He deliberately GAVE UP FTP to improve his aerodynamics. Think about that (and drink your water). No. physiologist Andy Coggan is “the highest power that a rider can maintain in a quasi-steady state without fatiguing for approximately one hour.” Notice the qualifiers in there – a certain level of approximation is built in. The simplest angle to use is Femur to the top of the neck as seen in the Tony Martin TT picture below. If Tony Martin (the current TT World Champion) produced 300w for 1h at his weight (I’m guessing around 82 kg or 180 lbs), he would only be producing 3.6-3.7 watts per kilogram (w/kg). INSCYD is currently used by several WorldTour … Heart rate is also our best tool for getting a window in the internal load of the body during a training situation or a race.”. So its not too hard to believe that a much improved Wiggins is putting out 479 for a hour, but at the end a 3 week tour without "help" ? When they change their training model to better resemble their actual racing, improvements in their finishes come quickly. If Tony Martin (the current TT World Champion) produced 300w for 1h at his weight (I’m guessing around 82 kg or 180 lbs), he would only be producing 3.6-3.7 watts per kilogram (w/kg). However, in long-distance road races, it’s not what you can do after 20 minutes, but what you can do after five hours that counts. In 1997, he used an SRM for the first time, and in 1999 became one of the pilot users for the PowerTap. The training benchmark most talked about among cyclists is Functional Threshold Power. Having short-burst power allows you to handle surges, create separation, and compete in a field sprint. During a race, a rider is never riding at FTP for more than a few seconds – they’re switching between different energy systems.”. Cavendish 48, Martin 7. However, FTP values are neither absolute nor 100 per cent precise. Contrast this with the graph from a local criterium: Criterium: More spikes than Bart Simpson’s hair. Then you start training. New riders often complain about getting sent to Offthebackistan (a remote village well away from the end of the peloton) during races. This is the simplest way to look at and gauge someone's ability. Can an amateur with a very good FTP make it … Exactly how long? Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube. I have one client who did a 56-minute 40k on 230 watts. However, after winning somewhere around 160 bike races with an FTP that’s only slightly above average, and coaching clients with a variety of talents to a lot more wins, I’d suggest you may want to rethink this. The classic approach to test it requires several lab visits to quantify the lactate response to bouts of exercise lasting 30 to 40 minutes. A quick Google search will produce statements such as: Cycling forums are full of questions starting with “My FTP is X. USA Cycling asked him to write a chapter on power-based training for their coaching manual, which eventually became the three-edition cult classic book mentioned above. Blue is speed. Setting aside discrepancies between different power meters and apps, how can we be accurate in how we discuss and apply FTP in our training? Given that FTP is a roughly one hour max power number, we will look at one of the best one hour riders in the world, Tony Martin (multiple-time world TT champion) and compare him to one of his peers, Mark Cavendish, who has never won an individual time trial as a professional, and doesn’t even bother to compete in the discipline at worlds. My Functional Threshold Power was now 290 watts, he informed me, and I was thrilled. Tony Martin - 254-749-9113 Contractor Contact: Gary Garner - 254-715-8833 Project Manager: Craig Archer - 512-465-1340 or Craig.Archer@TxDMV.gov. >>> Subscriptions deals for Cycling Weekly magazine. Climbers such as Chris Froome, Alberto Contador and Nairo Quintana go under the spotlight As well as Time Trial specialists such as Tony Martin and Fabian Cancellara. It’s important to remember that aerobic and anaerobic pathways are always intertwined and working together. Tony Martin (born 1985-04-23) is a professional road racing cyclist from Germany, currently riding for Team Jumbo-Visma. ... FTP, HR, AC, LT and others. When they try to get away solo but lacking the jump to get a gap, they end up towing the field around. : How to know and why not to race too soon, Even With Motivation, Unconscious Anxiety Blocks Improvement of Habits, Surgery and Recovery Around Training – A Coach’s Experience and Analysis, “FTP is the single most important physiological determinant of performance in events”, “FTP is one of the key factors of your cycling armory”. Again, we must remember that physiological responses cannot be nailed down with pinpoint accuracy – thresholds are not black and white; the lines are always blurred. Also consider that at last years worlds , Wiggins said he averaged 457 watts and was beat by Tony Martin by a minute and a half. “Good job on improving your FTP!” my then coach Richard Laidlow congratulated me two years ago. Taking some average assumptions (6% grade, 300-watt FTP, 155-pound bike and rider) dropping a bit over 4 pounds means gaining nearly a half mile an hour in climbing