didn’t lube my chain for months so riding my 350mi weeks on a screeching chain while wearing baggy kits and shorts instead of a bib.

Today:
That was a VERY long time ago.

Well, I am happy to report I am still obsessed with training today.
But now, everything is measured and it’s a lifestyle.

• I am extremely careful about planning out my rest days, so I know which days I need to go hard.
• I take recovery weeks once a month or so.
• I take 2-3 full weeks off the bike once a year or so.
• I prioritize consistency above all else.
• But if I miss a workout I know how to fix it.
• I now do bike-specific gym work 0~3 times a week, based on time of season.
• I macro-count off the bike.
• I still measure my weight half a dozen times a day.
• I plan out how much sugar water goes in my bottle, and consume 30~90g/hr depending.
• I obsess over marginal gains on my equipment and kit.
• Waxed chain, optimized Crr, aero bike fit with CdA measurements, all that.
• Multiple bikes, each optimized with different gear-ratios for different terrain.
• But bike is hilariously still pretty heavy.

I do about 6~12 hours a week now, and can hover around 3.8~4.0wkg on low maintenance.

Thank you for coming to my Fred Talk.

[Bgrim]

You had a power meter and hr strap but no bottle cages???

[maxim809]

Ya nice catch was waiting for this one.

I did the exact same 50minute mountain 2-3 times a week, which ended up becoming 30minutes by the time I was peaked. If you look at my elevation I was doing many other 3~18 mile mountain hills which I can cross-reference using known time and weight.

Used bike calculator and/or Gribble to compute back watts.

Wind’s not a big factor because these grades are +8%. And even still, I do so much Rchung analysis now that I can look up historical wind reports to subtract or add back in estimated wind data if my calculated watts looks really off.

tl;dr, given how much data I have over ~10 years on the same sets of hills, over various seasons, it’s really easy to cross referenced calculate estimated watts with real PM data.

[cartsman]

@TRusername

The bottom line is I think the average middle-aged male cyclist is probably around that 2.5 w/kg range,

Agree with this, but would also say the average middle age cyclist isn’t doing anything close to what would be needed to explore if they have 4W/kg potential. Lots of middle aged cyclists around where I live, most of them have most or all of the following attributes:

• little or no structure, they just ride
• very inconsistent, they’ll log quite a few hours if they have a quiet week and the weather is good, but will have big chunks of time off the bike for holidays, winter weather, busy times at work, etc
• Quite a bit of excess weight.

E.g. There’s a local club where their typical weekend club ride involves meeting in a café for breakfast, maybe 4 hours in the saddle at a social pace with a coffee and cake stop, and then a pub lunch after to refuel and rehydrate with a few beers. Which is absolutely fine - they’re a lovely friendly bunch of people, they’re enjoying themselves, they’re riding bikes, and they’re a lot healthier than if they didn’t ride. I ride with them occasionally and it’s always good fun. But I’m pretty sure if they followed an LV plan consistently for a year while cutting out the beer, cake and bacon sandwiches they could all make some pretty huge W/kg gains. It might also strip out all the things they enjoy about cycling and they’d quit!

Long winded way of saying that I don’t think the average W/kg numbers that people are achieving are much indicator of the W/kg that people are capable of achieving. Would be really interested to play with some of the TR data behind that W/kg bell curve! E.g. what happens if you filter it to only include people with BMI <=25? Or break it down by annual volume in hours? Or by compliance to TR plans?

[bobmcstuff]

Here’s my FTP and WKG history since I joined TR. wkg in orange on the right axis and ftp in blue on the left axis.

During lockdown I massively increased my consistency - previously I had to travel a lot for work which had a big effect on my weight and training.

Towards the end of 2020 I made myself quite badly ill by not having enough rest… I was doing a lot of intensity, minimum 3 TR workouts plus Zwift racing, and not really following the rest weeks. Recovered from that and adjusted my training to have a bit less intensity, more Z2 which worked really well, got to record levels at the end of 2021 for an event I had.

Then had a planned “off season”, started rebuilding into 2022, and caught COVID start of March… I have also been travelling a lot for work again recently, which has affected my consistency a little but my diet a lot - FTP is going the right way but weight is not… Although you probably can’t see that well right at the end there, when the blue line is above the orange line it basically means I am fatter than I would like

So my takeaway - consistency is king. And that includes consistently following the recovery weeks, and being consistent with diet.

[smlring]

meaning of reaching one’s full potential.

• I start riding
• first my vo2max starts to increase. To a lesser amount my “threshold”
• my vo2max reaches to my ceiling. I realized my potential there.
• I keep riding
• my threshold gets closer and closer to my vo2max
• soon I peaked there too. No more threshold for me. Here all ramp tests, 8 mins, 20 mins etc. All that bs is done measuring me.
• I keep riding. Because why not. I am not disheartened by same test results all the time.
• I can stay at my threshold longer and longer. Over an hour sometimes. See where do the phrases like “a long time”, “~1 hour”, “35-75 minute” come from.
• I stagnate there too. No more vo2max, no more ftp, no more tte for me.
• But I keep riding. Because I am thick like that.
• I start repeating my ftp for my tte (almost) twice in a ride. No more I am done for the day after an all-out climb.
• I now can do 2 or even 3 days like that. 2-3 big climb around ftp, around my tte. 2 or even 3 days. I am dead at the end but doable.
• Years has passed now. I clocked over 8000 hours. Can I improve? Not according to usual bs out there. I am peaked 5 years ago. According to them I reached my potential and stagnated ever since my 2000th hour years ago. I kept riding only for the love of the sport
• I did my first stage race in the mountains. I defended myself for the first 3 days, not losing much time and staying in top20. Destroyed most of the competition on the days 4 and 5 getting into top 10. Last 2 days were bad. I faded badly, making it to the finish at 14th place.
• Came back for more the next year. This time I fade much less on the last days, finishing a respectable 8th.
• My vo2max and ftp are the same for the last 8 years. But I have learning disabilities. So keep riding.
• This year I clock my 10.000th hour. I do that stage race again. Finishing 9th place. Unlike previous years I feel pretty good afterwards, taking the family for a trekking holiday.
• Now, I reached my full potential. Only way is to go down.

[pkwell]

This graph is the biggest boost my bike self-image has gotten in a long time! (Until @vermix came back and squashed my positive vibes…)

[FergusYL]

Right? As a 50 year old getting into the best shape of the past decade or so, this thread has been a real roller coaster thrill ride.

[pkwell]

This is really interesting, thanks for sharing it. If it’s not too much trouble, can you share a rough idea of how much your training volume changed (TSS/wk, or hours/wk … whatever metric you have handy).

Will also be curious to know whether your gains “stick” even after you reduce your training volume post-covid.