FTP Testing thoughts

#21

I am in agreement if you don’t know what you are doing you should round down!!! :slight_smile: If you do know what you are trying to accomplish you can always just pick the right workout% for the FTP you have… The primary way I would do that (if I was working harder) would be through HRV monitoring, highly accurate for me as well as sleeping HR. And if recovery is taking too long then I would lower my targets. As a coach it is probably easier to lower peoples FTP :slight_smile: and have everyone doing the same workouts.

For precision, recovery is highly individual and needs a more systematic approach such as HRV, individual monitoring or testing. If you are not recovering enough you should lower your target (or your FTP…) So if Jeremy likes a 90% target, he could switch all his students to a ramp test and change it to 85%. A ramp test does have the tendency to go high, and a 20m test is more likely to go low. So I agree to be safe without predictable monitoring then it’s better to go low.

#22

Like I responded to @Lilian for VO2 work, I do more and more of my hard workouts based on my Power curve. This is not my idea but I can’t find that article anymore. There was a nice explanation of how to use this and really train at your personal abilities. If I really can’t find the article again, I will try to explain further myself. I doubt that any scientific testing exists on this, because as @Jeremy already replied, he never heard of that before. I was almost instantly a fan of this because it doesn’t require regular testing and it adapts training to you personal abilities. If you are able to define you weaknes(ses) from you power curve you immediately can make workouts to improve capacity or power at that level. It does require a well defined power curve, but I guess most of us have at least 3 months of good data.
I’ll come back to this asap.

#23

One nice thing too is when you do the longer tests, you learn how it feels to ride at FTP. Something you don’t get from these shorter tests. Do it enough times, and you’ll be able to know where your FTP is on a given day. Since it’s a variable number and more of a range, the better you know how riding these long efforts feel, the more likely you’ll be able to actually ride at/near FTP.

Short tests teach you to ride harder

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#40

I did notice xert bloated my ftp - after it saw my runs as breakthroughs. I’ll go remove my runs so it can calculate properly.
Thanks for introducing us to intervals.icu easier to understand and the eftp looks spot for me

#41

Yeah, the running with power is still a bit sketchy.

It was first a ‘two separate accounts’ thing, then added/merged.

#42

It did make me feel happy seeing my ftp go up until intervals.icu spit out the new data :joy: