Those familiar with sessions I’ve written and use regularly in the Training Peaks portal use Functional Threshold Power [FTP] as a metric to set effort. Everyone of you is different and this should never be used as a badge of honour as some ‘weekend warriors’ seem to think it is. It’s just one of the ways to set proper training zones and is probably the most commonly used.
So how can you find FTP?
It used to be described as the effort you can sustain for 1 hour or a typical effort for a 25-mile time trial on the road. In reality it’s simply your aerobic threshold.
There are ways to find this accurately, most well-known is the 20-minute threshold test. Using a specific warm up protocol - without which the test result is in valid, you then ride to your maximum effort for the 20 minutes - something akin to a 10-mile time trial, taking 95% of your average power output to calculate FTP. It’s not pleasant and frankly as a sprinter fills me with horror!
The other known way to test is the Max Ramp. Assessing an individual’s potential for the start ramp power is key, for most male riders of average ability I’d start around 140w, the test then increases 20w per minute to failure. This is most important as some will stop when it simply hurts! Female riders ramp at 15w per minute.
Taking the average power of the last full minute you get MAP – Maximum Aerobic Power sometimes called MMP – Maximum Minute Power. Taking 75% will give an indication of FTP. The max ramp test should last no more than 12 minutes and comes with a few warnings. It’s a maximal test that also finds your maximum heart rate. I always question the health history of older riders.
Recently our local gym has installed new spin bikes which offer ‘training by colour’ on their screens – this is essentially a ‘jazzed up’ version of the 6-zone traditional Coggan Allen FTP zone system but is good fun as long as the FTP number you input on the bike is correct otherwise the only person you’re fooling is yourself and in some cases the instructor.
The bikes offer a different FTP test protocol that is interesting and perhaps a little less invasive but still requires a little hard work.
After warming up for 10 minutes you commence a ramp that increases by 25w every 4-minutes to failure. You then calculate FTP at 82.5% of the MAP but here’s the clever bit, unlike the Max Ramp that only uses the last full minute to calculate MAP this test uses the power of the uncompleted stage or ramp as well