speed. What about a rider like Greg Van Avermaet who has a monster FRC but most likely lower FTP? For a well trained athlete that’s a pretty big ask. “It is common sense to describe training load as a percentage of the maximum,” adds Weber, “so when you express training load as a percentage of VO2max, you get the best understanding of what training stimulus you might apply to your aerobic system in order to force it to adapt.”, Tony Martin at the 2020 Critérium du Dauphiné (Photo by Justin Setterfield/Getty Images), Even in the World Tour, FTP has a mixed reputation. On top of the lab-based tests you can perform to determine your physiological values, in recent years performance-analysis software such as INSCYD, Mesics and Ergonizer (more below) have claimed that they can provide coaches and athletes with the same scientific value – but without visiting the lab. Our primary guest today is the head physiologist and scientific brain behind INSCYD, Sebastian Weber. The same computer model had him within a few watts for that race. And I never said that Tier 3 or Tier 2 wheels were trash, I'm just rating them against other brands. To do the same with power, the rider would have to increase their FTP by nearly 5%. The lactate thresholds are the two points beyond which blood lactate accumulation occurs. Moreover, the classic ‘20-minute power times 95 per cent’ method of establishing FTP is not a definition, but only a protocol developed by coach Hunter Allen – with whom Coggan co-authored the book Training and Racing with a Power Meter in 2006. The training app The Sufferfest designed its own Four-Dimensional Power and Half Monty protocol, intended to encompass FTP, maximal aerobic power, and lactate heart rate. FTP has value, and the 40 to 60-minute average [over multiple tests] corresponds quite well with the definition of the MLSS.”. FTP in the pro peloton Tony Martin at the 2020 Critérium du Dauphiné (Photo by Justin Setterfield/Getty Images) Even in the World Tour, FTP has a mixed reputation. Tony Martin German bicycler. Will a Bike Fit Fix My Knee or Back Pain on the Bicycle? Coggan believed that effective training hinged on implementing a polarised training programme – with 80 per cent of sessions performance at low intensity. The real enjoyment comes from putting the pieces together.”, Learn to Ride a Bike – Bicycle Lessons for Adults, Nutrition Coaching for Cyclists and Triathletes, Complete Weight Loss Programs for Athletes. Work on your FTP if you have room for gains, but improving your sprint power, anaerobic repeatability, racing tactics, weight, mental commitment, or your aerodynamics will win you just as many races, if not more. Indoor Cycling Doesn’t Have to Suck [Enduring the Extended “Covid Winter”], Yes, You Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle Now! Friel believes the popularity of FTP is thanks to its simplicity. Set your bike up on the trainer and film your self riding at a 90° angle and use Motionysis (2) to measure your road bike angles and then do the same for your TT bike. It is impossible to determine FTP with absolute precision. This calculation is: 300w / 82 kg = 3.65 watts per kilogram A full 20-ounce water bottle weighs 1.25 pounds and requires five extra watts to go the same speed up our 6% grade. Don't get me wrong...6 watts/kg is doable for 20 minutes, even 30+ for a lightweight rider. The key to winning most races is speed, and a quick recovery from those speed efforts. Tony Hans-Joachim Martin (born 23 April 1985) is a German professional road bicycle racer, who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam Team Jumbo–Visma. Let’s test the model at the highest level of the sport. “That’s why I want athletes to tune it to their subjective perception of effort – because that changes during a long ride. He is also the co-founder of the physiological performance software INSCYD. What is going on in their body after three or five hours? Alternatives to FTP have been proposed to overcome FTP’s limitations. He's done it with a great aerodynamically efficient position, excellent focus and the ability to sustain a really, really high power. Instead of fixating on FTP, he urges riders to pay more attention to VO2max. Set your cycling training zones for the most effective use of a power meter (Cycling Weekly), Among the early adopters of FTP in the early 2000s were the creators of Training Peaks. Huge difference! The Sufferfest app then takes your results, analyzes them, and assigns you one of 6 rider types to show you the kind of rider you are right now. CP20 relates to 20 minutes, CP30 to 30 minutes, and so on. Then focus on aerodynamics first. His best results are 4x World Championships - ITT, 2x GC Tour of Beijing and 5x stage Tour de France. “There are so many different versions,” says Stephen Seiler, exercise physiologist and professor in sport science at the University of Agder, Norway, “and they are all trying to get at the same basic idea – that there is a point of intensity that you can maintain for a long time.”, However, it remains an inexact science. Training FTP, or testing for FTP, you’d have a flat line looking graph: FTP Test: Only small variances in power (yellow) and