My take on this is that whatever established test you pick is good.
The key is to be do that same test over and over for an extended period of time. By that, I am talking at least 6-12 month.
I’ve already mentioned this before, but the name “FTP test” is what keeps on getting people confused.
We should really call it a “Fitness Test” instead, as it is just a snapshot of your fitness on that particular day.
We agree that one of the best ways to determine MAP is based on a maximal 5 minute effort. HM determines MAP based on an averaging of the 2 minute and 5 minute portions of the ramp. We have found this has the highest correlation (0.953 adjusted R squared for the stats folks out there) to the 5 minute maximal test from FF. Using the raw power numbers to determine MAP does skew the results from purely ramp test numbers towards those who are anaerobically gifted, but we have found splitting it out over those longer time durations reduces the impact that has, while still giving a better idea of MAP for those who complete the entire HM test correctly while recording heart rate.
This definitely feels a bit one-size-fits-all to me. At a rough calculation from my last ramp test it’d mean your MAP is 126% of the raw FTP result (pre HR adjustment in SF’s case).
But I suppose it is the “Half” Monty so you can’t expect it to measure and adjust everything.
This might be the best thing I learned from this thread so far. Is there a way to also ignore replies to people you’ve ignored?
That would really clean some threads up, like the one I’m reading about intervals.icu - which I finally tried out - and is as great as people say!
Ha this is exactly how I describe it to the wife when I have one on the calender, saying FTP test would just go right over her, but its actually a fitting title
In what seems like an admission that the 4DP test just isn’t a realistic test for most riders to perform, sufferfest have introduced a new ramp test. They claim that it is special and different to the ramp tests used by other training software providers, but there’s only so much special that you can do with a ramp test.
The way I see it, FTP / fitness tests of whatever method don’t have to be perfect, they just have to be good enough. It’s more important that they can be done regularly than it is that they give the most perfect numbers - they are setting a baseline which can then be tweaked if necessary. The 4DP test, although it definitely has its strengths, is simply not realistic for most riders to regularly repeat. This feels like sufferfest are backtracking to a more realistic, more repeatable position, even if it is one that might not give quite as good data (in their view).
What’s their protocol?
Not 100% sure. It looks like there’s three sections to the test. The first section, before the ramp, has a few opener efforts. The second section is the ramp, which is one minute steps. The third section is a 20 minute effort (not hard) where I think you’re meant to keep your heart rate in a specific range
More info here, seems to have more of a warmup with a max effort. They also overly simplify other ramp tests using 75% of peak 1 min power as theonly method of devising an FTP figure.
Other ramp tests just take 75% of your peak 1-minute power from the ramp to get your FTP. Analysis of tens of thousands of Full Frontal 4DP fitness tests by our sports scientists has shown that this simple formula doesn’t take into account athletes who are more anaerobically fit, resulting in FTP estimates that are inaccurate for 17% of athletes.
Half Monty goes beyond a traditional ramp test by combining it with a 20-minute sub-maximal / tempo effort determined by your heart rate. By analyzing the relationship between heart rate and power, Half Monty allows The Sufferfest app to calculate your FTP to a much higher degree of accuracy than any other ramp test out there.
This is really just the good old ramp test with a rather large sprinkling of extra marketing on top 
I do sort of like the 20 minute tempo effort, but requires a HR monitor, which I’m sure a decent amount of people don’t have and don’t care about, so that’s pretty meh.
“resulting in FTP estimates that are inaccurate for 17% of athletes.” could be a pretty generalized and ‘wow factor’ statement. I’d be interested to see how inaccurate the ramp test ftp’s are. Maybe the TR team could do some data testing and narc on sufferfest 
Thanks for the info. Learn more about sufferfest here then in Sufferfest’s Facebook and your own forums don’t do a good job of the science and more the hype which is frustrating. (Also when the ramp test asked for feedback and I post in the forums of your own web site and get ignored…)
So map and ftp are both calculated of the same ramp which to me means if everyone is using erg mode everyone who gets the same ftp will have the same map. But then you have the section of assuming for a set heart rate where you are checking for how much power drops while keeping the same heart rate and using that to decrease ftp to be closer to reality of what can be sustained?
Just the way that 4DP is a rip-off of TP’s power profiling. Sufferfest seems to be long on marketing and short on originality.
Yeah the 4DP test was always a funny one to me. For a while it was really popular among the social media people where it was always touted as the hardest or toughest test. And said social media people basically wanted to show off their toughness. I guess this was intended as it fits the machismo balls-to-the-walls ethos Sufferfest seems to be built upon. But at the same time it really highlighted one of the problems with it: nobody in their right mind would want to do this thing every few weeks 
This is exactly what a pro pre season or winter camp does.
Was unaware of Bernal doing sprint testing in December…10 minutes before doing a LT test.
Maybe he pays his coach more than $20/mo.
Dr. Coggan has a, uh, “singular” communication style
From my memory they test after every plan which are like 12 weeks long so testing it pretty infrequently.