Testing. It never gets easier, you just get faster. Or, if Greg LeMond was speaking today, he’d probably say “you just put out more watts”. That doesn’t quite have the same romance to it.
Testing. It’s a minefield. Be that strength testing, bike testing, run testing.
This has come up quite a lot recently with an increasing number of cyclists I work with, so I’ll focus on the bike. There is not enough time to delve into every variable to offer a comprehensive answer. So, I’ll go over some things to consider next time you plan to test your capabilities.
Firstly, a couple of assumptions. 1 - You don’t have access to a laboratory, we are discussing ‘field testing’ here. 2 - I’ll use the commonly accepted term of FTP as a definition of power at anaerobic threshold. If you’ve got a spare week, you are more than welcome to read 100s of academic papers arguing about FTP, critical power/speed, maximum lactate steady state, etc but I really don’t think 99% of us care that much about the intricacies of defining ‘threshold’. We want a number that tells us how fit we are and helps us define training intensities.
Factors to consider
· Do you use a power meter?
· Indoors vs outdoors
· Terrain - Incline vs Flat
· Ramp vs TT vs Power Profile
· Training without power shock
Do you use a power meter?
Yes - Great, you’ve got an objective measure of your output. There’s no guess work and external factors are limited. The watts you produce are just that, you can’t cheat that result.
No - It gets a bit trickier, but until very recently competitive cyclists didn’t have a power meter and somehow managed to train well enough to achieve their goals. Power is not everything.
Indoors vs outdoors
This is a big one. There can be big differences between getting your test result indoors and outdoors. Anecdotally, more people seem to be able to produce more power outdoors than indoors, sometimes by as much as 20%. So, if your indoor test gives you a threshold of 250w indoors, your outdoor threshold may be higher. But then again, you might be one of those people who are similar indoors and out.
How to check - Use heart rate. Do you produce the same average power for the same average heart rate indoors and outdoors over the same duration? If they vary, then you may need to amend your power zones for indoor training and outdoor training.
The Terrain where you perform the test - Inclines vs Flat Roads
When doing your outdoor testing, this makes a big difference. Most people can produce more power on a hill than on the flat. The reason for this is the inertia of the hill, you constantly have a force to push against and that force is usually relatively consistent. Unfortunately, in the UK we don’t really have many climbs that are 20minutes long, so testing is probably done on a flat road and therefore it may be slightly less than you could produce on that hill.
Common Testing Protocols - Ramp vs TT vs Power Profile
Ramp Test (Zwift, Trainerroad, etc)
In this test you (or the ERG on your trainer) step up the power at 1-3minute intervals, you simply keep pushing at the prescribed power until you cannot push another revolution. In my experience, ramp tests usually give you a higher FTP than what you can hold for 40-60 minutes. It’s a short test, around 12-20mins and if you have greater anaerobic capabilities, you will have a higher estimation of your hour power. For example, Zwift applies the formula that 76% of your best 1min power as your FTP, so holding 412w for the 1-min before you grind to a halt will give you 313w as your threshold. As the power ramps up, you have a greater contribution from the anaerobic system. The greater this is, the higher it will estimate your threshold. The other negative of the RAMP test is that as your training progresses and you move closer to competition, you will add more intensity and reduce volume. This period usually includes more VO2max and anaerobic work, which in turn will increase your ‘top end’ fitness and result in a greater FTP estimation from the test protocol. What’s happening is that you’re getting sharper for your event but your FTP (hour power) might not have changed or may have even gone down. This is because, generally, the better you are at shorter efforts, the worse you are at longer ones. You can’t be good at everything.
I do use the ramp test too as there are several big positives. It offers a very simple test, there’s no pacing involved, so it’s a true level of maximal effort. It’s also less daunting, so it can be used regularly without a mental drain on the athlete. It's one test on one day, not a series, so it can be incorporated into a training week very easily and not impact on the athletes training time.
