I think the weak point of some of the low volume race specialty programs is the lack of sweetspot and just intensity intensity intensity. After this I tried polarised somewhere between low and mid volume (sometimes skipping the threshold work for outside mountain biking but low volume only has either 1 vo2max or threshold workout per week anyway) it didn’t do much for me and my ftp plateaued.
I really would like to start another round of base+sustained power build maybe even mid volume this time as I really felt getting stronger doing those ever longer intervals between 90-100% ftp interspersed with 2-4 min vo2max but at the moment I cannot imagine doing this inside. Sometimes I try but it is just too warm and the weather too nice not to be outside. Next fall…and a different specialty, perhaps 40k tt, century or off road marathon…
And maybe for me an important lesson when failing a workout i should accept at downgrades and not keep retrying the same exercise over and over
It’s been a long while since I updated but there’ve been a lot of revelations for me.
5/11/19: 231 watts at 100 kg
this was my first ramp test
6/30/19: 247 watts at 99 KG
8/12/19: 252 watts at 97.52 KG
4/22/20: 280 watts at 95.25 KG
this was the last ramp test I took
6/2/20: 265 watts at 96 KG
went with a coach who put me on a 20 minute FTP test, ramp test significantly overestimated my threshold power due my heavy reliance on anaerobic performance.
2/9/21: 294 watts at 99 KG
FTP found using 20 minute test. This begins my downward spiral into non-functional overreaching, my FTP did not change for the next year in spite of being coached
2/10/22: 303 watts at 103 KG
FTP found using AI FTP. I started on TR’s rolling road race plan and was able to complete the workouts though they were a 9/10 in RPE
4/5/22: 310 watts at 101 KG
FTP set using AI FTP after following TR’s rolling road race plan phase I.
4/26/22: 275 watts at 100 KG
After the last bump I wasn’t able to complete the prescribed threshold workouts. Even a level 1 workout felt like a VO2 workout. It was at this point I realized I was bordering on overtraining and AI FTP wasn’t helping me. I ran a test using Kolie Moore’s method and ended up with a 275 FTP. This was the right number.
In last 3 years I’ve learned the following:
How riding at FTP feels for me: Burning legs but no burning lungs. Heavy but even breathing and no gasping. Having to focus to keep the watts up but not have tunnel vision. A 1x60’ FTP workout should be a 7-8/10, hard but doable.
I can feel when I’m riding over FTP. 30 seconds of even 10 watts over FTP makes me start breathing raggedly and my lungs start to burn, RPE quickly hits 9/10. I can do a 3x10’ interval at this power but it’s not a threshold workout.
Unfortunately I don’t fall under TR’s or even the 20-minute test bell curve. My anaerobic fitness is much more developed than my aerobic fitness and this is going to take years to change, if I rush it I will burn out like I did last year.
The above points are applicable to me. No I don’t think you need to be able to hold your FTP at 60’ but for me, and other anaerobically-leaning athletes, it would behoove you to find your 60’ power as this is likely where your threshold is without anaerobic contribution.
All in all I have seen tremendous fitness and mental improvements after resetting things. When my FTP was set at 294 watts a 3x10’ interval session at 300 watts was nearly impossible and I dreaded every workout. Today I can hold 4x12’ at 300 watts at an 8/10 RPE, so it’s likely I’m due for a bump next block. And on the fast group ride in the area I’m actually relevant now on the flats (unfortunately climbing is still an issue at my weight), I’m able to hold VO2 power longer than before and cause splits in the group or chase back breaks. I never would have considered being able to do that last year.
How did you find your experience with a coach? Can you detail a bit more on that side?
I like my former coach and I think he’s really good when it comes to serious and competitive athletes. I was a bit of a challenge because I’m middle aged with a very stressful job and several young kids; my ability to recover is much lower than the average person, let alone athlete. I don’t think he was ever able to understand that and he over prescribed my training, causing me to build up a ton of fatigue that took me a few months to shed.
My suggestions for finding a coach are the following:
Shop around and compare, ask tons of questions and make sure they’re a good fit for you.
