How to Boost Your FTP (I ask Ben the simple question we all want answered)

In this podcast, the RCA's resident data nerd Ben Treble discusses ways you can boost your FTP (Functional Threshold Power), using specific workouts and progressing those workouts over time. Notably, specific threshold based intervals sessions you can progress over time. We focus on the 20min effort in this discussion, as that is the most commonly referred to FTP protocol. 

 

Full Transcript:

Cameron Nichols (00:00):

Welcome back to the RCA podcast where today I'm joined again by the RCAs data nerd Ben Treble. And Ben, I'm just going to ask you a really simplified question today. Probably one that doesn't really have much scientific research to back it up as a standalone question, but it's probably the biggest question we get from recreational and amateur road cyclists that come on board at the RCA. How do I boost my FTP? What do I need to do? What does the sign say?

Ben Treble (00:35):

Why do you want boost your FTP?

Cameron Nichols (00:37):

Because it sounds good. It's what the gym bro is talking about, how much they bench in cycling. We talk about how big our FTP is, so I want to go to my local group ride and tell everyone I've got a FTP of over 300 watts and of course in doing that, I should subsequently be stronger on the bike because if I have a bigger FTP, it increases everything else. I should be able to climb better because normally you're climbing around the FTP mark, it's going to help everything Ben. Alright, everything life is going to be better with a bigger FTP.

Ben Treble (01:14):

Sounds great. Where do I get one?

Cameron Nichols (01:18):

Well you tell me. You are the one, you are the man that knows all the science literature. So what have you got for

Ben Treble (01:24):

Me? If you come to me?

Cameron Nichols (01:24):

Is there a paper? Is there a paper?

Ben Treble (01:26):

It's a question I get. I get this all the time. No, the answer is it's very difficult. I didn't do a deep dive. Let's be fair. There could be papers, but I did do some research on this in the journals and there's very little on purely comparing say different workouts like HIIT workout versus endurance protocols. What improved FTP the most? Partly because the scientific community will probably put their hand up quickly and say FTP, how did you test it and was it a reliable test in the first place? The answer is often no. So then they move on and they measure with other metrics and do other research. Interesting. Not the answer that the everyday cyclist wants to hear.

Cameron Nichols (02:18):

This is a short podcast. Alright, thanks everyone for listening. Joking. Yeah. Okay, well then give me what you see anecdotally. So you've got a lot of recreational and amateurs that come to you and this is a goal of theirs and if you scratch the surface, normally the underlying goal is, well look, I've got this mate in the local group ride and he's kind of given me the shits and I want to beat him up the local climb. Or it's actually next year I'm targeting an event and I want to do well. But initially the focus is on FTP. So how would you go about as a general blanket

Ben Treble (03:09):

I'll play if someone comes to me and says, I want to improve my FTP and I say that's it. You just want to try and improve the test result. My first question is what tests are you doing? Let's just assume there's two main ones being like a 20 minute FT P test and the RAMP test. Probably the two most common FTP tests because you can kind of, depending on what type of athlete they are, I'm not going to say you can game the test, but you can design the training to target a better result out of that test, which will give you a higher FTP number as a result.

Cameron Nichols (03:46):

You can definitely game the test a hundred percent. Let's talk about it. Let's game the test.

Ben Treble (03:51):

If you are a more anaerobic sort of dominant athlete, like you're better at sprinting high intensity stuff naturally a bit more muscular, the ramp test is already going to be like a favored test protocol. If you are more aerobic and you're better at sort of steady efforts, the 20 minute test will give you a better outcome. So that's

Cameron Nichols (04:13):

Not on the indoor trainer. Not on the indoor trainer. Don't do the 20 minute test on the indoor trainer

Ben Treble (04:18):

Only if you have a lot of cooling and yes, maybe less, but yeah, the first one is let's work out which test protocol is better for you and then we can start to look at what efforts are going to help you improve that result.

Cameron Nichols (04:32):

Okay, so I'm going to give you more example cam. Yeah, I'm going to give you because I reckon a lot of recreational and amateurs have done the ramp test and the ramp test definitely has merits external to the genetic capabilities that somebody might have that favors more anaerobic muscular strength on the trainer to step up a ramp. But in terms of the practicality, because a lot of recreational and amateurs that want to know what their FTP is to go out and do a 20 minute sustained effort, which is probably the more the better way of getting your FTP, they don't know how to do that test. You would've seen this a hundred times where they've gone out of the blocks way too hard and they die towards the end the last five minutes, they're basically in a recovery spin because they're so smashed from the first 10 minutes where actual fact you should be almost the other way.

