Sorry, I just cant help it. But i hate what TR has done with FTP.
They should just stop referring to FTP or make it mean something. So its supposed to be an estimate of my FTP based on the estimate that at that FTP a 3.0 Threshold workout would be hard but achievable.
I am not trying to crap all over TR because i think it is a GREAT product, but just put ‘FTP’ out of its misery already. And yes i know workouts dont care about FTP (so again, why is there a meaningless FTP?)
It used to be a very good measure of my progression and testable
What is my FTP? I don’t know. If i look at a bar graph from my recent workouts its 291 and has been for almost 4 weeks. Oh by the way tomorrow its gonna be 311.
If they are gonna tell you your FTP is going to be x in y number of days, why not just update your FTP every day? That would be way more accurate
If both things are true, how has it been assigning me workouts over the past month? One thing I do notice (all my interval sessions using TR over the years are 1 hour duration) is that I can no longer predict workout difficulty from TSS. I just did a 84 and gave it a moderate (Threshold 4.3)
In the past i would just look at TSS and know what i was in for suffering-wise. Not any more. Somewhere in the high 70s was always the hard/very hard tipping point but that is gone now.
Just wanted to get it off my chest. If i wanna know my ‘FTP’ I’ll do a ramp test on TR or a 20’ TT outside. They have usually coincided quite well for me. And yes I know i can’t do that number for an hour! But at least it was repeatable and testable.
Your FTP is whatever your latest FTP detection shows. In your case, this is 291.
Doing a Ramp Test or a 20-minute test won’t get you a more accurate number.
If you continue to use AI FTP Detection, it will prove to be just as repeatable and likely more dependable than any other testing method since it doesn’t require a solid performance to work well.
I know it’s somewhat jarring to step away from older testing methods, but this really is the future, in our opinion.
If you want to know what your 20, 30, 40, or 60-minute power is, look at your recent PR curve, and you could likely get a good estimate. If you need help with that, feel free to reach out, and we’d be happy to take a look.
Thank you for your response Eddie, I can imagine you guys are probably hating life right now..
But sorry, that cannot be true. If the AI is as smart as you are all making it out to be - which i’m not disputing - then the FTP number is bascially meaningless.
If I were to get assigned a ‘prefect’ Threshold 3.0 workout today and another ‘perfect’ Threshold 3.0 workout tomorrow, would the intensity differ by close to 20 watts? No way. I agree with your points about the AI detection. But the FTP number is wrong and deceptive.
Its like assuming your bank balance is $x because that is what was on your monthly statement 26 days ago.
If this is true, why isn’t FTP updated daily or after each scheduled workout?
So what is your FTP?
Is it your 40 minute, 60 minute, 70 minute power? On which day? The day after an under over workout or the day after a rest day? Is it when you’re properly fueled or fasted? Is it on your most perfect day or repeatable everyday? Is it tied to your lactate threshold or mine? etc.
Training is not always perfectly linear, and you don’t have workouts each and every day that showcase breakthroughs in fitness, so trying to update FTP every day would be a wild rollercoaster and extremely unproductive.
I don’t know of anyone who checks their FTP more than once a month. The goal here is to give enough time to progress at your current FTP up to higher levels and take on productive workouts that will increase your fitness.
Even if you had a robotic physiology, checking FTP all the time would, in theory (?), just give you the same workout almost every day, but sometimes with power targets that are one watt higher. That’s not how you get faster.
Workout progression, recovery, and supercompensation are how the body becomes stronger and more efficient.
Also, we at TrainerRoad aren’t hating life at the moment. I hope that’s not how you imagine us!
I heard it as level 3 vs 3.0, but then I was getting different signals with getting assigned higher workouts. So we are about 1 level apart but our predicted FTPs are relatively close.
It is interesting that it’s ramping you up even faster 291 to 311 but putting you at a lower threshold level. Mine is 293 to 306.
when i saw the 291-311 a month ago I thought no way. The original prediction was i think 291-312. How can i go up 20w in a month when the past two months saw increases of 6-10 watts each.
My concern about the horrible thing that TR has done with our “FTP"s is they don’t align with anything else.
Used to be I’d get a TR FTP bump either via a test or the old-style AI FTP, and I’d go to Strava, Intervals.icu etc etc and update the numbers to match.
I don’t feel like I want to do that now. It’s just gone up from 289 to 302. I believe 289, I don’t believe 302. If I put 302 on Intervals.icu I feel my fitness/form graphs will all be off.
I’m starting to hate that argument. Day by day variation doesn’t discredit a metric completely. What’s your weight? It’s the same question. Have you taken a s*** before measuring, or eaten lunch and drank 1L of water? Do you have your clothes on? Is your scale level on the floor? And so on and so on. Each of those questions makes it harder to estimate your weight, yet you don’t say you weigh 40 kg to your doctor because it’s the number that works best for you on Zwift and is most “functional”. Your anesthesia dose might depend on it. Or the tension of your bungee rope. Or the force required to unclip a ski. It’s a metric that exists in the world. Words have meanings. Communication and knowledge are built on that idea, ffwd to civilizations…
I don’t disagree with you, but thats kind of my point. Everything has variables, including FTP, workout levels, etc and so there is always some float in there. There is no such thing really as a “perfect” workout, but something which is close enough based upon the recent data. Which is why the exact FTP, doesnt really matter
Exact FTP doesn’t, I agree, but what’s a tolerable inaccuracy? To continue the weight analogue, you’ll never be able to report your exact weight either, but you’ll probably be 1 or 2 kgs off at most, which is close enough for practical purpouses and is still communicable to the outside world. Take that back to the FTP metric. It doesn’t make it meaningless, just hard to put a finger on. And if you’re way off, it may stop being practical, and will certainly not be communicable to the outside world. I see that last thing as a fundamental issue with communication.
