Testing for Aerobic Decoupling

Here is a 90 minute workout I used a year ago during early base:

WKO5 is being used for graphing, but there are other tools out there like TrainingPeaks and Intervals.icu.

Here is a 2 hour segment from an outdoor ride at tempo (78% FTP):

see how the HR trend line and power trend line are parallel like a set of railroad tracks? That is 0.05% decoupling, essentially no decoupling.

And here is a 2.5 hour / 4500 foot (1370m) climb where I rode to HR (~154bpm) and let power drop as elevation went from 1350’ to 5850’

decoupling is about 7.5% and you can see the power trend line is falling while the HR trend line is almost flat.

Hope those examples help.

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