I realise this is being a bit nit-picky but the ramp test has been calibrated for seated efforts only. If you use something like Zwift or Trainer Road the ramp test explicitly tell you to remain seated. If you were to do a standing ramp test you would expect a significantly higher values than when using a 20 min or 1hr standing effort to estimate FTP. That is to say comparing the results of seated and standing ramp test will strongly bias the results towards the standing efforts.

To further complicate matters its very common for riders to have higher FTPs when climbing than when on the flat. Any real world FTP standing data is likely to come from climbing where as TT efforts are unlikely to have been recorded on climbs. This will again lead to higher power results for standing even though the difference is not actually due to the position on the bike.

Hi FFT,

See this paper published earlier this year:

https://www.tandfonline.com/...8?journalCode=tejs20

Only 7 in the study, but well trained cyclists (>14 hours per week).

It is possible to run the numbers on Martin et al. cycling model to show how much the improvement in aero makes up for the drop in power, but I think others have done this anyway

I've filled the survey in as I have reasonably good data for TT and hoods/bartop positions from races (if anybody has done an FTP test fully out of the saddle I'll be amazed!). Take a look at your drop down options for annual cycling mileage as you seem to be missing one - goes from <10,000 miles to >20,000 miles.

Don't mean to be a killjoy, but honestly don't see how you're going to get reliable enough data to draw any meaningful conclusions from for the following reasons:
- Data accuracy. You don't need to spend much time on forums like this to realise that a lot of people struggle to get consistent FTP results for all sorts of reasons including pacing, not zeroing PMs, going in too fatigued (or going in too fresh and hitting it out of the park...), inadequate nutrition, etc. You've got no way of controlling for this.
- You also don't know whether the tests were conducted in the same timeframe and using the same methodology. E.g. from the survey there is nothing stopping somebody from submitting a hoods FTP that was estimated from a ramp test, and a TT FTP that is taken from a 60 minute race 3 months later. Most people get pretty chunky discrepancies between estimated FTP from ramp, 8 minute, 20 minute and 60 minute tests at the best of times.
- Lack of context. Particularly the position they have and how they got to it. There are some people who have made a deliberate decision to sacrifice power in their TT position in order to get more aero and be faster overall. Others simply have a bad TT position where tight hip angles or other limiters are impairing their power.
- Differences in TT and road positions which could influence results for some of the test methodologies. E.g. I know that I can generate more short-term power in the road position because I have more upper body leverage to counterbalance the forces. So while my 60 minute FTPs between TT and road are very close, I suspect there would be a much bigger difference if I tested them with a ramp test since the ramp test involves going significantly above threshold which I find harder on my TT bike.

Would be really interested in a proper study on this. But would have to involve doing FTP tests in a lab to ensure they were consistent. And would have to involve fit analysis to ensure that subjects had equally good ergonomics in both positions. As well as sufficient adaptation time to those positions. Based on my own data and talking to a lot of people over the years my take on this is that over longer durations (20+ minutes) most people can get their TT and road power within a few % of each other provided they have a good position and spend time adapting to it. But I also know a lot of people who have fairly significant discrepancies because they don't have a good position (or have deliberately chosen a position which is more aero and less powerful) and/or haven't spent enough time adapting to it.

thanks // not sure what you mean by calibrated, the ramp test and steady state tests are simply making a calculation from your power meter average over the test period. However I do recognize that they advise to remain seated, but that doesn't mean people always will. The tricky thing from my perspective is collecting data where people stand or use TT position consistently throughout the effort. The former (standing) being very rare.



I agree gradient could be an addition factor, but I am not collecting climbing FTP data currently, although its a nice idea.

thank you, I am collecting the published literature on this, thanks for the heads up on this one.

yep only 5 people so far have given me standing data!


oops, correctly thank you!!





Agree its tricky, which is why I will try and also a. get the data from lab tests b. do our own testing, or even test myself under the same conditions but changing positions.

thanks for taking the time to reply

Thanks for the link. The nugget of wisdom I got was "Therefore, cyclists and coaches should consider the cycling position used when calculating CP."

It seems like coaches and software platforms should really have an option for choosing power levels based on the intended position.