The marketing push required to move away from FTP would be massive. You are trying to upend decades of ingrained training philosophy. It would be massive undertaking. Take riding outside for example….how am I supposed to gauge my outdoor, unstructured rides / efforts if I am not using FTP as a reference? Even if there was a viable alternative, trying to get your brain to switch is a tough ask.
This strikes me as the next PL….sure, it may “work” within TR, but likely doesn’t stretch well outside of the TR ecosystem.
Good episode. I think FTP serves a number of purposes:
Training metric for targeting zones - but TR does this better with PLs. I guess behind the scenes FTP is not used. E.g. V02 max is set at some Watts x Time x Intervals level, then is shown to us as FTP x 150% or whatever
Gauge of progress - always feels good when the number goes up!
Comparison - a quick and easy way of achieving theft of joy…
I would not miss FTP if there could be some replacement - e.g. here is your line (bit like the power curve but a PL for each zone) and how it has moved since last month, last year etc
It’s not a matter of ignoring FTP, but using more metrics instead of only FTP.
Is FTP the best metric to train? Yes! But FTP is a piece of the puzzle. There’s no championship for high FTP. Achiging 5w/kg doesn’t guarantee you a win on your target race. Here a quotation for our former famous member is totally valid. A high FTP is a ticket to play…
What metrics? Using FTP as a training metric already provides the other metrics….endurance, tempo, VO2, etc.
I think it is also important to understand that FTP is simply power-based, bike specific version of a prove training philosophy / regimen. Runners use pace or HR, swimmers use pace/100m, etc but all are based on the idea of using some form of threshold as the basis and scaling up or down.
Threshold training is the proven training regimen…it just happens to use FTP as the basis for the bike.
I actually would prefer pure wattage approach because it gives me better confidence on what i CAN do than what I could THEORETICALLY do. As Dr. Coggan says, “the best predictor of performance is performance itself.”
I’ve gone back and forth between different training tools, intervals.icu, xert, traininerroad and they all give me different FTPs which for me is fine. I understand that FTP isn’t a fixed estimation, it varies day to day and across event duration. I prefer to focus on achieving higher and higher Progression levels as a measurement of performance. As an example, my FTP may not change but i went from doing a 2x20 SS to now completing a 3x30 SS. FTP didn’t change but my performance did.
In my opinion, it doesn’t provide other metrics. You’re mentioning zones.
A 300w FTP athlete will have, very roughly, 330 vo2 and 215 endurance. That’s the zones I should train in order to improve my ability in those zones. I agree and stated that FTP is the best metric to train.
But, that doesn’t account for variations in athletes. More explosive, the diesel guy, the sprinter, etc.
How we measure those “metrics”, and what metrics per se are the tricky part. TTE? KJ after 60min… I don’t know, but they play a huge role indeed.
Also your FTP changed in that case, just very little and therefore it’s harder to measure compared to the bigger change in duration which comes from it.
I love the idea of not showing specific workouts until a day or two before. Everyone who uses TR knows their workouts are going to change massively even from the start of the month to the end of the month, let alone the start to the end of a training plan.
That said… I hate the idea of getting rid of FTP lol. Please don’t do that.
It’s interesting how much people’s viewpoints have changed on “seeing the whole plan in advance”. It wasn’t long ago that everyone was saying they would never use Xert or Join because they wanted to see the entire plan and couldn’t trust the plan without seeing workouts more than a few days in advance. Now that “AI” is taking over, it seems most people who’ve responded are fine with that.
That’s what I sometimes share at work, when someone demands a precise plan about a complex thing with 12 unresolved dependencies and a 2 pages risk matrix
I personally don’t care whether FTP stays or goes as long as i have a reliable gauge as to whether I’m getting stronger or not. I do like the idea of the score out of a hundred though.
I like the way the progression levels work with TR…dare I mention that it would be good to see them update (if applicable) following unstructured outdoor riding/group riding…
The thing I like most about Trainerroad is the huge workout library and the fact it gives me a plan and then I can choose to go and mess it up as much as I like by switching workouts with different zones or whatever. However, sometimes I think it would be nice if Adaptive Training offered to return me to the right track if I stray too far.
Finally I would like it if Adaptive Training explained why it had changed the workouts. I guess if they are shaded out this wouldn’t be relevant, but for me it would be a good part of the learning experience to understand workout selection a little more. Why has it adapted me up/down?
I could be wrong but I don’t think Nate was serious about actually getting rid of FTP, it sounded more like he was emphasizing other metrics along with FTP as indicators of performance. It’s a useful and universal metric across multiple platforms and cycling disciplines, but just chasing a higher FTP number while ignoring TTE, durability, repeatability, etc etc is a fool’s errand if you compete at most levels.
And I don’t really mind the idea of “hiding” future workouts until you’re closer to the date, Jonathan’s screenshots showing the general structure and duration of upcoming rides looks more useful to me anyway. I don’t really care if next week I have Bluebell and Tamagachi followed by Bernie Mittens or whatever, I just want to see how many VO2, endurance, threshold etc workouts I can expect.
I still want to see my week ahead showing the workouts. I don’t tend to recall a workout changing for the current week. If I ride 4 times a week with 2 endurance and 2 harder workouts I just don’t see the change for that week as I don’t tend to get 2 workouts of the same type that are not endurance. I don’t see the benefit. my planning is a week ahead. Two weeks out, I don’t care except to know when a recovery week is.
More a comment on marketing and advertising than the topic at hand, but I react pretty negatively to clickbait titles like this episode
I appreciate a good discussion about training methodology and diving into zone calculations as much as the next cycling nerd, but the title reeks of desperation to me. ‘FTP is dead’
I also hate the click bait title and all this feels reactionary to other videos I’ve noticed on YouTube, like Dylan Johnson’s video on durability vs FTP.
I know the TR team has discussed many time about other components of fitness. However these all revolve around FTP. If you want sustained power, repeatability, durability, or anything you need to know your FTP to set those training zones. I think you would have many users turning over tables if you blinded them to their FTP. I use the term blinded because you would have that info on the backend to set up the zones and progression.
How would you feel about a title like… “Should TR do away with FTP?” Still clickbait but on topic with what was discussed.
On another note, I would love to dig further into recovery between intervals. When you are doing high end VO2 or anaerobic work it is no doubt very important to recovery fully between hitting the next rep. In these kinds of workouts you are focusing on quality of the reps.
That said… I was blessed (back in the day) to train with and observe some high level distance runners competing at the national and Olympic level. I was amazed how short and fast the recoveries were (this was for 5k-10k guys).
Granted these are top end athletes with genetics on their side, in our 20s, were very fit and also (most of the time) able to maintain pace of the intervals despite the shorter recoveries. For lack of a better apology it really improved “durability” (to use a current buzz word).
I know the rest we take is a “it depends” situation but I think there is tremendous value in short rests pr sometimes taking reps at a faster pace and worth digging into a bit more. Really we love to dig into percentages of FTP and training zones, etc but I think interval recovery is really overlooked.
