2-Years with TrainerDay - 400watt FTP

Warning: long post incoming

@soulo_ridah I’m sensing you have some disbelief in my numbers, which is fine, I definitely can understand your frustration from slow progress. I’ve given some broader details on my journey, but I’ll try to give a little more specifics related to your questions. I’m 100% transparent in my lifestyle and approaches to training, so if you have any others feel free to ask.

So 1st off I think I need to provide a bit more background on my history and consistency. In the past 12ish years, I have not taken more than 3 days off from exercise or training of some sort. When my family goes on vacation, I run or do bodyweight cardio. When I’m sick, I’ll take a day off or maybe 2 if it is bad, but I’ll be right back at it even if I’m still not 100%. If I’m injured, I do anything I can do to stay active. After I ran my last marathon in 3:30, I took one day off and then was back on the elliptical doing 90 min of easy cardio. Keep in mind, fitness and health is my passion. It is what I love to do. I’m thinking about this all the time. How can I get better? What can I do to improve more? What things can I change in my life to optimize my training? Constantly reading and listening to training books/podcasts/articles and anything else related.

So based on your post, it is really impossible for me to analyze what you are doing “wrong” without more information. You provide that you followed a TD plan to the T, but that’s really it. What plan was it? What is your lifestyle outside of training? Do you eat right? Do you sleep well? The list goes on. So with that being said, I’ll just tell you how I do it and try to point out what some possible differences would be.

Here is where I’m going to throw a bit of a wrench at you. I don’t follow TD to a T. I believe it works well for most people. @Alex can definitely chime in here, but I think he is well aware of the fact that I may be an outlier. They have developed the app so that when it generates a plan for somebody, they aren’t going to crash and burn and dropout because it is too hard. Imagine trying to give out generic training for people with all sorts of training experience, fitness levels, etc. You would probably err on the side of making stuff a bit more accessible and achievable rather than flogging them into misery except for maybe a small amount of higher achievers. Probably wouldn’t have very good retention with that sort of thing. (I’m a data engineer so have some experience in software development principles)

So in my opinion, TD is a great starting point and hits on the most important cornerstone in any training: CONSISTENCY
If you can maintain the consistency set up by your TD plan, nice work. If you then follow it to the T, then you need to assess your progress and analyze how the plan went. Did it work with your lifestyle? Did you feel you had key workout days each week that pushed improvement? Was it too hard? Was it too easy?

I found out very quickly, that for me, I can push the envelope much further than what a TD plan lays out. On key workout days, I replace the TD prescribed workout with my own. These are MUCH harder, as you can see from a prior post of mine referring to a threshold workout where I do 2x30 min at almost 370w followed by another 45 min of Z2. I know it is human nature to look at results and outcomes and think you understand the path it took to get there, but I can probably assure you that the amount of pain and sacrifice I put myself through is quite rare. On hard days, I’m always on the razor’s edge as far as the workout being so difficult it is almost unachievable. I do this twice a week usually. Now as I’ve said before, I don’t believe you should go ahead and try to replicate this. As Alex has said before, this leads most people to burnout and quit. You need to have an absolute understanding of how your body is feeling and an incredible sense of how long it takes to recover and when you can go hard again.

So obviously my opinion is that you need to have very hard days if you want to increase your performance to the limits. To achieve this though there are so many other factors.

  1. Eating tons of good quality food
  2. Getting good quality sleep
  3. Prioritizing training - yes that means going to bed early on Fridays or Saturdays because you have a big training day on the weekend. Sacrificing social outings.

Now keep in mind I also have two daughters (1 and 4) and a wife, both of us working full time jobs. I’ve said it before but I wake up at 4:30 to get my training in. I basically give up all free time in my waking hours to training, working, or family time. One thing I’m absolutely non-negotiable on is that if my training takes away from any sort of experiences or activities my daughters are involved in, I change something. This is why I do it early in the morning while they are sleeping. Yes, even on weekends.

So I hope this gives you an idea of how I’ve gotten to where I am. It is a total dedication to training outside of family and work. And if you think this is hard to believe or crazy. Well I’ll just tell you my family thinks I’m crazy, my friends think I’m crazy, people I race think I’m crazy… I must be crazy.

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We are all a bit crazy, just some of us are crazy and it results in a 400w FTP and others end up in different, better or worse places from our craziness. I end up creating TrainerDay :slight_smile: Elon became a billionaire…

Andrea has coached athletes such as Cadel Evans and he won the TDF and many other pros that followed plans like CJ with less intensity (for base and build) and he also has worked with many others and prescribed low intensity. My guess is you could have suffered a lot less and smarter and achieved 95% of the results or possibly just taken longer to hit 400w. You were likely on the razors edge of risk or your body operates different than most.

I will say it’s pretty obvious pros suffer a ton but mostly in racing although over longer periods of the year. So I would say suffering is a part of top performance but can be constrained to a focused few months a year, and then maybe periodic top up through the summer race/performance period. Meaning most people hit a plateau and then can do a reset and rinse and repeat, with yearly periodization being the most popular form.

But as you said and I agree with this stuff is very individual and you happen to be extremely good at suffering and it worked.

