In an effort to change up my bike training and move past the 3.7 W/Kg FTP (225 watts) I’ve had for several years I’ve been working on my high end power by doing 3 and 5 minute intervals, mostly 3 minutes though.
In the past I’ve done threshold intervals 2 days a week with a longer ride on the weekend sometimes with Z3 intervals thrown in. I’ve even added 1 hour rides a few times. I’m on the bike normally 9 to 11 hours a week
I’ve seen improvment above Z4 (Coggan’s) from 260 watts to 295 (last night) which according to cyclingpowerlab.com predicts my 5 min power to be ~270 which I know I can beat with a one-off hard effort.
So now my 5 min power is getting over 120% of my FTP and my question is should I continue to work on raising my high end (VO2?) by doing the same thing (5X3’ Zone 5 with 5’ rests)? add more repeats? add time to the intervals? or maybe something else?
I’m 14 weeks out from my biggest HIM race of the year so I still have plenty of time.
This year I feel ‘punchy’ on the bike and it seems to be much easier to do shorter hill climbs at a higher power than I’ve done before, hard to explain. FTP is right on schedule but I haven’t tested only cuz I’ve been working on something different.
In an effort to change up my bike training and move past the 3.7 W/Kg FTP (225 watts) I’ve had for several years I’ve been working on my high end power by doing 3 and 5 minute intervals, mostly 3 minutes though.
In the past I’ve done threshold intervals 2 days a week with a longer ride on the weekend sometimes with Z3 intervals thrown in. I’ve even added 1 hour rides a few times. I’m on the bike normally 9 to 11 hours a week
I’ve seen improvment above Z4 (Coggan’s) from 260 watts to 295 (last night) which according to cyclingpowerlab.com predicts my 5 min power to be ~270 which I know I can beat with a one-off hard effort.
So now my 5 min power is getting over 120% of my FTP and my question is should I continue to work on raising my high end (VO2?) by doing the same thing (5X3’ Zone 5 with 5’ rests)? add more repeats? add time to the intervals? or maybe something else?
I’m 14 weeks out from my biggest HIM race of the year so I still have plenty of time.
This year I feel ‘punchy’ on the bike and it seems to be much easier to do shorter hill climbs at a higher power than I’ve done before, hard to explain. FTP is right on schedule but I haven’t tested only cuz I’ve been working on something different.
Thoughts? Questions?
Thanks
jaretj
Personally, I have not found a heavy emphasis on level 5 intervals* as being the most effective way of increasing my FTP. That’s especially true with 3 min efforts, which to me seem to target FRC as much as VO2max.
But, I’m only n=1 (albeit someone whose FTP is high relative to their VO2max), and YMMV.
*E.g, up to 18 wk of ‘Hickson intervals’ 3 d/wk, performed on an ergometer to oontrol/maximize the effort.
Thanks, I’ve just been stuck so long at the same FTP with my current time limitations that I needed to try something else.
It may be that 3.7 is all I’m capable of doing and I’ve squeezed everything out of my training that I can. I know I had to try something different, more volume didn’t help last year so I moved on to this.
Would you happen to have any suggestions or questions I should be asking myself?
How long have you been doing the shorter intervals?
Have you tested your FTP recently?
If you have been doing the shorter intervals for 6-8 weeks and have not tested FTP, I bet you will be pleasantly surprised.
I am not a coach, but my understanding is that you need to change up your training stimulus or you will stagnate. Many coaches here advocate doing these short, hard maximal efforts early in season and then progress to longer steady state intervals as you get closer to your target race.
Normally I reserve them for race prep in my long ride. Say starting 4 to 6 weeks out I’ll ride 60-70 miles with 40 of it near HIM effort which would be just below 85%.
Perhaps adding them earlier would yield better results or even do it on my thursday ride in the place of my Zone 5’s
Have you tried 4x10? 5x8? (adjust rest interval accordingly). Can’t guarantee changing the duration will be the key to increasing your FTP, but you should be able to increase power a bit over a shorter interval, maybe making your body more used to a higher power?
From what you say, at this point it couldn’t hurt…
Do it all. 20x 2 min. 10x 5 min…pick your poison it all helps. I was a Cat 2 cyclist & my best 40k tt times came from a summer of a lot of crit races, lots of long road races, a lot of 25k tt’s & a few 50 k tt’s. I did a 25k tt pretty much every week & did a lot of 5 min efforts in training.
I think in the end we are all eventually limited by God given talent. As much as we don’t want to admit we are tapped out with the talent we have or time we have that crossroad will come. And volume does not appear to be your limiter.
For me I do almost nothing but ~90% type stuff and continue to get stronger and stronger on the bike. But…I’ve only been riding about 5 years and have upped the volume each year.
10 and 15 minutes are my bread and butter for FTP. For me I can’t say I’m always at XXX% of FTP for either duration. It kind of depends on how the legs feel/where you are in the training cycle/the weather, etc. as to the numbers I get. For example my power is lower on hotter days in order to complete the interval w/o blowing up; my power is lower if my legs are tired from being deep in 3 week block of training. It just depends. I guess I would describe the effort as controlled hell. You’ve done enough at this point to know how hard you can go w/o blowing up or ruining the rest of your intervals. I guess in my mind I pace myself based on being trashed by the time you finish the last interval. On a day where I end up with decent legs or cool conditions the numbers are naturally a bit higher. I still push the same amount but the average over the intervals may end up being 10 watts higher than on a tired leg day or hot day at the same tested FTP.
what has been the most effective way for you to raise your FTP?
Training in the “sweetspot.”
(At the 1st-ever power-based training seminar in Philadelphia in 2001, I ended my talk with a Lettermanesque top 10 list of things I’d learned by using a powermeter. The last three were: 3) specificity, 2) specificity!, 1) SPECIFICITY!)