Make sure that the coach is really into communication, I want a coach that will ask me questions about my training and follow up when they don’t hear from me for a couple days.
If possible, find a full-time coach. My coach was not full-time with a very busy job, unfortunately I think this hurt my coach experience with him.
Some good learnings, in particular recognizing when you started experiencing under-recovery / functional overreach.
On the topic of threshold, its really refreshing to read your comments on learning how to ride by feel. The best thing that happened to me when I started road cycling in 2016 was learning to ride at threshold by feel. No power meter, just heart rate.
Congrats on recognizing your AI FTP (and 20-min test) was too high, and dropping it 35W to something more reasonable and sustainable.
For what its worth, my coach is full-time. He has over 50 coached athletes including this year’s female Unbound Gravel 100 winner, performance director for an elite US team, coaches juniors, and data scientist of a world tour team.
Busy guy.
But he is super responsive to my emails and request for help when life interferes. My plans have been customized including power targets. Since this is the FTP improvement thread, here is my FTP and Garmin ML FTP over the last 18 months of being coached:
green is coach assigned FTP setting from field tests
pink is a moving average of Garmin Edge 530 ML FTP with WindWarrior +4% fudge factor
grey is +/- 2.5% confidence interval band of Garmin ML FTP
Two years of spin classes got me to 240-245W FTP by November 2015. Self-coached to 275-280W FTP in 2016 and 2017, with ability to ride 70 minutes at FTP. About 7-8 hours/week average. Then I reduced volume with TrainerRoad down to 5+ hours/week, because it was supposed to be more efficient, but that reduced peak FTP to 245-250W a couple times over 2 years. Bumping up volume to 8 hours/week with heavy focus on endurance and always be doing above threshold work got me to around 270-275W FTP this year.
The other big result from switching to endurance focus is that my Resting HR (RHR) has dropped 12bpm over those 18 months. Another conclusion from my self-coached and TR years is that my training had too much intensity and/or intervals, and in addition to significant drop in RHR my morning HRV has seen improvements. And late 2021 I was easily able to easily drop 4 pounds a month over 5 months.
Therefore it should be no surprise that I feel this way:
To be honest I was a bit blown away by results from simply doing a lot of easy/steady riding and a small number of intervals. I’ll call it the easy road less traveled.
The fudge factor just came out of my power:HR data on previous 30-70 minute threshold efforts. For example earlier this year I did 275W for 32 minutes, and after a week Garmin pushed ftp up to 264-265W. Simple math on that one - 275/265 ~ 104% or 1.04 = 4% fudge factor. Garmin and WKO and other analytics seem to derate unless I do a 50+ minute threshold effort.
FTP has stayed stagnant since I picked up mountain biking (XC) in January and have focused mainly on skills since.
January 2022 = 290 FTP @ 4.5wkg till now around 275 FTP (haven’t properly tested).
My XCO races times went from 47+mins to just breaking 40 mins - 2 mins away from race winning time on a very technical course! So regardless of FTP - am seeing improvements on a weekly basis on actually utilizing my fitness and having confidence to empty the tank on technical trails.
One other surprising improvement from what I thought I was very ‘slow twitch’ my 5sec max has moved from 850W to 1250W (19wkg) without any sprint training, just purely MTB racing. Also I did strength train from Novemeber 2021 to May 2022, 2x20 mins sessions a week of compound workouts - this also has contributed grealty.
Excited for next season - hopefully I can fully utilize my fitness - I am a completely new cyclist!
Uau… Looking at your graph, it really sells out the Sweet Spot Base I and II Mid Volume as opposed to the Sustained Power Build which is supposed to be better for working on your FTP.
Can you comment on that?
Do you think you kept all variables the same or did you have any changes that might’ve contributed to not getting the best out of the Build phase?
Started out riding on an indoor trainer December 19 2021 with my free Rouvy trial. Using a 20 minute test got 168w FTP or 2.96 w/kg, on Jan 25 did another Rouvy 20 minute test and got 181w FTP or 3.19w/kg.
Did Zwift for a couple months and didn’t do an FTP test.