So was I right in the first year you made huge progress and the second year was smaller or did I misunderstand you?

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You are absolutely right. Yes I went to 365 the first year, and it took me basically another year to get to 400. So a much smaller gain.

Also I agree there are probably different paths I could have taken. I will say that the one I chose and part of the reason I probably went the “hard” way is because, I’m one of those crazy people who think it is fun to be in that pain cave…

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I should also say as you are aware doing tons of threshold is exactly what any 40km TT racer should do where FTP really is the most important. For a 12 ultra race it is less important. So you did training that directly resulted in FTP 20 minute test improvements where other types of training can produce better results for other kinds of events. Now having a 400w FTP is pretty much going to help in most events :slight_smile: So for sure there is a correlation.

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And I would be very surprised if this year you add another 45w to your FTP… Sorry I wish I could help you with that but that’s all you… :slight_smile:

If you wanted we could ask Andrea for any ideas. I would think more likely you should forget about FTP and focus on your weaknesses for the events you are most interested at least during your peak season but you will obviously do what you like to do and you did a great job so far.

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I also 100% agree with your approach in that you did what you like to do. If someone came to me and said I love suffering, I would say, ok, let’s do some smart suffering then. At end of the day why not enjoy what you are doing? Most people can’t handle sustained amounts of suffering. But it’s a balance of duration and recovery. For you 8 hours a week can have a lot of hard training. For most people that could do 1-2 hours of riding a week with a lot of HIIT and be fine. But if you don’t sleep well, are older and training 15 hours a week you likely need to back off on something.

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Nope not at all. Its not that I do no believe, I just would love to know what I am doing wrong by following the TD plan.
I to get up at 5am and do 1h strength session in the gym with 30min of warmup, activation, stretching 4 days a week. After work I train 4 days a week as CJ prescribed. I did not a single day have a problem with finishing the set, and on most days, I even upped by 5-10% just to get the last of me and really question my life choices. My diet is on point, where I meet all the macros, and fuel my training as required. Get enough sleep. I do not have kids and can do what I want when I want.

So you see when I question this. How can one person do that much of a jump and another get nearly none (well few watts).

If I wasnt dedicated to this, took shortcuts, sure my fault and I would never ever question the results. But in my case, I do not understand.

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We could start your question in a new thread if we want to try to do a full evaluation. The main thing to think about is that cycling anything over 60 minutes and even shorter is like 95% aerobic. Aerobic means getting oxygen to your muscles and being able to utilize it. Think more in terms of air pump than muscle related. Obviously there is a muscle component.

I will give one idea that comes from Maffetone but is supported indirectly by many others. Which is that strength work can frequently inhibit or slow aerobic capacity improvements. Secondly and related is adequate recovery. These things can vary a lot from one person to the next. If you are seeping 9 hours a day, have zero stress, spend time relaxing in the hot tub each day and eating amazing (very little processed food) and are 20 years old, you have a great chance at optimum recovery speeds. As you reduce those factors as well as your genetic contribution you need much more recovery time or smarter training that you can recover from faster.

To me hearing 1.5 hour in the gym throws up a red flag for maximizing cycling performance. Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge fan of strength training for health, fitness, longevity and mental well-being but it needs to be very strategic when used with cycling performance.

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HI Soulo_Ridah,

You are working very hard. I can imagine your frustration when you see someone else getting more results.

That is why I always tell my clients to look at their own results. You can’t compare people because everyone is different, and pros don’t work like that, either.

Yesterday, I talked to Sven Nys, a Belgian pro who is world-famous for his Cross-cycling. Guys like Matthieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert have been dominating this discipline for years. To this day, he still holds some records that these guys haven’t been able to break. His son, the 22-year-old Thibault Nys, ripped the pro peloton apart on numerous occasions last season.

Someone else asked him if Thibault should focus on being a better climber so he can join the GC pros on the Giro or the Tour de France. His answer was definitely not. Thibault has other strengths. He can shred the peloton when everyone is on his limit and accelerate again. We are talking Watts way beyond the lactate threshold.

That is his unique feature. Is he training differently than the rest of the peloton? Not so much. This is just his nature. Will you or I ever get the same results, even if we put in the same time and have the same resources: probably never.

You need to find your own unique blueprint. Maybe your FTP is way lower than Tayno_25, but you could still beat him on a hilly, 150-mile ride.

FTP is a marker for progress, but it has its blind spots and limits. 20 Watt’s progress in a season is very good.

I agree with Alex that your weight training might be holding you back. Should you change that? If you want to be the best cyclist you can be, reviewing that weight training and spending more hours on the bike would be a good idea.

If you want to grow old healthily with great overall strength and fitness, you might want to keep things as they are. That is up to you.

Another thing Sven Nys said was that as an amateur we need to look at our lives and set some goals that fit with our work, our personal lives and enjoy what we do, because that is the long term strategy that will keep you doing what you are doing until the end.

So, as I always say, have lots of fun, Coach Robert

PS; if you want me to review you program, send me a pm.

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Wise advice as always.

Also very cool you talked with Thibault’s dad! I’ve been following his domination this cross season and it has been fun to watch.

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