- A few months back, we released a video
where we'd asked the question,
does your functional threshold power matter?
And the answer was that yes, actually it does.
But that is a measurement of your ability,
and as something from which to base your training on,
it's actually really quite crude.
Because it measures just one aspect of your ability.
An important one, but only one of many.
So if, for example, you have an amazing anaerobic engine,
it's not gonna tell you.
If you have an amazing sprint, it's not gonna tell you.
And so if you are basing your training zones
and your training plans around your FTP,
you might not be training effectively
and you might not be making the training gains
that you otherwise could do,
despite putting in the hard work.
So in this video, we're gonna explain why that's the case,
and then shed some light on how you might be able
to fine-tune your training to take advantage of it.
And we're gonna do so using the Sufferfest 4DP
training app as an example, because funny enough,
we were not the first people to come
to this conclusion, not by a long shot.
But there has been this rise in recent years
in online training apps that actually don't take
other power values other than your FTP into consideration.
Some however, do, one of which is the Sufferfest.
And they got in touch, following our previous video,
because last year they launched
what's called their 4DP training app
which is where you choose from a variety of training plans
that are tailored to your own personal power profile,
a four-dimensional profile, if you will,
gauged from one rather brutal-sounding hour-long test.
You want, you want me to do the test, don't you?
I got, I've gotta do the test?
- [Crew Member] Yeah, of course you do.
Go on then.
(laid back electronic music)
- The 4DP test is done on an indoor trainer.
We're using the Wahoo Kickr,
but you don't need such an advanced bit of kit.
You will, however, need something
with which to record your power output.
The test comprises of five individual
efforts of different durations.
After a quick warmup, we have two five-second
all-out sprints, then a bit of recovery
before a five-minute effort
to gauge our maximal aerobic power.
Then with legs feeling a little ropy,
it's a 20-minute all-out effort to gauge our FTP,
before a final sting in the tail, a one-minute max.
Happy now?
Yeah, I am too, a little bit.
Gotta love a fitness test, even if they are blooming hard.
They are still remarkably satisfying at the end.
And who doesn't enjoy having
sore legs at the end of the day?
You'll be wanting to know the results, I'm sure.
I think the exact wattages
are not necessarily terribly relevant here.
What is is the rider type that the Sufferfest
kindly works out for us.
So am I a sprinter? No.
Am I an attacker? No, sadly not.
I am a time trialist, which isn't the end of the world.
It's like Rohan Dennis, I'm just much, much slower.
What is interesting though is the fact
that we made Chris do the full-frontal test as well.
Sounds really dodgy, I know, but that's what it's called.
And he is a very different rider type to me.
So when you compare our power profiles,
we are very different.
Chris can out-sprint me any day of the week
with just one leg, whereas although our functional
threshold powers are remarkably similar,
because I have about half the muscle mass that he does,
I can therefore climb better,
and also time trial better as well.
Now, you can see also that given our FTPs are the same,
if we were to base our training purely off that figure,
Chris would not be taxed anywhere
nearly enough at anything other than his FTP,
whereas for me it's not all that far off.
The threshold-based training zones are in white,
whereas Sufferfest 4DP is in gray.
Longer efforts, as you can see, are closely matched.
But there's quite a significant
deviation in the shorter efforts.
And for Chris, you can see that this is even more extreme.
And yes, he is clearly more powerful.
So to truly understand this, I think,
and to grapple with Chris' extra sprint power
and anaerobic power, we actually need to understand
the physiology behind it.
So get ready.
(laid back electronic music)
It's quite complex, so we're gonna do
our best to simplify things.
Your genetics dictates the proportion
of skeletal muscle fiber types that you have.
So you all know, I'm sure, about fast twitch fibers
that sprinters have, and slow twitch fibers
that endurance athletes have.
Now, importantly, you cannot convert one type of fiber
to another through training.
But it isn't quite as simple as that,
because actually, within the category
of fast twitch fibers you have two distinct types.
You've got type 2X and type 2A.
2X are the absolute fastest,
but also the most susceptible to fatigue
because they rely on a completely
different energy source, phosphocreatine.
And those are the fibers that really explode
over five seconds to 10 seconds.
So your absolute sprint power.
Then type 2A are actually nearly as fast
but they are much, much more resistant to fatigue.
So these are the ones that really power
your anaerobic capacity, your AC power.
And actually, they also play quite a large role
in dictating your maximum aerobic power as well, MAP.
Now, the reason being is that they rely
on glycogen as their fuel, which is far,
far more abundant than phosphocreatine,
meaning that they are much, much more resistant to fatigue.
So if we go back to the comparison of Chris and myself,
I think it's fairly safe to assume
that Chris is gonna have a far greater proportion
of type 2X and type 2A fibers than I do.
What I rely on is the type one, the slow twitch fibers.
Now, these have much, much greater resistance
to fatigue than the type twos.
However, they are never gonna be
performing particularly fast.
So your type one fibers are not gonna win you a sprint.
And you can't, unfortunately, train them to work any faster.
What you can do though, is train them to produce
more power over time, so effectively boost your FTP.
And so on that point then,
I think it's probably time to move on to training.
(laid back music)
Much of the training for type 2X,
so your pure fast twitch fibers,
remember, is probably best done off the bike,
because to boost your max sprint power,
you need to build more muscle fiber.