cadence (green). Without FTP, the platform wouldn’t work. 4DP gives you a complete picture of who you are as an athlete in a way that FTP never could. “A true metabolic steady state doesn’t exist,” says the physiologist. FTP included both: the watts I was producing aerobically and anaerobically. Both incredible at flat TTs. but they get killed by froome and contador on the hills because of weight. This feature originally appeared in the print edition of Cycling Weekly, on sale in newsagents and supermarkets, priced £3.25. The Lactate Threshold 1 (LT1) is the point beyond which there is sustained increase of blood lactate concentration, but a steady and tolerable one for the body. Being able to throw out a pretty 20- or even 60-minute number when fresh is often useless when attrition thins the field and it becomes a war of wills. For now, it’s important to note Coggan’s use of the words “quasi” and “approximately”. Similarly dismissive of FTP, Dan Lorang, head coach of pro cycling team Bora-Hansgrohe, uses his own calculations to determine his riders’ thresholds and how these levels interact with VO2max and lactate accumulation. The key lesson was that there are multiple thresholds, each meaning different things – so why as cyclists do we rely so heavily on FTP? i think your "normal" weight for the gc guys is way too high. Born Alvin Morris, the son of immigrants from Poland, Tony Martin received a soprano saxophone on his tenth birthday. “In a race, what’s important is being able to go with surges, recovering from hard efforts, carbohydrate sparing, sprinting and managing fuelling demands. FTP, as Coggan describes it, was a “pedagogical construct” intended to solve the confusion around thresholds. It doesn’t tell me what happens if the athlete continues for more time at that effort.”. I subsequently learned more about the aerobic pathway, where energy is released from glucose and fat in the presence of oxygen. It doesn’t tell us about the underlying issues of the engine, the physiology,” he says. That’s when he started to express his ideas and studies in terms of power output, and in 2001 he wrote the first FTP-based ‘training levels’. As a cyclist, he’s been training with power (on an ergometer) since the winter of 1977-78. FTP attempts to identify LT2, but without measuring lactate levels in the blood. But remember it’s just a single tool in your toolbox. Is this good enough to start racing?”. Many world-class male TT specialists have FTPs well in excess of 400 watts; Bradley Wiggins’s Hour record power was estimated as 440 watts. Twenty seconds of speed and a draft will negate 100 watts of FTP advantage. FTP is the amount of wattage a rider can produce for one hour without fatigue. No way!!! The word ‘functional’ is the key to understanding the reliability and validity of FTP – it is functional because it has a practical and useful application in the power-based world of cycling. (power is yellow, cadence is green, blue is speed). Tony Martin is not just a time-trial World Champion – he’s a German time-trial World Champion. “Riders training by FTP have a massive blind spot, as they tend to ignore the aerobic versus the anaerobic contribution to their performance,” says Weber. Chris Froome rode the time trial of his life as he rode his way into the overall lead in the Vuelta. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tony-Martin-American-singer-and-actor “If I only used the FTP value with the team, it would be hard for me to understand where the value is coming from, or in which direction should I progress that number,” says Lorang. Even so, both Lorang and Seiler agree that FTP has its uses in cycling, particularly among amateurs who don’t have access to labs for regular testing. For a pro cyclist riding 30 hours+ a week, I’m not sure how that kind of distribution would work out – one thinks of Sebastian Weber’s comment that a pro can’t ride at 70% FTP day in, day out for six hours without excessive fatigue (his example was Tony Martin – 70% FTP for him would be 300w, and “six hours at 300 watts, that’s Paris-Roubaix.” The Lactate Threshold 2 (LT2), on the other hand, is where the accumulation becomes rapid, meaning the effort is no longer sustainable. But how much does our prized FTP value really tell us? I want to know how durable your body is at low power, and its ability to repeat high-intensity efforts over time.”, Professor Seiler believes cyclists need more than a power number to guide their training. In his grammar school glee club, he became an instrumentalist and Coggan began reading up on exercise physiology when he was in high school. – Learning to Ride Safely in the Era of COVID-19, Knee Pain & the Cyclist [How to Prevent & Solve Knee Pain on the Bike], Please Take COVID-19 Seriously [A Cyclist’s Personal Experience with the Corona Virus], Six Causes of Foot Pain, Numbness, and Hot-Foot During Bicycling, and How to Solve Them, How to Use Visualization and Biofeedback to Enhance Cycling Performance, Peeing in the Peloton – Tips for when you have…, Beyond the Intervals: The Deeper Benefits of Power Meters, Ready for the First Races of the Year? 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