FTP Test - How to

penski

Hi All,

So yesterday I redid the FTP test, online in Zwift (Short version).

Before the 20minute test starts, it leads you through a warmup, followed by a few quite hard segments, and then a recovery period.

Now...these segments I assume are to tax your body to make the 20 minute/95% value accurate for what you can actually sustain over 60 minutes.

My question is - should these hard segments before the test be calculated from the current FTP value - or the one I anticipate being able to achieve?

I.e If i do these segments at x% of 150W (previous test 4 weeks ago), and I think I will now be able to achieve 200W, will those efforts of 150 be strenuous enough to yield an accurate result?

Sorry the point is rather difficult to get across - hope somebody understands!

ravey1981

The hard efforts before the test itself are just to get your body used to hard effort so you can then do a hard effort... if that makes sense... Just give it everything you have in the 20 min test....

sebbyp

Yeah surely those short segments are just for warming up. You have to be ready for a very hard 20min effort so few short efforts upto FTP should bring the heart rate up a tad and gets the muscles ready for the main event. The Sufferfest Rubberglove has 35mins of warm up I think including 6 x 3min steps of increasing power and 4 x 1min @ftp with 1min recoveries.

jrich

FTP is supposed to be roughly equivalent to the power you can sustain in a steady state for a 1 hour TT.

In order to accurately estimate this figure with a 20min test you must do a separate effort beforehand. Allan and Coggan recommend a 5 minute max interval followed by 10 mins recovery followed by the 20 min max effort. Both the 5 and the 20 should be done at maximum capacity for that time frame. e.g. 5 mins at 350W then 20 at 300W.

To estimate FTP you then take 95% of you average 20 min power.

My understanding is that the 5 min effort is very important to improve the accuracy of the estimation - if you don't complete it then you will likely over estimate your FTP meaning your zones will be off and your training will be compromised.

So what you do before the 20 min effort is not just a warm up.

stretchy

jrich wrote:

My understanding is that the 5 min effort is very important to improve the accuracy of the estimation - if you don't complete it then you will likely over estimate your FTP meaning your zones will be off and your training will be compromised.

+1 the efforts are important

buckmulligan

stretchy wrote:

jrich wrote:

My understanding is that the 5 min effort is very important to improve the accuracy of the estimation - if you don't complete it then you will likely over estimate your FTP meaning your zones will be off and your training will be compromised.

+1 the efforts are important

+2

To address your initial question regarding whether they should be performed at what your current FTP is or what you expect your new FTP to be, I'd say that (paradoxically) it should be at your new FTP, which you haven't yet established.

That might sound crazy, but when it comes to FTP testing the real world, it shouldn't make a massive difference. If you're just starting a training program then sure, you might see big jumps in your FTP from one test to the next, but as your power output increases and gains become harder to come by, the difference between your current FTP and your expected new FTP (and thus the intensity level of the warmup efforts) will be much smaller.

I'd say if you're expecting a jump of >10W over your current FTP then bump your values up a bit beforehand so that the warmup efforts are a bit harder (but perhaps err on the conservative side). If you're expecting a change of <10W then just leave it as is and see what happens.

If you're new to FTP testing it takes a few goes at it to really learn how to get the most out of yourself in the test interval as well e.g. how hard you can push yourself, what cadence allows you to sustain the most power etc. Every time you do a test you'll dial it in a little bit closer, but you're still looking for moving target because ideally your fitness should be improving all the time, so don't overthink it too much!

CRAIGO5000

+1000.

The efforts are important. The 5 min pre-effort is to stress your system prior to the 20 min effort. Once you have accurate FTP data, you can then use the 5 min pre-stresser as a proper wattage to hit. Without any previous FTp data to go off, I'd probably look to ending that stresser at around 90% of your max heart rate. Remember that this is a threshold test. If you go beyond threshold, you'll fail and wattage will come down and skew results. Your sole aim is to gun for a SUSTAINABLE power not one that fluctuates massively at the beginning or spikes at the end because you went out too soft for the first 15 mins. You want to be spent at the end but have produced a nice almost flat level of consistent power for the full 20 mins.

I've done lots of these and they become much easier to repeat one you have prior data to look at. As hinted at in a previous post, gains become little between tests. My last saw an improvement of 4 watts but I'd just recovered from a cold which lasted a week. Because of this, my result was actually good.