I did my first ramp test last week and my FTP came out at 202, but it took me until the 2nd last interval to fail. My initial estimated FTP must have been way low (as per the on screen text in the ramp test). I just did Monitor today and in the 4th or 5th interval the on-screen text says something like you’ll be feeling the fatigue by now but I wasn’t. I’d been working for sure but I wasn’t tired and my legs felt good. I think I finished the ramp test when I did because I’d been going for so long (28 minutes) so I was burning out rather than blowing up. So my question is should I re-test or just bump my FTP up a bit (and if so how much)?

Yeah, I’d say try bumping it up a little by a little and see how it feels with something tough. I used to do this all the time in the pre-Ramp Test days, because there was NO WAY I was re-testing on the 8-minute test. Over-unders were a good check in on FTP to see if my legs were sufficiently loading up on the overs and clearing out just a bit on the unders.

28 mins??? I’m no experts so others can confirm - but is that not crazy Long? I blew up after 19:30 so came out with FTP just a few under the initial TR est.

[image] jonbar123: I blew up after 19:30 so came out with FTP just a few under the initial TR est. I think he’s including the five minute cool down, which is still long. 20 minutes gives you a little growth in my experience. 23 minutes is a lot of growth. Or just a bad initial starting point.

My first ramp test I had the FTP set way too low and ended up in the same situation (with 202 as my FTP, too). After the first week of the plan I did another test with the new FTP as a starting point, and it went up more than 10%, which ended up being a good value for the workouts afterward. I’d recommend a retest and then continuing from there, as it seems starting with too low of an FTP makes for a sketchy ramp test.

Ah yes. As you say 23 mins would suggest a bad initial starting point

Thanks for the replies everyone. The workout was 33 minutes long including the 5 min cooldown. I started with an estimated FTP of 147. I think I’m going to re-test. I’ll report back the result.

you can either do that or just increase ftp in 5 or 10 watt bumps until you where you need for effective workouts.

If you’ve just done the ramp test and you’re on SSB1, then it is expected to be easy. I retested two weeks in because as a total noob I was developing those easy gains rapidly. The tss is super low on the ramp test though, so if you feel like another test, go for it.

Think I had a very low starting point (134 IIRC) cos my ramp test was best part of 40 mins inc the warm up and cool down! But I well into my plan now so next ramp test should show a big jump as it’ll be a better test too.

If you set FTP too low then surely the first parts of the ramp test don’t impact the outcome much (if at all) as they all in far lower zones than you are testing or that cause you difficulties to ride at. It doesn’t ramp up to a significant level until it hits a significant power and starts making you really work.

Workouts seem easy after initial FTP. Should I retest or adjust my ftp?

Training

jgthomas59 November 2, 2018, 7:27pm 18

@gpl’s ramp test on Zwift has you set your initial FTP to 100W every time. I used the FTP from it as my initial value for TrainerRoad. And the two tests agreed within a percent or two. So perhaps another way to get started.

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Workouts seem easy after initial FTP. Should I retest or adjust my ftp?

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Workouts seem easy after initial FTP. Should I retest or adjust my ftp?

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