- Your functional threshold power has long been considered
the cornerstone of the aerobic performance.
Essentially this is the maximum amount of power that
you can sustain when riding flat out for 60 minutes.
- Yes it's the single biggest factor governing
how fast you can ride.
And this is how you improve it.
(upbeat gentle music)
- [Man On right] The first thing to accept
when wanting to improve
your FTP is that it's going to hurt,
it's going to to take time,
and you will not see improvements every week.
However, if you put the work in it will pay dividends.
Now with that little disclaimer's out of the way,
let's get stuck in.
- [Man On Left] One point to note is why you
definitely do not need a power meter
for any of these intervals.
You will need an understanding of how it should feel
at these intensities,
but we have a link in the description for a video on that.
And yes, a power meter will make things easier
and it does remove a little bit of the guesswork.
Plus you can more easily track your progress.
(upbeat music)
- [Man On right] First up is an all time classic.
Chances are if you've ever read anything about training
with power you'd have seen a session
called two times twenty.
This is because it has long been recognized as the most
effective way of boosting your FTP.
- [Man On Left] There's a reason for this,
you spend just the right
amount of time at an intensity
that is just about sustainable
without completely exhausting your system.
Meaning you can recover, become stronger,
and then repeat the efforts again in relatively
quick succession.
Right, back to the session
and I'll describe it to you briefly.
Start out with an 8-12 minute warm up.
That will get the blood going and your muscles warmed up.
In the effort you are looking around a 9-10
on the perceived exertion scale.
In between efforts you're looking
around a two to eight minute recovery.
Now during this effort you can sit at
whatever cadence you want,
whatever feels comfortable,
and also your position.
Whatever position you feel comfortable to you,
or what suits the event you'll be doing.
Now it is worth reminding you though,
that these are hard.
So we only recommend you do a maximum of two of these
sessions in a week.
And only string around three to six weeks together before
moving on to something else.
I guess it's time that I stop talking about it
and I get to doing it.
(upbeat music)
The second way to approach this is by shortening the effort
but making it more intense.
There's been an increasing amount of research
that shows that to be able to boost your FTP
you actually need to go beyond it.
So this is how.
For this session complete a short warm up
around 8-12 minutes before going straight
into one minute at zone five
followed by three minutes at zone three.
Repeat this three to four times per interval
and allow four to eight minutes recovery.
Aim to complete two to four of these in any given session.
(gentle music)
Now this session is quite difficult to complete on feel
but it is still possible.
You're looking for an effort that you can sustain
for around five minutes,
for that one minute effort.
And then knock it back subtly for the three minutes
because that's more of a tempo style effort.
Now this is a hard session and you're going to want to be
a little fresher when you're coming to do them.
But that's still fun I guess.
(upbeat music)
- Next up on our hit list The Ways to Improve
your FTP is the one that I'm going incredibly hard
but for a much shorter period of time.
Because let's face it, unless you are absolutely
on top of your game on any given day
it's actually quite hard to maintain maximum focus
for a full 20 to 30 minutes.
So, we are going to reduce the efforts right down to
30 to 60 seconds and the total work load
is three minutes to six minutes.
But these are max efforts with a really short recovery.
And because of that short recovery you will be targeting
every energy system in your body.
So when you recover your FTP will be going up.
Start hard, commit to the effort,
and don't ease off until you get to the end.
(energizing music)
One thing I should add is you don't want to do more
than six of these in total and your maximum recovery
between efforts should only be three minutes.
And that's what makes it tough.
One final way you can look to improve your FTP
is to increase the duration of your longest ride
each week by 30 to 60 minutes each time.
Riding at a lower intensity for a prolonged period of time
will force your body to undergo a wide variety
of adaptations that are crucial
to your endurance performance.
These adaptations are far too complex to go into detail
on this video,
but they are significant enough
that you should include endurance training in your schedule.
Aim to ride at an intensity known as zone 2.
This should be sustainable for hours on end,
it should also be adhered to fairly strictly.
There are however some intervals you can look to include
to further increase your fitness.
And they are, believe it or not, short sprints.
You should aim to include four to six sprints
of 15 seconds.
And have 25 to 35 minutes between each sprint.
And this is because of the increasing scientific
evidence that including short maximal efforts
will further boost your fitness gains,
forcing your body to create adaptations that you simply
wouldn't get from pure endurance training alone.
(upbeat music)
Good luck with those sessions, they are four great
FTP sessions that guarantee to get your legs burning
as much as your lungs.
- Yeah they sure are.
If they've helped you build your FTP
then do let us know in the comment section below
because they've helped us haven't they?
- Yeah definitely.
Big fan of the twenty thirty minute efforts.
- Hard, but effective - yep.
- If you're hungry for another video then we would
suggest you click through to that one.
Now that is a video on how to train on feel.
And hopefully it will help with this video too
if you haven't got a power meter.
- Make sure you give us a big thumbs up
if you enjoyed this video, and subscribe to the channel too.
- Yeah we do hope you give us a thumbs up, we're worth it.
Are we?
I shouldn't have said that.
- No.
You just always like to carry on talking.