you can’t do that every single day though…probably
that would imply a very odd definition of FTP. my understanding that it was a power level that was essentially sustainable “forever” (commonly taken to mean “i could do it for 1 hour and would have been able to keep going forever more”). here on ST (at least), there seems to be a redefinition of FTP as “the power i can maintain for 1 hour as an overall average rather than a steady state, and oh, i was dead at the end of it”. maintaining FTP should be hard, but only so hard. the use of 2x20’s etc is there to try to lift FTP by actually performing slightly above it. after all, if you were at FTP for 20mins, you should really be able to just keep going …
and if you can’t get up and do that again tomorrow, then i’d similarly argue that you overshot, and it wasn’t really “FTP”, but some other race-friendly performance effort. which is pretty valuable!
you can’t do that every single day though…probably
that would imply a very odd definition of FTP. my understanding that it was a power level that was essentially sustainable “forever” (commonly taken to mean “i could do it for 1 hour and would have been able to keep going forever more”).
I would think that wouldn’t give you the opportunity to ride harder than what your current FTP is already.
Wouldn’t riding slightly harder for shorter periods with a little bit of rest be better for increasing FTP?
jaretj
probably depends like the other poster said. but I think in general, the best workout for 1 hour is to go as hard as you can for 1 hour.
I’d add “without compromising your ability to complete subsequent workouts” to your comment. The best workout is one that accomplishes the task while facilitiating the greatest amount of recovery and consistency. I have to imagine that for most folks it’s much more effective to achieve 120 minutes/week at or above FTP by breaking it into 3x40 (in the form of three 2x20 workouts) rather than 2x60 workouts.
you can’t do that every single day though…probably
that would imply a very odd definition of FTP. my understanding that it was a power level that was essentially sustainable “forever” (commonly taken to mean “i could do it for 1 hour and would have been able to keep going forever more”). here on ST (at least), there seems to be a redefinition of FTP as “the power i can maintain for 1 hour as an overall average rather than a steady state, and oh, i was dead at the end of it”. maintaining FTP should be hard, but only so hard. the use of 2x20’s etc is there to try to lift FTP by actually performing slightly above it. after all, if you were at FTP for 20mins, you should really be able to just keep going …
and if you can’t get up and do that again tomorrow, then i’d similarly argue that you overshot, and it wasn’t really “FTP”, but some other race-friendly performance effort. which is pretty valuable!
FTP is your max 1 hour power. The most you can possibly sustain for 60 minutes. Yes you should be dead at the end of it.
Don’t know where you got that first definition but it is definitely not correct.
every place i’ve seen FTP defined, it takes the form of something like “the maximum power that you sustain for one hour”. there’s nothing in that definition which requires that you could sustain it for 61 minutes, let alone 120 or 480 or whatever but … the definitions i’m familiar with stress that its a sustained power level, not an average. further, FTP is typically defined using 1 hour interval, not 1 or 3 or 5 min interval. both of these details mean that it does not refer to a “peak effort”, but to a power level that you sustain for a time that goes beyond the normal break points of most limiters. that’s why its an entirely different number on something like the coggan charts than, say, your 3 min sustained power.
i would agree that the definition doesn’t directly imply “i could keep going for ever more”, but the sustained quality and the 1 hour duration definitely tilts toward a power level that is not limited by conventional factors in fatigue.
put a different way, the difference between what the power level you could sustain indefinitely and what you can sustain over shorter time period gets smaller as the test interval gets longer. by the time you hit one hour, you’re getting relatively close to a genuinely steady state condition, though you’re almost certainly not at it.
All the definitions I can find stress that its your maximum average power over 1 hour. The name isn’t CP60, its FTP … functional threshold power - a power threshold where function breaks down after some interval. Why is the interval 60 minutes? It could that Coggan or someone else just pulled 1 hour out of the hat because of similarity to a typical racing interval. But my reading of it has always suggested the idea that the maximum power you can sustain for 3 minutes has almost no information about how much you could sustain indefinitely, whereas the maximum power you can sustain over 1 hour is probably very close to what you could sustain indefinitely.
every place i’ve seen FTP defined, it takes the form of something like “the maximum power that you sustain for one hour”. there’s nothing in that definition which requires that you could sustain it for 61 minutes, let alone 120 or 480 or whatever but … the definitions i’m familiar with stress that its a sustained power level, not an average. further, FTP is typically defined using 1 hour interval, not 1 or 3 or 5 min interval. both of these details mean that it does not refer to a “peak effort”, but to a power level that you sustain for a time that goes beyond the normal break points of most limiters. that’s why its an entirely different number on something like the coggan charts than, say, your 3 min sustained power.
i would agree that the definition doesn’t directly imply “i could keep going for ever more”, but the sustained quality and the 1 hour duration definitely tilts toward a power level that is not limited by conventional factors in fatigue.
put a different way, the difference between what the power level you could sustain indefinitely and what you can sustain over shorter time period gets smaller as the test interval gets longer. by the time you hit one hour, you’re getting relatively close to a genuinely steady state condition, though you’re almost certainly not at it.
Sorry but this makes very little sense to me. Your max 1 hour power is not going to be the same as your max 2 hour power. It may not be double your max 2 hour power but it is not going to be the same. A max 1hr TT means you’re falling off your bike and puking at the end. It means you absolutely could not have sustained that power for one second more.
