Saying FTP doesn’t matter is missing the point. People say this because when you look at pro athletes that all have high FTP relative to their weight, it is not the person with the highest FTP that wins, because you don’t win a race by being the fastest in a 1 hour TT, unless the race is a 1 hour TT. But for sure nobody is going to win races with much lower FTP values.
If you are not a racer and just want to be able to go out and ride fast, FTP is a good simple metric to focus on.
The problem with the tests is that people equate themselves with whatever number comes out and want to post a good test result on Strava. They don’t like the test that is giving them lower values. While all that matters is that the test is not too stressful so you can do it often and that it is precise:
With time you can then tweaks the outcome to get the appropriate interval intensities for you. But hey how are you going to convince your friends that your ramp test really needs a factor of 85% rather then the standard 75%?
Oh yeah? How come the plans haven’t fundamentally changed since back when the 8 minute test was the default with 20 minutes as another popular option? How come the intensity zones are based on traditional Coggan zones relative to FTP? Why don’t they say “don’t use your real FTP, use your ramp test score instead”?
Edit: and what about people not following TR plans just doing workouts? There’s plenty of workouts in the library that aren’t in any plans at all - should you use your real FTP or ramp test score for those? Sorry, but your argument has been tried before and it just doesn’t hold water.
If FTP is the most important thing to cycling success, how come the guy who always “wins” the local practice crit have a 1w/kg disadvantage against everyone on the field? Because he knows how to ride and where to be. Why does the guy who can barely hang with the A group on road rides decimate everyone on the MTB KOMs? Because he has two decades of technical experience riding and racing MTB
Neither of these guys do any formal training or intervals or pay attention to their FTP, so FTP is not the most important thing to cycling success unless we are talking about something like a TT where power is basically the only thing that matters and no strategy or developed skill is involved (aside from maybe the learned adaptation of being able to suffer in a more uncomfortable position than the next guy).
You seem a bit stressed. Maybe your FTP measurement is off.
But seriously, there are answers to every one of your questions, just perhaps not ones you would be willing to consider. In case that’s not true, let me make an attempt. There isn’t, and there cannot be, an “optimal” FTP or perfect FTP or clinically accurate FTP or universally applicable FTP for a whole set of reasons. It must always be a value with a range of outcomes (assuming everything mechanical is in order, which it often is not) and can only be useful relative to something–in this case, your plan, whether that be a TR plan or a single workout. I.e., it’s not useful at all relative to the alleged FTPs of your friends or competitors or professional athletes. So your question about why don’t they say “don’t use your real FTP” is misguided since there is no such thing as a real FTP. They tell you to use the ramp test or the 20 minute test but those diagnostics are necessarily a starting point not a precision instrument–not precise for a large population or a single individual. The plans probably haven’t changed fundamentally because the 20-minute test was resulting in measurements that were more variable than they should have been or harder to execute and were too easily avoided, yet the mean or average outcome for riders was good enough to dial in the program and workouts. The intensity zones are probably based on the Coggan zones because they work fine–they are also not a scientific law, but are just big ranges within which some physiological differences generally hold. They aren’t discrete or handed down from tablets but they work as well as anything. So you need to apply some sense of the complexities and statistics and ranges to understand how this all applies, take a deep breath, understand that it cannot be precise, and that TR’s job is to give you a very sophisticated plan layout that the allows for gross customization based on this one imprecise value. It works for most people and is dramatically more efficient and effective than most of the ways people “train,” especially when you factor in TR’s proper dedication and commitment to education about how to apply this imprecise measurement, how to modify it for your particular case given their very adaptive, sophisticated plans, how to judge its efficacy, and then how to eat, sleep, and adapt your life to take even more advantage of this program. In my view, and to repeat for emphasis, the FTP number you get via the Ramp Test only matters or is “functional” (the F in FTP) relative to the TR program and it does fairly reliably put riders inside a good shot group or range that has a high probability of allowing you to execute and improve from their very sophisticated program. You must apply judgment to adapt the program to your lifestyle and characteristics, hence the education program. Thus, it takes work to do the program and work to adapt it. It’s not for the lazy. Trust the program. I’m not saying that because I’m a shill for TR but because I’m a life-long athlete and coach. Half of improvement is buying in and in my personal view, if you can’t buy into the TR program and use it to make you faster, you have gone over the edge of being skeptical (as we should be) to being cynical which is only itself going to make you slower. Just to close the loop, for most people the other half of improvement is executing the plan, i.e., being consistent. Buy in + be consistent = getting faster (or improving) But some people have a problem buying into ANY program (not just this one) for any meaningful length of time. As a competitor, and I almost hate to say this, but that fact simply gives me an advantage. So be my guest and don’t buy in and get stressed about it; it’s a choice with consequences.
