Coyle’s studies suggest that, on average, a new cyclist can expect to improve threshold power, when adjusted for efficiency gains, by about 12.5% in Years 2-3, an additional 8.5% in years 4-5, then another roughly 5% in years 6-7 and 4% in years 8-9, starting from a baseline with one year of training. Put another way, this means 200W in the first year of training becomes 225W in Year 3, 245W in Year 5, 255W in Year 7, and 265W in year 9. Does this track with your experience or were you way over or under these numbers? At what point did you plateau?
I remember being surprised at Rappstar’s mentioning he was in the high 260s at IMAZ '10 and improved to mid 290s for Ironman Texas–around 10% improvement in FT, if he rode at similar intensity factor, in 2 years. Pretty insane rate of improvement, and I think likely well outside what the typical aspiring cyclist could expect to see. I am curious if others have experienced similar above average (or below average) improvement rates.
I think I plateaued after 2 yrs. After that it depends on the quantity and quality of your training. My FT goes up and down during the season depending on how I train.
I haven’t seen any evidence that ones FT would rise year over year given the same training program. I suspect the ‘average’ cyclist Coyle studied just learned to push themselves harder.
I think gains can be a lot higher than that if you do lots of interval training. I went from doing a 20 min test of 321 watts in the fall of 2010 to a spring 2011 test of 368 watts. This was after doing 4-5 hours per week over the winter on the trainer, mostly comprised of hard intervals. Last winter I only spent around 2 hours per week on the trainer, and I was able to ‘maintain’ my bike fitness and focus on swimming and running.
I suspect the ‘average’ cyclist Coyle studied just learned to push themselves harder.
I often wonder about this. For half the year I do a ~24min TT every week. By the end I’m coughing blood, seeing cross-eyed and pedaling squares. I’ve always been that way, even when I first started riding… that is what an all-out effort feels like. And that isn’t quite a 100% effort… I hold back just a little on those, saving the real destruction for real races. But I know that a lot of beginners don’t come close to exploring that boundary.
And my power output is steady as can be. If I was lazy over the winter it will take ~6 weeks before I hit the plateau, but then my power will not vary more than 2% over the next 18 weeks or so. If I take 2 weeks off my power might be down a tad (or not), but after 1 week it is back. I try different things, but nothing makes a difference.
BTW… the cumulative increase Coyle mentions adds up to a 33% FTP improvement from years 2-9. My experience is more like 3%. I could have turned pro with an extra 30%…
looking at my best 20 min power for my last 5 years…
Year 1 - 256w
Year 2 - 290w, 13% increase
Year 3 - 296w, 2% increase but I dropped a substantial amount of weight so power to weight went up
Year 4 - 311w, 5%
Yeat 5 - 331w, 6%, increase in power to weight was more due to being very lean
Its worth noting though between year 2 to 3, and 3-4 I had interrupted winter training due to operations on my wrist and had 8 weeks off the bike in both cases.
Looks like i’m behind the trend, but then my stuffed training until last winter has probably skewed it a bit.
The rate of improvement for beginners is much faster at first because they gain a lot from the quick VO2 gains.
Those unfortunately plateau off after about 3 months of solid hard training (it might take a beginner several months even to reach the point they can do this type of training though). After that, the aerobic gains are much smaller, and depend on both your volume and intensity.
Andy Potts in his online video interview said he’d be THRILLED with a 1% power improvement on the bike from year to year.
Well… this is my first year cycling and I just got a powermeter a few weeks ago… Recent test shows my 20min power is 245w and my 5min power was 320… I just did an all out 5 min today at 338w and I think a few months ago my 20min power was around 220… I think my FTP is increasing a lot since I’ve been heavily focused on FTP training on the trainer…
I’ll dig this thread up this time next year to see record my 2nd year’s improvement.
BTW… the cumulative increase Coyle mentions adds up to a 33% FTP improvement from years 2-9. My experience is more like 3%. I could have turned pro with an extra 30%…
Same here, if I could gain an extra 33% on top of what I had after one year of training I’d be at 6.3W/kg. But it clearly ain’t gonna happen because my 5 minute power hasn’t budged since the end of my first 6 months of training, and my 5 minute power is less than 6.3W/kg, so there’s clearly no way my FTP can ever reach that level.
The poster above saw 30% in 5 years, so it seems like the potential is there for such gains, but to your point it’s probably unreasonable to expect time and miles alone to give you a world class FT. Clearly there’s a lot of variability in general, but 3% feels pretty low. Surely, a big factor in improvement, aside from the physiology of the thing, is the increasing training load you can bear. Ideally, you’re racking up more training stress each year for the first four or five years, and getting stronger. I think it was Cam Dye who mentioned that you have to ride your bike *a lot *when you’re starting out in order to realize potential.
I don’t know though. I’ll report back in a year for the first data point.
How do you adjust this rate of gain if you’ve had a background in athletics aside from cycling?
I raced bikes from 13-23 and then went 15 years without riding. During that time I continued to stay generally fit as a recreational runner, but raced very little.
Started tri’s last year and my first year back on a bike went well, but do I still get to see these huge gains next year???
Ideally, you’re racking up more training stress each year for the first four or five years
I’m not sure why this would happen. A CTL ramp rate of 3 per week is generally considered quite reasonable, so to get from a CTL of 0 to 120 would only take 40 weeks. You’d have a negative TSB at the end of those 40 weeks, and it would take a bit longer to eliminate that, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be pretty close to the limit of the TSS you can handle at the end of the first year.
Ideally, you’re racking up more training stress each year for the first four or five years
I’m not sure why this would happen. A CTL ramp rate of 3 per week is generally considered quite reasonable, so to get from a CTL of 0 to 120 would only take 40 weeks. You’d have a negative TSB at the end of those 40 weeks, and it would take a bit longer to eliminate that, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be pretty close to the limit of the TSS you can handle at the end of the first year.
it’s a lot more complicated than that. Approach to CTL is exponential, to go from 55 to 60 might take 600 TSS, but to go from 95-100 will take a lot more. Not to mention you need to factor in recovery weeks (decrease in CTL) and that it’s a qualitative model. Finally, if all you have is like 10-12 hr/week, you may never see CTL of 120
It really isn’t a lot more complicated than that. All you have to do to keep ramping your CTL up at 3 per week is hit a daily TSS around 18 higher than your current CTL. However many hours a week you have available, you should be able to get your CTL up close to the maximum level you can achieve with those weekly hours after one year. You’re not going to need recovery weeks with a TSB around -18, just keep ramping it up. Many people can cope with a significantly faster ramp rate than this, 3 per week is really quite conservative.