And no, I’ve never successfully gone this hard during a 1hr FTP test. But I chalk that up to a lack of mental toughness, and prefer other estimating methods like the monod protocol to make up for my lack of mental discipline (and the fact that I usually test on a trainer).
All the definitions I can find stress that its your maximum average power over 1 hour. The name isn’t CP60, its FTP … functional threshold power - a power threshold where function breaks down after some interval. Why is the interval 60 minutes? It could that Coggan or someone else just pulled 1 hour out of the hat because of similarity to a typical racing interval. But my reading of it has always suggested the idea that the maximum power you can sustain for 3 minutes has almost no information about how much you could sustain indefinitely, whereas the maximum power you can sustain over 1 hour is probably very close to what you could sustain indefinitely.
in a practical world, the question that we want answered is “given that I can sustain N watts for M minutes, how hard should I ride for X minutes if I want to avoid blowing up?” (the definition of blow up will vary depending on whether you’re a triathlete or a TTer).
i’m sure that at some point AC will weigh in, but reading between the lines of the term that he & hunter came up with, functional threshold power is intended to be an indication of a power level that is coupled to some important long term metabolic transitions. if you ride above your FTP, you can’t sustain it for more than an hour. but clearly, the limits are entirely different than those that apply to your 3 min power or your 10 minute power. its not that you’ve gone anaerobic, or that any particular metabolite is rapidly exhausted. sustaining a power level for 1 hour is running into much longer term limiters, the kind you’d be interested in if you want X (in my question above) to be a big number.
you could tackle an FTP test like 1 hour TT test, and you’ll get a number. if you really rode it like a TT, you’ll end up with a power level that has less to do with your long term sustained power level than if you rode it the way i’m intimating at: riding such that any increase in power at any point during the test will lead to a blowup within, say, 2-3 minutes. if you ride it like a TT, you can probably find a way to recover from these (or not, but then you’ll know better next time, and get back close to what i was describing). try that in a 100 mile event, and you probably won’t. which outcome provides more predictive, useful information?
to take a different approach: why is anything special about 1 hour?
You know, I calculated that I lost nats by 2 watts this year. It was the single worst TT (from a power standpoint) that I’ve done; the heat + humidity crushes me. Even if I’d ridden conservatively at -10 watts from what I was doing all season, then, well…
All the definitions I can find stress that its your maximum average power over 1 hour. The name isn’t CP60, its FTP … functional threshold power - a power threshold where function breaks down after some interval. Why is the interval 60 minutes? It could that Coggan or someone else just pulled 1 hour out of the hat because of similarity to a typical racing interval. But my reading of it has always suggested the idea that the maximum power you can sustain for 3 minutes has almost no information about how much you could sustain indefinitely, whereas the maximum power you can sustain over 1 hour is probably very close to what you could sustain indefinitely.
I think Andrew Coggan came on here and said that physiologically there is no diff between what your body can put out for 1 hour or periods more than one hour…it’s all aerobic. Beyond 1 hour, we’re just limited by what is stored in our muscles, and we can’t top with nutrition on the fly so the power output falls off.
So based on that, if we had enough stored in our muscles, we’d be able to go at FTP pace for an entire Ironman, but unfortunately we don’t, so we have to dial back the pace because we can’t top up stores as fast as we are depleting them. Can someone please state if this is correct?
So to Dawhead’s point…after an evening of refuelling and nite of sleep, it should be possible to replicate the same workout (say 1 hour at FTP) daily, assuming your body can replenish by the next day.
I agree that there’s nothing ‘special’ about 1hr aside from it being a nice convenient number to use that is likely ‘close enough’ to a physiological breakover point which Coggan etc. are trying to approximate.
But FTP isn’t supposed to be your ‘long term sustained power level’.
And I really don’t understand what you mean when you say:
you could tackle an FTP test like 1 hour TT test, and you’ll get a number. if you really rode it like a TT, you’ll end up with a power level that has less to do with your long term sustained power level than if you rode it the way i’m intimating at: riding such that any increase in power at any point during the test will lead to a blowup within, say, 2-3 minutes.
My FTP currently somewhere around 275. However, I can easily hold 310W for 5 minutes and could likely hold it for 15 minutes with a lot of sweating and pain. So a power level such that any increase during any point in a test would lead to a blowup within 2-3 minutes is obviously not 275 for me.
Is it 300W? Well, if I start a test at 300W and increase it to 310, that’s fine and would not lead to a blowup within 2-3 minutes. If I start at 310 and increase to 320, I could still likely hold it for at least 5 or 6 minutes before blowing up.
So by your logic my FTP is not 275, but is more likely somewhere north of 315. That would be nice. But it’s just not true. There is no way I can average 315W for 1hr. The reality is the most I can manage for 1hr is much closer to 275 than it is 315.
Riding at 95% for 60 min is probably the least likely way to increase your ftp (or 60 min peak power). I’d never do that workout. The longest interval that I ever do at full power is 20 min, but that’s after a lot of work mixing below for longer durations and above for shorter.
You know, I calculated that I lost nats by 2 watts this year. It was the single worst TT (from a power standpoint) that I’ve done; the heat + humidity crushes me. Even if I’d ridden conservatively at -10 watts from what I was doing all season, then, well…
Yup - hot in Lou that week! We all were down on pwr while there, just some less than others. My pwr file from the road race was just stupid for that first 10 mins, then sucko after being relegated to the chase pack. Really drives home the point that you expend some power in cooling and some for the pedals.