Hello, I was curious if the need to do a ramp test will go away in the future (near?) if with intelligence in the software and analyzing recent rides/workouts you have done, will your FTP be able to be predicted (with some accuracy) without needing to do the test?
Iâd say not, the structure of a training plan, rest week and then test on newly adapted legs/lungs is fairly integral to the traineroad method of training.
Besides, who doesnt love a ramp test!?
You might be able to skip the FTP test itself but the models are always going to require maximal efforts across your power curve to make any kind of meaningful FTP prediction.
For example, WKO has modeled FTP (mFTP). Itâs pretty accurate during the racing season and when Iâm doing hard group rides. But during base training in particular when Iâm not doing any maximal efforts, itâs way off what I test that.
I think considering that the Ramp Test was created because the average person has a really difficult time pacing an effort consistently that reflects their FTP, it would be interesting to see what kind of efforts (without being long/requiring steady pacing) would be used to calculate that! Would definitely take a lot of resources and analytics to compile that information from the breadth of an athleteâs workout data, would be cool nonetheless! But for now, the Ramp Test isnât going anywhere.
LOL RIGHT!?
Workouts or rides donât push you to the point of failure; the ramp test does. How will you (or the computer/algorithm) know what your point of failure (your highest one minute/theoretical power) is if youâre not pushing yourself to the limit to find that point? It will only be able to extrapolate your highest one minute power for a given ride or workout, which is not quite the same as pushing yourself so hard until you cannot continue with the express purpose of establishing your theoretical hour power. Or am I missing something?
I donât see why, unless some of those workouts and rides include maximal efforts, and you were going to do the same workout or ride at the end of every block. If you just finish every workout as prescribed, you probably gained fitness in the process, but thereâs not enough information there to figure out how much.
There are a number of ânon-testâ ways to estimate FTP. Here are two threads discussing one option and the ideology behind it. This and others (WKO and more?) use certain âmax effortsâ to estimate FTP. These likely need to come from things other than typical workouts. Things like races, hard group rides or deliberate efforts outside of âtrainingâ mentality seem necessary for these models.
I have no real idea how accurate or useful they are, but the Intervals.icu one seems reasonably close to my Ramp test results from 2020.
Itâs lower than my last ramp test so Iâm going to say that itâs inaccurate, but of course I would say that
If you know your body and your response rate to workouts the need to assess your FTP goes away. Figuring out your failure point on long threshold efforts can let you dial it in without any sort of assessment
Takes a while but you can definitely ballpark it pretty quickly and then dial it in with a few different workouts over the course of a training block.
As for the machine learning aspect - sure, it would be possible. Someone out there has the data to do something like this, but that doesnât make it easy
The question is why would you estimate your FTP without doing hard efforts. You will have a random number that does not have any validation and use other than another workout.
Personally I do not race and I happy that wko pushes me to do some max efforts and they give me a lot of satisfaction afterwards, because this way spinning on a hamster wheel is way more motivating and I like to see what is my limiter (physical, and what kind of physical or mental) during these hard tests.
I definately have a problem!
Seriously though, Iâve started doing an extra ramp test while fully fatigued at the end of training blocks to get an FTP range. (Plus I enjoy them ).
Prior to the tests above I hit 226 while totally knackered. After a week of recovery I couldnât get my HR above 169 in 3 ramp tests spaced out over 2 days. In that situation the ramp test is a waste of time.
The intervals icu eFTP tracks my progress pretty well I and worked well when applied to a workout.
I think knowing how threshold should feel is still the best indicator by far.
PS. I reserve the right to take back my comment about âenjoyingâ ramp tests at the end of build. Iâm pretty sure Iâll feel differently if the numbers are near last years.
I hope not. How else am I going to torture myself every 4-6 weeks?
I follow my data on intervals.icu. The estimated FTP is typically within a few watts of where I test via a ramp test. It is based on you doing harder efforts to determine where you should be in your FTP. I find it works well if I have been doing some harder all out efforts.
The advantage of taking a test though is you are aiming to do a hard effort and can measure the performance.
Hmm I always thought it was because the average person a) hasnât been asked and doesnât try, b) TR doesnât ask anyone to try except for some efforts like Tallac and Monitor +1 and a few others, and c) the 8-min and 20-min ask you to pace ABOVE FTP? Is this an inside trainer issue? Because I canât be more average and yet I learned the pacing in my first year of cycling in my mid-fifties Apparently you can teach an old dog new tricks
EDIT:
look below!
I think you need to start at âwhy are we doing the assessment?â If itâs âto measure progressâ then itâs an OK measurement⌠but you have the PR chart which is a much better way to measure progress. If itâs to set intensity levels for all workouts then we know that phenotypes completely screw up the traditional Cogganâs levels above threshold. So using an FTP as a basis for for prescribing VO2/anaerobic workouts is ânot best practiceâ anymore. So if youâre doing it to prescribe sub threshold workouts the ramp test is so skewed by the athleteâs anaerobic and VO2 max contribution that it is mostly useless for setting a solid target there.
Make your testing more organic. Prescribe intervals that the athletes âcanâtâ do and use what they do do to figure out what their max is. Stretch a threshold interval a bit beyond their PB. Target their 3 minute interval 5% above their best. Find the gaps in the PB curve that you need to find the data you need for good prescriptions.
TR has some of the slickest and most modern UI/platform experience out there. To get to that ânext levelâ they need to leverage the data they already have into making prescriptions for the athlete.
It wasnât needed for those of us who can pace a 2x8 or a 20 minute effortâŚso sure, its possible it might go away, but what metrics would the science rely on to better estimate (âpredictâ implies a future value) the current training level? HRV? HR Efficiency? HR reserve? All of those things fluctuate due to non-performance related inputs, while FTP MIGHT remain very steady.
I asked pretty much this question a wee while back.
With the data trainerroad is gathering every workout I believe it is entirely feasible that a plan/ftp should be capable of actually adapting itself automatically as you go along.
Someone said something about the a.i. that would be needed for that kinda thing and I disappeared into a daydream about Skynet and the terminator cycling on my turbo trainer and it all got pretty hazy after that.
Xert already advertises âNo FTP test everâ. From my understanding it uses your workout data to provide and estimate of FTP and bases your workouts off of that on the fly.
TR could if they wanted to. Thereâs no shortage of expertise & data to get that job done.
intervals.icu already does a pretty good job at it. Xert has a no test approach.
But it is better or is it just a different set of things that arenât quite perfect? To me the best thing for the most people is still some sort of periodic evaluation workout. The algorithmic estimations of FTP are pretty good while your fitness is setting new records or holding steadyâŚnot so hot if you have a little fitness setback.
Ramp test makes you be honest with yourself.
Maybe some folks on here know Iâm not big on following the ramp test, except for maybe one test I did back in March (after a very vo2 focused block) I have yet to do a ramp test which reflects the realities of my training success. I think there are a lot of physical and mental factors involved, which we donât need to dive into. I largely donât really focus on testing and at this point I am pretty good (not great lol) at upping my target based on success of recent training. Part of the training journey is, in part (my opinion), learning to not be a slave to tests/algorithms/estimates and begin using stuff as a guide and becoming more intuitive about how your training is going.