But this is the main problem? If ramp test botched your FTP you cannot do the program properly. If SST is your threshold and over/unders are over/overs then your training is simply off in terms of strain, recovery or simply frustration that you fail the workouts and you cannot be consistent.
No one talks about “perfect” FTP as it is a little bit arbitrary concept but calling FTP something that does not meet most of these arbitrary requirements is a simple mistake. Yes ramp test works for many people and does not work for many. 20 min test is very hard to pace and is extremely taxing. Riding for 40 min at your threshold and regulating the intensity according to feel and breathing is the simplest thing anyone can do.
If your ftp is vastly underestimated you do not get sufficient stimulus and also do not have benefits from the program.
Yes, that’s the whole idea and no, it’s not the main problem. If you can’t execute a diagnostic ride appropriately (a big issue people don’t like to discuss), or are such a freakish outlier that you are doing it right but the results are still way out of the TR box, AND you don’t want to figure out how to fix it, then don’t use TR. I’m glad we got that out of the way.
The point is that without some sort of diagnostic test, it can be very difficult to customize a program appropriately. Back in the 1990s we used heart rate because it was the best thing we had. I built the first customized HR-based periodized training program for the USCF way back then. But HR has its faults. Power was better–way better–but still has its faults. That’s because humans are complicated and we don’t understand how everything works.
I haven’t seen what you propose as a method. Perhaps I need to lurk around here more often. But people who throw out snarky, purely critical comments and dash away typically don’t have much going on logic-wise. The Ramp Test is my jam. It almost perfectly “sets” my TR programs and workouts. If I fail to complete a workout, which is rare, it’s almost always because I failed to prepare for that particular workout (fuel, sleep, etc.). I do have some minor troubles getting through longer VO2 Max intervals, but that’s something I need to work on, and TR gives me a whole suite of workouts (and a workout builder) that allow me to step back and progress up to the objective. Much improved compared to doing it the old way, or the usual way if some of my riding mates are any example. They just ride a lot, have mythical FTP values, and do OK. But just OK. They could do a lot better if they just did a Ramp Test, didn’t whine, trusted the program, and ground out the plan.
It seems plain the ramp test was tuned to the existing plans. First, redoing all the plans would be a logistical nightmare. Second, what of the 8-min and 20-min tests? They probably wouldn’t “work” well on revised plans - so they would need to be re-tuned (sacrilege!).
Much as I think the ramp test is a fairly crude yardstick, the experience of TR users suggests it gets close enough for most people. And it is, at the end of the day, simply a test to get a number to plug into your training program.
If people feel it doesn’t work for them, there are other tests available, and indeed other platforms with different metrics (e.g. Sufferfest’s 4DP).
You pays your money and takes your choice - simple really.
As regards FTP being ‘the most important thing in cycling’, again this isn’t complicated: it’s totally event dependent. Bike handling and strategy will be a massive factor in a flat, twisty crit, and almost irrelevant in a time trial up Mount Ventoux. Again, it’s up to the individual to choose how to spend their training time depending on their event. Race hilly TTs? Build a bigger engine. Race mountain bikes downhill? Maybe go practice your bike handling.
It’s kind of weird to see people making statements differentiating between “real ftp and the ramp test score”. Is that “real ftp” a 20 minute ESTIMATE or a 2x8 ESTIMATE for the same thing as the Ramp Test ESTIMATE? Hell I f you wanna be hardcore go do a full 60 minute effort and train off that if you know better. Reality is even though some people suck at taking the ramp test, it’s perfectly viable for others (I’d argue that the others are actually a majority) or TR would not be implementing it as their default protocol
Traditional tests give an estimate of FTP without having to do a full 60 minute effort. If someone thinks estimates are inaccurate scores, they can do an hour test. After all they know better than the entire cycling community what’s best for training
Just a quick FYI thrown into the discussion because it is mentioned and misinterpreted a couple of times:
A 60-minute all-out effort gives you one exact number: Your 60-minute max power. Not your ‘real’ FTP, not a fake FTP just a 60-minute max power number. Like in all mentioned test protocols, you can use that number to estimate your FTP, but there is nothing magical about doing an effort for 3600 seconds.