(05:26)
You should be starting below and finishing strong, but you would never know how to do that until you've done it a few times. But I think it comes back to the fact that a lot of people want to boost their FTP, but they never even ride at FTP. They're doing local bunch rides or group rides where it's very on off. They're in zone two or then they're in zone four or five, so they race up the hill, then they're coasting down the other side and zone. Or they might be just doing random swift iwt racing is probably the only one where you actually are operating around tempo, sweet spot, even a bit of threshold consistently in a sustained manner. But I think a lot of on-road riding with mates group rides and just people that go out and ride generally they sort tend to jump between zones one and two and then go straight up to zones five and six and that threshold area really gets missed. So that actually don't spend a lot of time there, even though inadvertently by them saying, Hey, I want to increase my FTP. It's like, are you actually spending any time there? So I think that would be a good one if we just drill in on that one. If I said, okay Ben, I want to improve my 20 minute, what do you got for me?

Ben Treble (06:42):

Oh, the 20 minute not the ran.

Cameron Nichols (06:44):

Yeah,

Ben Treble (06:45):

Not

Cameron Nichols (06:45):

The ramp. There you. Yeah, the 20 minute I was

Ben Treble (06:46):

Prepared for the ramp. That's okay.

Cameron Nichols (06:48):

That's for a clearly one.

Ben Treble (06:49):

Let's go. Yeah, I'm okay with that. Yeah. Well the first thing I would do is let's assume it's a sort of amateur level rider. They're maybe riding three, four times a week. I would still leave one long social ride on the weekend and then just use the midweek rides as two focused interval rides. One I would do over unders. So this is normally around, yeah, it's normally the over is 105% a threshold and then the under is 95% and you can do it in different ways, but usually I might do say one minute over, one minute under and you might do a set of eight minutes or 10 minutes, you just progressively and you might do two sets first and you slowly build up. So you might end up doing three sets and I'm just going to do this for say two blocks. That's the first key session.

(07:47)
And the second key session would be learning to ride the time trial. So doing practicing, building them up, so probably doing two by 10 minutes at slightly above threshold and then getting them two by 15 minutes and eventually getting them to do 20 minute efforts and learning what that feels like riding slightly above threshold for 20 minutes straight at a steady state and preparing them for that test. So there would be the two sessions that just you progress them through those two, you've got the lactate shuttling session and then you've got the time trial above threshold session and then retest after whatever you say you want for eight

Cameron Nichols (08:27):

Weeks. And so let's just drill into this a little bit more. So you said two blocks, what do you mean by a block? So you're talking about eight weeks? About eight,

Ben Treble (08:41):

Yeah, let's go with eight weeks. I would do three weeks of progression. So I like to structure my, let's call them blocks. Typically three weeks on one week easy and the way I do the first three weeks, the first week I call a try week. So we try the workouts for the first time and get a feel was it the right, did we get the right number of intervals and sets, was it achievable or not? How hard was it based on that? The second week is the practice week, so it's ideally the same workouts, they should feel a bit easier. We get some acute response and the third week is a push week, so we increase either the number of intervals or the number of sets and then the third week is an easy week, so it's normally the same as the first week or with a little bit reduced volume and then we go again in the next block, but it'll be an increased progression.

Cameron Nichols (09:36):

Okay. The overruns, let's talk about what the first session might look like in the first block and then what the final session would look like in the second block if we're progressing so people can get a good feel of where you would start and where you would finish with the over unders.

Ben Treble (10:01):

Yeah, I would probably attempt to start with two sets with eight minute block. So you would do four, one minute over four, one minute unders, that's an eight minute block and then you would do roughly five minutes recovery at who knows, 50% threshold and then you go again for a second block. So that's probably the first place I would start.

Cameron Nichols (10:30):

Okay, and where would you be working towards?

Ben Treble (10:34):

Yeah, I'd probably try to get to a point where you could do 12 minutes,

Cameron Nichols (10:39):

So

Ben Treble (10:40):

Say six minutes over six minutes under through one set and three sets probably in an eight week period.

