Do you really know what ‘FTP’ means?

The way I see it, there are two major factors determining what your FTP is: the strength element, and the endurance element.

The mistake many athletes make is that they do not fully comprehend what low intensity endurance training really means. The main culprits are those that perform their base mileage with a group of friends or a club at the weekends. These longer endurance rides are where you should be developing your ability to ride for longer before fatigue sets in. When done as part of a group, these sessions can easily slip into a smashfest, with riders racing up climbs, hitting the front hard and generally having fun (which cycling should of course be) but losing sight of the purpose of the session. The result is that this supposed endurance session can rapidly devolve into yet another strength-focused session. If you are performing a significant amount of structured high intensity training elsewhere in the week, an endurance ride that turns into a high intensity workout can see fatigue overflow into the next week, and the athlete develop chronic fatigue, because unwittingly all their sessions effectively become strength-focused sessions.

As we have discussed, putting a specific number on your FTP is not always helpful. However, the vast majority of online training platforms do require an FTP to set training intervals, so they are roughly at the right intensity. They have to use something after all.

Therefore, it is important that your FTP is as accurate as possible, or you could end up training the wrong energy system to that intended by the session objective.

There is a lot of discussion over which testing methodology is the best to use. Here are four of the key methodologies.

Some coaches swear by the ramp test. In short, a ramp test is where every minute the power target increases by a certain amount and keeps doing so until you fail to complete a step at the target power. There are different versions of this test but, regardless of the specifics, once you reach failure, a formula is run over that result to predict your FTP or, more specifically, the theoretical average power you could hold for a full hour.

Ramp tests are great because they are usually short, around 25 minutes or so, including the warm-up. They are therefore the least physiologically demanding form of testing and can be done fairly regularly without requiring tonnes of recovery.

The downside to a ramp test, in my opinion, is that they are a bit of a quick and dirty methodology. Because it is so short and essentially takes a result from your final max effort, the formula is relatively complex and has to fill some gaps that other tests do not need to fill. And anything that requires a greater deal of gap filling through mathematical inputs is likely to be less accurate. Plus, it can favour particular types of riders, those with great strength but not necessarily a big endurance component to their fitness.

I tend to use ramp tests with inexperienced athletes, or those coming back from a big lay-off, just to give them a starting point with their bike training.

In this test, after a long warm-up, you perform a 20-minute effort as hard as you can and record the average power for that effort. That average power result is then multiplied by 0.95 to extrapolate out to your FTP, or predicted 1-hour power.

This form of test is probably the most commonly used and, in my opinion, is a step up from the ramp test in terms of accuracy, as only a simple formula is used to predict your 1-hour power or FTP.

The major downside to the 20-minute test, though, is that it is much more physiologically demanding and therefore should not be performed as regularly as a ramp test, because the fatigue accrued through such an effort will likely overflow into your normal training.

I use the 20-minute test method for athletes that have a good level of fitness but are not perhaps at a level where they could manage a full spectrum test.

Critical power is the power you trend towards in a hard ride of about 30 to 40 minutes. I find it more useful than treating FTP as a single maximal hour, because a maximal hour is rare unless you are racing a 25-mile time trial. Training platforms such as Zwift still ask for an FTP, so the critical power calculator turns the result into one. FTP is critical power times 0.96. Critical power should sit about 5% above that FTP.

The test is three maximal efforts: 3, 5 and 12 minutes. Use the best recent average power for each, in watts. The 3-minute effort should be the hardest, and the 12-minute effort the most evenly paced. Ride the 3 and 12 minute efforts in one session, with a long warm-up and about 20 minutes easy between them. Do the 5-minute effort on another day. Do all three fresh, within about a week, so the three numbers describe the same fitness. A tired 12-minute effort pulls critical power down.

The same three efforts also give W’, the work you can do above critical power. The calculator is a guide from three rides, not a lab test.

This final form of testing can come in various guises. I call it full spectrum testing because, in essence, it tests all of your energy systems through different types of intervals, all in one session. In the format I use, the session covers four things, and the 20-minute FTP test comes last.

The logic behind this form of testing is that the 20-minute FTP test should be done at the end, because it represents your aerobic capacity, the max average power you can sustain whilst still in an aerobic state. Therefore, I perform the VO2max and anaerobic efforts to strip away the rider’s anaerobic systems, so those systems are less able to help in the 20-minute effort.

The reason I perform this type of test for more experienced athletes is because I have seen occasions where testing via the ramp or standard 20-minute test on its own has led to a significant FTP inflation. Up to 30 watts in some instances. This means those people were training well outside of the power ranges they should have been training in.

The major downside to this full spectrum testing is how long the session is and how difficult it is. Typically, the session is over 1 hour 30 minutes, and it is brutal. This means plenty of recovery is required afterwards, and the riders also need to prepare in a specific way too. I recommend at least a 12-week gap between full spectrum tests.

Improving your FTP is actually remarkably simple. You need to balance focused strength workouts with ensuring you consistently perform plenty of low intensity mileage too. The general rule is to look for an 80:20 split, with 80% of your total volume being low intensity sub-threshold training and just 20% made up of structured high intensity work.

The sessions themselves do not even need to be that complicated either. The layer of complication comes when you realise you want more than just a higher FTP and you want to develop as a rider. If you have raced at any level, you will know that a high FTP does not necessarily translate to race wins. Different events emphasise different rider characteristics. So, for instance, a course with short punchy climbs like those in the Spring Classics will suit those with a well-developed VO2max power. Whereas flatter courses likely to end in a sprint will suit those with good top-end anaerobic power. The riders’ FTPs in these scenarios are unlikely to be determinative of success.

Therefore, my advice is to figure out what your strengths are, choose events that emphasise those strengths, and structure your training around those objectives.