And then to get them to work for longer,
you need to supply them with more fuel,
so more phosphocreatine.
And coincidentally, even at the other end of the spectrum,
to improve your FTP, so to improve your aerobic power,
that actually also comes down to fuel to a certain extent.
So in order to supply your muscle fibers
with more blood, with more oxygen, you need to improve
the capillarization of the muscle tissue,
so literally supplying it with more oxygen.
And then also, to utilize that oxygen
you want to develop the mitochondrial
density within your cells,
so more little power plants
that use that oxygen in glycolysis.
Are you still, are you still with us?
Quick, can we play some loud music or something?
Show Chris' bulging muscles.
(energetic electronic music)
There we go, yeah, woo-hoo, look at that.
Right, that's enough of rippling leg muscles for one moment.
We should get back to the job at hand.
And unfortunately, we've kind of had
this simpler part of things.
It's when we start talking about
those one to five-minute efforts
that were in the middle of the power profile
that things get really complicated, which is annoying,
because actually when you think about it,
those are probably the most important
durations of effort for a bike rider.
I mean, the ability to follow surges
when you're on a fast-paced group ride or the ability
to ride up a short climb or steep bits of long climbs,
even accelerating away from a traffic light,
all situations where you're putting
demands on your body in excess of FTP intensity.
Now, I've always kind of referred to it,
personally, as strength endurance,
so that feeling when you're able to make
those little efforts again and again and again.
And it's funny, you know,
when I look now at my power profile,
the numbers aren't a gazillion miles away
from when I was racing full time.
But yet I know that were I in a racing situation,
I would very, very quickly come unstuck
because I'm lacking that muscle endurance.
And I know this because I see it
every time I do a GCN challenge,
the Three Peaks cyclocross, for example,
or the Taiwan KOM challenge.
But yet it's not my endurance, per se, that's lacking,
'cause I also know from stupid GCN challenges
like trying to ride with Mark Beaumont,
that I can actually ride a push bike
at a reasonable pace for 17 hours.
So instead it is that endurance to repeated harder efforts,
beyond a one-hour ride or a two-hour ride, three, four.
And I didn't know it when I was racing full time,
unfortunately, but that endurance is one of the crucial
aspects of training your type 2A muscle fibers.
If you wanted to boost their overall power output,
you can do so through training
by building more muscle fibers.
But often that's not actually what we're after.
What we want is the ability to keep repeating
the same power output, but again and again and again.
And it's when you start to get your head
around this most fundamental point of training,
that you then start to realize that limitation
of basing your training off of FTP.
Because if you are blessed with type 2A fibers,
and it really is a blessing, as we can see, as a cyclist,
then you absolutely want to maximize your training
to take advantage of that as much as possible.
You don't want to go too hard, which I guess
is the risk if you're training off heart rate
or just on perceived effort,
because in that case, those type 2A fibers
won't be working aerobically.
They'll be working anaerobically,
which is a different thing entirely.
And of course there's the risk that you won't be able
to do the correct number of efforts or the right number
of minutes in training because they will be too fatigued.
But on the flip side, and arguably far more dangerous
from a training perspective, is if you don't go hard enough,
because then you simply won't be
getting the training effect.
- Holding back for the 20-minute test will ruin your life.
- So you can see, I think, that even from this
oversimplified version of your very complex physiology,
the importance of training at the right intensity for you,
for your genetics, and for your goals.
So you can see then from this the takeaway points.
It's important to recognize those different energy systems,
and your training needs to touch on all of them.
It also needs to be at the correct intensity
to get the desired training effect.
But as an extra layer of value, it also teaches you
an awful lot about your own body
and your perceived exertion.
'Cause while we don't want to become a slave to power,
if you're aware of how it feels,
it's an incredibly valuable skill
when you leave the pain cave
and go out onto tarmac in the real world.
And on a personal note from all of this,
I think not recognizing why I was doing
certain things from a more scientific perspective
gets chalked up as another one of those little mini-regrets.
Potentially if I had thought more
about training those type 2A muscle fibers,
I'd have done more to coax something else from them,
which potentially might have helped.
Who knows?
Now, one last point to make as well.
We touched very briefly on strength training off the bike.
And I think it's important to say
that the Sufferfest actually have modules
in their training plans away from the bike,
so strength training, also mental training,
which I thought was kind of cool, and yoga as well,
which James, weirdly, has become absolutely obsessed by.
(gentle music)
- [Instructor] Inhale, lengthen.
Take smooth and even breaths in and out through your nose.
Empty your chest, rising and falling.
Keep your gaze fixed on one point
on the ground in front of you,
and try to stay as still as possible.
- Well, I'm sure that commitment
will see him reap the benefits from that.
Yes, in this specific case
we have been using Sufferfest as an example,
but the points that we've discussed here are true,
whether you set your own training, whether you have a coach,
or whether you use a service like the Sufferfest.
I think for many of us it's really fundamentally
important to actually understand
why we're training in a certain way,
as well as giving us the confidence
that the training that we're doing is gonna be of benefit.
So the take-home points are you need to know your strengths,
you need to train at the right intensities,
so work as hard as you need to and touch on
all the various different important points.
So there we go.
If you would like to see a little bit more information
about what type of rider you are,
but not specifically about your physiology,
more about your mentality,
we have a video on that very subject.
You can get through to it just down there.