FTP realistic gain possibilities

Hello,

This is my first year training with power (PT Pro) and I am not exactly certain what to expect from my training from the perspective of increasing FTP. Ultimately my goal is to increase FTP, however, I am not sure what is realistic to expect for one season. Since I know this is a bit of a loaded question let me provide a little background.

Using the 20 minute FTP testing in A Coggans book (and I know there is some debate on the best method to test) I came up with my FTP at 240W . I weigh approx 79kgs. Cat 4. 35 years old.

My training plan has me going 4 days a week under a periodized regimen for a double peak - early April and mid June. The plan is a combo of J Friel's perodization and power training principles from A Coggan.

I have been fit my whole life, with those periods we all go through as the infrequent exceptions. Never quite the top athlete, but always good enough to not be embarrased by most anyone.

All that said, is there a way to determine (ballpark) what kind of FTP increase is reasonable to expect? Any insight you guys have is tremendously appreciated!

T

It really depends on how focused you have been on FTP type training in the past. If you've been diligently plugging away and boosting your FTP for the past several years using means other than a PM, then I'd expect more modest gains than if you have just "been riding lots" for several years and are now apporoaching training with a bit more rigor in addition to using the PM.

Personally, I was in the former situation, having trained with some rigor, but without an HRM. I got a PM right around the time that I determined my FTP via a 40K TT. At that time it was 280W. A year later, after training with power more rigorously, I made a modest gain to 289. This year's aspirational goal is 300W.

Eventually PM or not, we all get to a point where we've reached our genetic ceiling (at least with using the current time we have to train as effectively as possible).

This is my first year focusing on raising FTP. I suppose I would have fallen into the latter of your two categories (generally riding lots). I will say that I tried to ride hard, lots. But, in the end that targets nothing specific.

Is 280W realistic?

There is no good answer to your question. Anybody who says otherwise is trying to sell you something. Lots of people have started at 240W, and ended at 280W. Some have even done it in a single season. It so happened I went from ~250W (estimated) at the end of 2005 to about 280W in October 2006, which felt like about all that was possible to achieve in that time frame.

But that was me. You don't have my genes, or my time to train, my motivation, my training history, etc., and I don't have yours. All training is an experiment with N=1 subjects; there is no way of knowing what the outcome of that experiment will be ahead of time. There are sedentary individuals out there who simply don't respond to endurance training! It's hard for us to imagine, but studies that put untrained folks on supervised endurance training programs always find a few percent who simply don't improve. On the other hand, we all know athletes whose bodies seem to react to training immediately and vigorously. You don't know where you are on that spectrum of training response.

Even the good responders eventually reach their genetic limits. One of the hardest parts psychologically about training is that we don't really know when we've hit our ceiling; even if you've already hit it, the only way to be sure you've hit it is to assume you haven't.

As Tim Noakes put it, "All training plans are essentially bogus, in that they presume the result of an experiment before that experiment is conducted." Train to improve; don't presume to know how big that improvement will be, or on what time course the improvement will come. Don't get me wrong; I still use goals like, "under 20 minutes up the local climb," or "X w/kg over Y minutes", or whatever, to help me stay motivated and remind myself why I'm training. But I know there's a chance I won't hit those goals this season, or indeed, ever.

Realistically, most riders who go from 'just riding around' to focused training with a power meter make blockbuster gains in the FTP department in the first season of focused training. "Blockbuster" will vary from individual to individual, though. There are folks that could take that 240 number up to 300, while others may struggle to get it up to 260, in a single season. Take comfort in the fact that it will probably take years to reach your potential, and that the training is doing what it's supposed to be doing, regardless of how fast or slow it's going about it...