You will know if your FTP is set correctly after your first workout at the new wattage. The indicator will be whether or not you can finish the last interval at prescribed wattage.

Cheers but we crossed this already...SRM needed a new calibration due to solid chainrings and potential slope drift. Retested with a nice increase today. Not a 40 watt increase though!

I know what it is and had an early coach that every other day made me do a FTP test. It helped me in no way predicting pace. Learning how to ride a test is a start and knowing you can sustain power through the dark patches 8-12 minutes for me and make the end. Are you on a good day that day or not? I find it puts limits on yourself and on bad days has negative affects mentally.

I know roughly what power I can sustain in a half and full IM so I have a maximum number I try not to cross early especially in IM and the rest is what the legs are giving me on the day. Training is by feel based on how the legs are, long the efforts are and how many. Otherwise my coach uses the moderate, medium, mad approach. I’m a classic over trainer so I push those numbers and can adjust to how the legs are on the day.

Now the OP coach is going to lift his numbers and he’s worried and questioning why this happened. Maybe he was on fresh legs, maybe he has improved, maybe was the weather that day but now being worried about what that is going to do to your sessions and a coach that thinks they should be lifted from a one off is that really the way to train? Not for me...

Being a user of Rotor Q or QXL rings I have always read they cause power meters to read inaccurate but as I have always run them so is always constant on my bike but your power meter may now be affected so I wouldn't write Any changes off there. I did a session on the trainer on Sunday and even with QXL rings my Power2max power meter and Tacx Neo were reading identical.

Actually I knew my form improved and I know my power at all durations had improved. I just knew it wasn't 40 watts at threshold; not because I doubted my coach or was worried, but because after a decade of data things stand out and very recently before I had a full gas effort that wasn't what yesterday indicated. I do get having good legs, etc. etc. but it was enough of an outlier to any historical data that it causes question. FWIW, the real increase was 21 watts at threshold. Something I am very pleased with and reflects some other efforts I could actually sustain in training recently when giving it the gas.

I don't second guess my coach, I was second guessing a device where things could and did go "wrong" for a very particular scenario that I hadn't account for. I'm glad I posted otherwise I wouldn't have learned about SRMs needing a calibration procedure in this scenario do to it not requiring it when swapping "normal" chainrings.

Sounds like the issue is much more with the early coach than with FTP tests! Testing every other day is nuts, I never test more often than every 4-6 weeks, though might bump my zones up or down a bit in between tests if sessions are consistently feeling too easy or hard. And the reason the OP posted is precisely because he's worried that this is a one off and not consistent with his training.

I was joking every other day it just seemed that way as I hated doing them so much and nothing ever really changed in my sessions or racing. Believe me there were issues with that coach he broke me pushing me too hard but I still agree with the article I posted saying get rid of that train of thought using FTP. My coach trained under Brett, coached for Brett during that time and was only in Switzerland last year getting advice some about me. Having used both methods I know what one I prefer. Unless you find it hard to push yourself which some people do, I would never use FTP and power zones personally.

I'm doing a mix, currently riding 6-7 days/week and about 50:50 indoors:outdoors. All my indoor sessions are in erg mode because I do find pacing indoors to be quite hard and prefer to just zone out and watch Netflix through the suffering. Outdoor rides I'm generally riding more by feel and not looking at power much until after the ride.

Agree that FTP should be taken with a pinch of salt, but it's a useful metric as long as you don't get too obsessed with it. Key for me is listening to my body in between tests and being honest with myself about my zones/numbers, much better in the long run to dial things back a bit if necessary.

This is why I don't even bother doing formal testing. I rather base fitness and future interval wattage targets on a range of current data rather than one single X minute effort that is only performed once every Y weeks. That way micro adjustments can be made week to week, or every couple of weeks instead of only making changes after a test...which may be 6-8 weeks apart. Because I'm able to make adjustments as needed, I'll never run into a situation where I suddenly put out 40 more watts than expected for a threshold type effort. If that happened, then I know for sure my PM is off...or I have simply not been paying attention to my workouts.

I can understand the value of formal testing for someone very new to power who is unsure how much to adjust targets week to week based on analyzing the data. But once you have years of data and experience...it shouldn't be that difficult to estimate FTP or proper interval targets based off of all your current workout data and how hard you perceived them to be.

was the previous ring oval as well? if not, change is something other than what you think it is, but not sure if that is relevant if you only use the oval ring going forward