Cameron Nichols (10:47):

Yep. Okay, so that's the unders. Now the sustained time trial efforts, this is the one that I'm interested to dig a little bit into here because something that you said got my attention, you're working towards 20 minutes over threshold if you can do 20 minutes over threshold, isn't that an FTP test? Isn't that achieving more than what you would want because you're kind of like

Ben Treble (11:21):

Your F, but you should be able to test then even better when you go into a test. I mean if let's say your FT P is 300 watts

Cameron Nichols (11:32):

When you get started, so I've just come in and I'm just starting this eight week block and my FTP is 300 watts and I want to get it to three 50.

Ben Treble (11:42):

If you are not used to time trialing, whilst it should be achievable doing say three 20 for 20 minutes, it probably would be very challenging.

(11:52)
Some might struggle, some might be able to pull it off. So you've got to work out that starting point, which is why I would often start with 10 minute intervals to get a gauge on doing two 10 minute intervals with a pretty short say like two minutes or three minutes between them to get a gauge. That would be my starting point. Let's understand are they good at doing 20 minute efforts, pacing them, what's the heart rate response by just splitting one hard 20 minute effort above threshold this way and that gives you an idea. If they can't get through that, then your starting point becomes a bit lower, right? You might have to do two 10 minutes below threshold with more recovery and progress from here to a point where you get them to doing 20 minute effort above threshold, getting ready for the test right at I think the training at the end of the day, you want the race or the test to be easier than the training.

Cameron Nichols (12:56):

Yes. Would there be an example or a scenario where you would even, because a lot of people haven't done any sustained, even though I've done a ramp test in my FTPs 300 watts, it's like well they may not even be able to hold 300 watts for five minutes or even that. So is there a world in which you might even start the threshold sustained efforts less than 10 or you would always start at 10 and if they're struggling, just reduce the power?

Ben Treble (13:35):

Yeah, you could go less. I think it probably depends a little bit on if they're outdoors, what climbs do they have available to them. If it's not easy to access a long climb that's 20 minutes, maybe they've got an eight minute climb, then maybe I'm going to drop it to eight minutes. So it's just like it's a practical component to that session. You really are not used to sort of long steady state efforts. You might have to go smaller I would hope nothing like six minutes probably. It's going to be hard and maybe you're not going to be that great at it the first few times, but people pretty quickly, they get these acute adjustments to them, but it requires repetition.

Cameron Nichols (14:25):

And so where's your end state? So let's just say your start state 6, 8, 10 minutes, depending practically what you've got available in your area towards the end of this block, which is an eight week block, you're getting to a point where you're doing two times 20 minute threshold efforts. Is that what you said?

Ben Treble (14:46):

Yeah, in an eight week block, I think it's cheaper.

Cameron Nichols (14:51):

So tell me what that session looks like. The two times 20 minutes. Because if your FTP is 300 watts at the start, obviously you're aiming for three 50. This is the example. What are you aiming for? Two times 20 is a pretty solid workout and obviously you've got to repeat it. So you do it once and then you've got to repeat it again. So are you really aiming for above threshold? Is that actually doable?

Ben Treble (15:20):

For repeated twenties I would do them at threshold.

Cameron Nichols (15:23):

At threshold. At

Ben Treble (15:24):

Threshold I wouldn't be going above threshold for the repeat twenties, but if we're doing, say in the start we're doing two by 10 at a certain point I would want to look at going above not a lot, like 105%.

Cameron Nichols (15:37):

Yeah. Okay. And how would you coach that to somebody that's never done these sustained efforts before? The example is I want you to go at 105% of your FTP for these two times 10 minute efforts with a five minute recovery in between. Are they at the start of the 10 minute effort? Are they doing 105% out of the block or are they building towards it? How would you normally coach?

Ben Treble (16:08):

There's a good warmup and then you just try and keep it as steady as possible for the training?

Cameron Nichols (16:16):

For the training, yeah, so if you saw some, I'm going to throw some examples. I know this is the one, the overruns isn't so bad. I mean people will still fail in an over unders, but it's a bit more easy to reflect on that one and go, alright, I struggled to get through those eight repetitions, I got to seven or I got to six, so I'm going to reduce the over and the under power by 5% for my next one so I can get through it. I don't want to injure myself, but the sustained efforts can be quite a funky one because people haven't, particularly for those who haven't done it before, it's like, well how do I start my effort? How do I finish my effort? What if I'm doing these 10 minute efforts as the example at five minutes in, I start at 1 0 5 and I start dropping off and I end up at 90% of my FTP?