Started Trainer Road on April 17 2022, first Ramp test was 175w FTP at 57.5kg or 3.04w/kg. Next ramp test on May 24 was 194w FTP at 58.7kg for 3.3 w/kg. Eat pretty clean but stopped taking creatine and reduced my fat intake slightly. Today used the AI detect and it suggested 198w FTP but then I tweaked the estimated time for this weekend’s race and it reset my plan and wanted another ramp test and wouldn’t let me auto-detect.
Did the ramp test and got 204w FTP at 57.2kg, 3.56w/kg. My goal for this season was to be 3.5w/kg and by next spring to be 4 w/kg so happy with my progress so far. Have been pretty nervous about cutting down on the outside rides and having a reduced weekly avg kms and TSS but I am progressing on paper so that’s reassuring.
Thought I’d add my data point here to counterbalance some of the amazing gains here
I picked up TrainerRoad at the beginning of Covid in April of 2020. I saw some great gains – from 2.9W/kg to 3.8ish W/kg in about 5 months. I burnt myself out a bit and picked it back up at the beginning of 2021.
Started back over at around 3.2W/kg and plateaued a bit at 3.6W/kg.
Then I started a new job and then started prepping for a new baby on the way! I basically stopped all training for the better part of 10 months.
I just took a ramp test and … oof. My FTP is the lowest I’ve seen in years. Not only that, my W/kg dropped by even more since I added some pounds to my #dadbod. I’m now starting from a 2.67W/kg.
SSBHV 258w to 278w! AIFTP 3.92wkg
Got SS PL up to 10 starting around level 6.
Tested outdoors prior to this and was within a few watts. First time really completing a plan but I cut it short by a week as in weeks 3&4 I added two long outdoor endurance rides - probably added to the tiredness.
Really pleased but think I’ll do MV Build and add z2 as doing that with HV was just a bit much for me.
Started training in January. First ramp test 157. Been following low volume Olympic plans, so two rides a week. Just tested at 215, so 37% improvement in 6/7 months. I think after my race in august I will switch to sweet spot base low volume and split the other days between running and swimming base work. Very happy to see where this goes into next season! My goal is to get to 3 w/kg, which at my weight is about 252 watts.
Only just started indoor training at beginning of July. Have been riding for fitness and commuting for over 10 years. My estimate for FTP was around 272W (Garmin, Goldencheetah). However a week before starting TR I gave blood which would have knocked my performance down. Happy with progress so far. First ramp test I had not calibrated trainer and did not know what to expect so redid the following day.
196cm and 94kg.
High Volume Sweet Spot plan
Maybe it’s just within the margin of error, but I seem to be losing a bit of ground this summer. It’s gotta be the heat. Yeah, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it… No worries, I’m still doing the workouts and having fun.
TR seems to work. My last update via AI FTP has me thinking I’m plateauing. As a result, I have purchased a weightlifting set and will be delving into strength training.
By the way, FTP drop in January was due to blood donation.
I had a 10W difference between AI and Ramp test FTP values (AI was lower), so not convinced about AI estimation. Today I did my 44km loop and pushed (since my tested FTP was higher yesterday) and was 1.3km/hr (5.4%) faster than my previous best over the past two years. I think the indoor continuous pedalling has improved my ability to keep pushing the pedals and keep the power high.
Returned to Trainerroad August 1st. After a six month injury layoff I had been back on the bike for maybe two months, working my way back super slow, trying to avoid re-injury.
Reckoned my ftp was around 270 on that first Trainerroad day, and sure enough the ai ftp gave me smack on 270.
Its only been three full weeks training but I feel noticeably stronger already, so ran the ai ftp again for laughs and got 286 back.
Reckon that might be a little optimistic, even with me rebounding from injury. I’d have been over the moon with 280 but I guess in for a penny, in for a pound.
18 watts in three weeks, hell, even 10 watts in three weeks is substantial for me. Don’t think I have done a single recommended workout either - I use adaptive training to basically tell me which zone I should be targeting, then I select a workout I can buy into both physically AND mentally.
I basically stopped all training for the better part of 10 months.