20min Power Test (Allen and Coggan) -
Now, if done properly, this can give a decent estimation of 'FTP' and allow you to set pretty accurate training zones. There’s a link to the protocol here. Essentially, you follow that protocol and assume that 95% of your best 20min power is your FTP, so if you do 300w for 20-minutes, your FTP is estimated to be 285w. The trouble is most people don’t do the 5-minute maximum effort before the 20minute test. The key here is to go full gas for the 5 minutes to expire a decent amount of anaerobic energy before you complete the 20min test. That makes the 95% calculation more accurate. If you don’t complete that 5min effort, or you do it too easily, your 20min power will be too high to accurately estimate FTP and your training zones will be too high and you’ll possibly train too hard in your training sessions. For example, a rider I work with can hold around 400w for 5minutes. So, leading into a 20min test, I expect them to complete the 5-minute max effort within 10% of that number (360w) before their 20minute effort.
Power Profiling -
This is the most comprehensive way of assessing your performance, it involved tests across several durations to help develop a power curve and identify critical power (similar to FTP). These durations are typically 6sec, 60sec, 3min, 5min and 20+min. If developing a critical power curve these durations can be altered, but you need 2-3 efforts between 3min and 20min+ to calculate critical power and assign effective training zones. It can be quite time consuming as you need to test in a fresh state and doing several efforts over the week several times a year may lose you training time.
Final points:
1. Pick your poison - Select 1 way to test that is most relevant to your discipline and stick with it for sustained period of time. This will help you become familiar with the protocol, feelings, requirements and reduce the fear of the test. Some recommendations below.
Time Triallist - Do longer duration testing, 20min+.
Cyclocross - A ramp test will probably be sufficient
Road - Do a mix of durations
2. Create a repeatable protocol - Make sure your lead up is consistent. I generally recommend a 3 day lead up including Day 1- off, Day 2- a 1hr spin with 2-3 short sprints, Day 3 – Test day. It will make sure you’re not peaking for the test. If you fully taper for a test you may hit some really high numbers as you’re and will struggle with actually applying these numbers when training load accumulates over the next 2-3 weeks
3. Realise that no matter what the result, it will never be perfect and in practice your FTP will vary day-to-day. You will probably need to calibrate your power zones with heart rate and RPE pretty regularly.
My Conclusion:
I pick the protocol depending on the athletes’ goals. I’m a big fan of using testing rather than just pulling workout data to estimate thresholds and assign training zones. Using a test day gets athletes used to stress similar to a race day. If the athlete is using power this will generally involve creating a power profile to monitor progress across several durations and assigning training zones. The durations will be different depending on their goals. For criteria and cyclocross racers we may use 6s, 60sec, 3min and 12min as most of these races are decided on shorter efforts (<5min) followed by periods of relative recovery. For a road racer we may look to use 5min and 20min+. The durations will change depending on the riders’ goals. Testing will be done indoors for consistency, but the training zones will then be calibrated to RPE and/or heart rate both for indoor and outdoor sessions. If big differences are seen, I may look to apply some testing outdoors to double check.
But, what if you don’t use power? 🤯
If the rider is not using power or heart rate, it’s about finding several hills, segments or courses of varying durations that will allow us to time the efforts to track progress. Progress is progress, whether that be power or time to completion of a certain distance.
The outdoor conditions have a big influence, windy days can play havoc with a testing protocol. But it’s the best we can do, and that’s how we all started, isn’t it? We all have a hill we track our progress on. Am I faster than last time, yes or no?
Following these measures, we prescribe training by rate of perceived exertion (RPE). The training prescription takes care of the intensity. For example, I could ask a rider to complete 5 repeats of a 3-minute hill as fast as they can with a consistent level of effort at 8-9/10 (i.e., don’t sprint off for the first 30sec then fall to bits). Inevitably, they will fall into doing this session at Zone 5 or VO2max intensity, if done correctly. Completing 3 hours steadily at talking pace, well, this will fall into aerobic endurance work. It’s not as complex as you think to train without the fabled power meter.
Power makes this easier, but you can often become a slave to it and forget about everything else. Always use the feeling to assess things on the fly.
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