Ben Treble (17:12):

Yeah, I have a different take to you on this one you said at the start. Okay, good. You think it was better to go easier at the start and then ramp it up? I disagree with this approach. If it's purely you have to get to 20 minutes. To me there's a high likelihood if you go too easy say in the first half and you're like, okay, there's more in the tank, I'm going to push that you could get to the end and have reserve left in the tank that you didn't really go all out and this 20 minute test, I want you to get to the end of it and fall off the bike in a safe way. It's a maximal test. There should be nothing left in the tank in a 20 minute time trial like this. And you have to also train for that. That's part of doing the two times 20, right? It's building the tolerance and getting used to that pushing, which a lot of people haven't done necessarily before, but I would prefer somebody go out the gate slightly harder and even if the power drops a bit towards the end, you're getting everything out.

(18:31)
Interesting. That's my take.

Cameron Nichols (18:34):

Obviously

Ben Treble (18:35):

If you're going out too hard and then it's dropping a lot at the end because you went way too high above your threshold, your lactate builds up, you get the hydrogen S and then you completely park it four minutes early. To me it's a failed and we're going to retest.

Cameron Nichols (18:53):

Okay.

Ben Treble (18:55):

Yeah.

Cameron Nichols (18:55):

Alright, well that's good. I mean there's a couple of different perspectives for you. I think I take that feedback on board and I think it can go either way in an actual 20 minute test because done a 20 minute test a lot of times and I've done the proper FDP test as well a number of times, which includes the all out five minute effort before the 20 minute effort. And that's not a nice test, that's why I don't think people do it, even though that's the way you should do a proper FTP test. And that is you do a VO two max fatiguing effort for five minutes upfront after a good warmup. Then you have, is it a five or a 10 minute recovery? I think it's somewhere between there and then you go do the 20 minute effort and I'm of the ilk that I'll work my way into it and then I'll really the last couple of minutes rinse myself out to a point where I almost feel sick and I get to the end of that test.

(19:54)
I'm like, oh, if I could have kept going for another 10, 15 seconds here, which I probably could have, does that mean that I've not really given it everything in that 20 minutes but then I've gone the other way in the past where I'm fatiguing so bad at the end of the 20 minutes I'm like I've just really just ruined the test because I've just so fatigued at the end. The power drop-offs been significant. So it's such a fine balance and I think it really depends on the person and this is why obviously we're ultimately talking about this, it's actually the pacing effect. There's a real art to it and everyone's different and that's why I'm so pleased that you mentioned that as one of your key workouts because if that's what you're trying to achieve with an FTP increase and I think look, I there's a lot more merit in training this way versus training for a ramp test because how many times do you go out in the real world and you get benefits out of training for a ramp test? Don't get me wrong, but it's not really specific unless you're doing a ramp test challenge with your mates, but what are you more likely to do? You're more likely to do a climb competing with your mate or you're more likely to half wheel your mate side by side. What do you need for that? You need good sustained threshold power. So this scenario to me makes a lot more sense to train for if somebody's looking to boost their FTP and yet the training for the sustained efforts definitely makes a lot of sense. So

Ben Treble (21:34):

Something I quite, this is a training thing, I do that just as an add-on where I would apply your approach. Where I go slightly easier or reserved at the start and later would be one of the ways I motivate myself. This is a session I do for me is I was a climb, a local climb here. It's about, I think the segment is about 14 minutes maybe give or take depending on how good light you are. And week on week I try to beat my personal best and I use the wahoo climbing so it tracks the segment and tells you how close you are to your time and I normally spend the first half just trying to stay on pace and I get through the first half, then I go, okay, now I know if there's anything left, you start to push more and then when there's only like 500 meters left, you just go full gas.

Cameron Nichols (22:35):

Nice.

Ben Treble (22:36):

Yeah. So this is one way to improve pbs and that's one where you do the complete opposite. You don't go all out at the start. It's a good way to learn pacing is to use that function on a bike computer.

Cameron Nichols (22:50):

Good. Alright, well we got there in the end. It was going to start off as a three-minute podcast and I think we turned it into about a 20, 25 minute podcast in the end with hopefully some good meat on the bone for people out there looking to boost their ftp. So thanks for your time Ben. If you actually are looking to increase your FTP, please note we do have plans on the RCAs website off the shelf plans both four and 12 week. We've got four week FTP building plans and our 12 week plans are the general speed and strength plans. But they both are designed to increase your FTP. So make sure you check them out on our website, www.roadcyclingacademy.com and we'll catch you in the next podcast.

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