Zwift's New Ramp Test (FTP)

Why wouldn’t you reference other similar tests, especially as a content creator trying to create interesting content. I’d be referencing a bunch of similar stuff if I was the author to make my article informative.

I love Zwift more than TrainerRoad but as far as the whining here goes about Zwift, I don’t see THAT much of it. There’s a few guys who make digs, but it’s the same guys all the time, and they’re entitled to do so. Maybe you need to step off the internet for a while and relax. If you’re writing long whining posts about unimportant things like your perceived amount of cricticisms of Zwift on some forum then you’re getting sucked into a bad place mentally.

2 Likes

OK. Time to take a breath or two, pause and reset.

Whining about whining about whining is not what we do here.

I posted this thread as an observation. I included a quote as a tongue in cheek jab that was not meant as some attack or criticism.

I have likely done a poor job of explaining my point of view beyond that.


Let’s move beyond the silliness, and refocus on the Ramp tests and what they do for us.

As above, I’m keen to see how they differ and what that means to our training.

9 Likes

I’m with @GPLama on this broadly. I did a ramp test years ago with my coach which gave me Maximum Aerobic Power and also an estimate of my FTP.

It’s no more new than when Sufferfest released 4DP and Andy Coggan kicked off because of his wk04 iLevels. The question now, as it was then, is: who packages the data / science / information best for their target audience? Who can make it accessible? Who can market it successfully? Who can tweak it to be the most accurate version?

I still like TR because they have a huge dataset to back up their calculations, whereas Zwift will have fewer riders performing structured workouts to test out their new FTP.

[FWIW I’m much more interested in when TR will implement a test for anaerobic capacity for more tailored workouts above 120% FTP]

8 Likes

Frankly, I’m all for cyclists having more consistent FTP assessments, and this is an actually good change that Zwift has shipped for once.

This is the real challenge. Going from “here is an FTP estimate and a good selection of zones” to “here is a fully individualized set of zones and a set of specific workouts to match based what we know about you” while still making it easy to manipulate and understand.

As a PM/software developer and someone who has used every analysis product on the market, I can say with certainty that it will be very hard to do this right. In order to get close, for myself, I run like 5 different tests over the course of the week across multiple products and then have to keep a close eye every training week to adjust.

The math is the easy part; making it actually easy to use and understand is where you have to find the magic.

The truth of the matter though, is that all the extra individualization is maybe a few percent at max. Most people think they need it but they really don’t.

1 Like

I’m not so sure about that. I think triathletes / TTers / and older athletes (who all tend to have better aerobic engines) are probably over-represented on TR. This is just a hunch, mind you.

MAP and step tests have been well studied. There is plenty of scientific research to back it, however, like all tests including the 20 minute test, there is a range of values that corresponds to the fat part of the bell curve.

Just because you can complete workouts at a higher FTP number doesn’t mean that the higher number is correct.

1 Like

This is not at all how it works in your body. Not even close.

2 Likes

TR clearly admits that the ramp test (or any FTP test) works for most as a close approximation to their FTP, and typically close enough to structure training off of. Then and in addition to the ramp test TR attempts to educate its users (podcasts, articles, forum, etc.) on how to make adjustments specific to their training should their FTP be estimated high/low, age, fatigue, recovery and so on.

2 Likes

I have no idea how you can make this claim.

Knowing someone’s W/kg says literally nothing about their ability above or below FTP or any related duration. It’s a single data point. That’s it.

I have a nearly identical W/kg to 2 local riders. One is the same weight, but we have very different power profiles. Another is heavier, but we are more alike in power curve. Point being that W/kg around FTP is not all telling.

There’s no way to look at that one point and make any accurate claims to their ability outside the FTP equivalent.

3 Likes

I am not sure that is true. I could do a number of sessions higher than my FTP, say upping my FTP by 10% but that would not be the right to do and would not be sustainable over the long-term,

2 Likes

Ah sorry it was the sentence "But I’m not aware that most of those prior ones were used to determine FTP in the same way that TR has done. " confused me, was just pointing out there were a lot of prior ones were used to determine FTP in the same way that TR has done.

As Oscar Wilde said " “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”, so there will a lot of coaches (and gplama) flattered that TR and now Zwift have copied their principles, after they both copied Andrew Coggan’s 20min ftp test, after sufferfest implemented it first … just have wait until they catch up with the rest of the 2008 book

1 Like

As I recall from when TR was going through the process of developing their ramp test, it sounded to me like what they did, albeit on a grand scale, was compare ramp test results for individuals to their results on the ramp tests to come up with the formula. They then tweaked the formula at least a couple times during the beta. This is a sound logical approach and it certainly appears they have done a good job of getting the ramp test numbers to generally match one’s 8 or 20 minute numbers. But this approach is not exactly hard nosed human sports physiology science. Its a math exercise. You’re taking “tests” you can’t really verify and bench marking them against a new set of tests you can’t really verify and then doing trial and error math to make the results match. That being said, it is more than good enough for the vast majority of TR users and I’m for one quite happy with the results (the formula that is, not my actual FTP number :wink:

It would be interesting to see how Zwift came up (or is coming up) with their formula. My guess is they don’t have as big a data set to work with as TR does but their data set may be more than big enough to do the plug and play/trial and error work that TR did too.

3 Likes

The goal was not to have the Ramp match the 8 or 20 minute numbers from what I’m aware. I’ve spoken to the TR crew in person about some other related things and there is more going on under the hood.

The Zwift ramp appears to be based on the Conconi protocol, not on their data set.

4 Likes

I think there Zwift used the recommended by coaches (see my links above) 0.75, where as like you say. TR did an entire beta thing to get peoples Ramp Test to mach 20\8 min tests, the only think that strikes me is there are a lot of “over tested” \ “under tested” posts, the the coaches that use the 0.75, prescribe does 20mins at FT / 0.95 afterward to confirm new FTP … maybe TR should build that into their training plans

The idea of this is the “novice riders” are more likely to fail doing the ftp test, rather than the ramp tests, but if they are told … this is your ftp, you should be able to at x … they are more likely to achieve it

My understanding is that although this might have been the starting point, they also looked at the data of workouts completed after the ramp test to see whether they were overestimating or underestimating for the majority of users.

3 Likes

One should never judge the amount of people having issues from online forums. This is the first rule of the internet. Happy people don’t come to forums to say “working great for me!” so you are almost always going to have negative selection bias.

5 Likes

Very true, but that wasn’t the point I was making, and you can remove the sentence from my post and I would be raising the same point

Yeah. As I hinted, my little joke didn’t land. I plan to keep my day job. :stuck_out_tongue:


Full disclosure, I will remove that quote since it is only serving to distract from the discussion I had hoped to have in this thread.

Sorry for that and other digression my comments have caused. Lesson learned.

1 Like

FYI, there have been unofficial but popular ramp tests to determine FTP on Zwift for a while now. Much earlier than the TR ramp test. This Shane Miller guy has a video about it from Jul 2016.

2 Likes

See my post above where I provide links