“In any case it’s not possible to increase low hr power if you don’t move also the ftp and vo2max up.”
I don’t wholly agree with that.
I chart the moving averages to try to make a fair reflection of the trend.
My catalogue of indoor workouts is pretty small. I have a 2 hour MAF ride, a 1 hour variant, a 3x25 and a 3x20 Fatmax ride and a couple of different VO2 rides. I did a block of sprint work in March. Sometimes I do something different, but it isn’t massively different.
For my purposes, I think the mix of workouts in the 28 day period is a fair selection to measure, even more so the 168 day period.
I could game the data by designing a workout optimised towards maximising Z2 power, but there is no point.
On 14 July 2025, TR AIFTP said 287. Today it says 330.
I don’t know what my VO2 numbers are, but I do know that I am completing the same VO2 workouts now as I was back in early July 2025 (I stopped VO2 workouts for 12 weeks or so to focus on MAF work).
You’re increasing power at low hr and you’re increasing power at threshold. It’s very hard to have power at LT1 much bigger than 80/85% of power at LT2.
Yes, but it takes a fair bit of work to get to 80/85% and that sort of work isn’t done by everyone.
I ride with plenty of people that have higher FTP than I do, but their power in their Z2 HR range is lower than mine. It just isn’t something they have worked on to the extent that I have.
Plenty of them still drop me on group rides.
1 Like
I agree. For me power at lt1 (260/265w) currently is around 85% of ftp (305w). Therefore I’ve little room to increase it without also improving ftp. It’s doable a bit, but not very effective.
One thing I did notice is that work to raise FTP left an aerobic fitness gap that took quite some time to fill.
I wrote a couple of post about it here Steve Neal tempo training thoughts - #142 by Ivegotabike
1 Like
I agree. After raising FTP you’ve a gap to fill. Basically, from what I’ve read, the power at LT1 / power at LT2 cannot be much bigger than 80/85%. And this is also the reason you cannot grow aerobically forever without also creating room (move up the ceil).
1 Like