- Maybe you've just bought yourself a power meter
or you've got access to one,
and you want to know how to get the best out of it.
- So coming up, our top tips to training with a power meter.
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- First things first then,
after you've got your new power meter on your bike,
you're going to need to calibrate it
to ensure the data you're collecting
is as accurate as possible.
You'll find the calibration function
either under the menu setting of your head unit
or on an app on your phone.
I used to ride for 10 or 15 minutes
until the power meter had adjusted
to the ambient temperature,
and then I pull over to the side of the road,
and do the calibration.
- Right Chris, while you're doing that,
I'll tell you guys a little bit more.
At a very basic level,
this is like the tare function on your kitchen scale.
You're essentially zeroing it
before adding additional load.
In a perfect world, you'll be doing this
before every training ride.
But power meters have come such a long way
in the last 10 to 15 years,
that that's not so important
if you do miss it once in a while.
Alright mate, you ready?
Got three hours to go.
- Come on, keep up!
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Zones.
There are many different ways
of calculating your training zones with power,
and there is also plenty of discussion
on how many zones to use.
But the most widely used,
is the system created by Dr. Andy Coggan.
Almost all training computers or programs
default to a very close variation of his zone calculations
based on percentages of your functional threshold power.
Functional threshold power is abbreviated to FTP,
if you didn't know.
Which is the maximum power
that you can sustain for 60 minutes.
- These zones have been long recognized
as the gold standard in training.
- We'll start at the bottom,
Zone 1, or active recovery.
This is done strictly underneath 55% of your FTP.
This is the zone that you'll use for all of the easy parts
of your interval sessions.
But also for those strict recovery rides,
which are under an hour in length.
Something I was once told
that almost all athletes do incorrectly,
is also something I later witnessed when I started coaching.
Theoretically, you could ride
almost indefinitely in zone 1.
But I don't think you want to.
- Now this should be around 65 to 75% of your FTP,
and this will make most of your training
as an endurance athlete.
This will help your mitochondrial function and growth.
And it will also help utilize your fat to energy.
And this effort you'll be able to sustain
for hours and hours.
- Zone 3, otherwise known as tempo.
This is done at 76 to 90% of your FTP,
and is the sort of zone that,
if you're a well trained athlete,
you can probably maintain for three to eight hours.
It's not a comfortable zone,
but at the same time, it's not maximal.
It's the sort of zone,
that if you lacked structured training,
you'd probably end up riding quite a lot.
It's kind of a dead zone.
It's great for certain training sessions.
But it's not the sort of place you want to ride too much.
- Alright, now we're into the hard effort.
This should be around 95 to 105% of your FTP,
and you should be able to sustain this for around an hour.
But if you're wanting to build it,
then an interval session worth doing,
is around 10 minutes and three times
with a maximum work time of 30+ minutes.
This isn't easy,
but the more force you can generate on this effort,
the faster you'll be able to go on your bike.
Nine! Oh, done!
- VO2 Max, otherwise known as zone 5.
These efforts are done at 106
to 120% of FTP,
and they're pretty tough.
You only want to do these efforts
when you're feeling fresh,
as they do place a high demand on the body.
They're the sort of effort that probably feel okay
for the first three or four minutes
if you complete them at the lower end of the zone.
But once you push past that four minute barrier,
you're really going to start hurting.
If you're going intervals in this zone,
you want to aim for about 25 minutes total workload.
- Alright, you're going to hate us for this one.
You're looking for an effort
of around 121
to 150% of your FTP,
and an effort that lasts between 30 seconds and two minutes.
I'm going to need to put my glasses on for this one.
It's going to be a hard one.
Three, two, one!
This effort is excruciating!
Rinsing your body,
but this effort is short and sharp
and straight to the point.
Woo!
Ouch!
- And finally, we have zone 7, neuromuscular power,
otherwise known as sprinting.
These efforts are a complete maximal effort,
and they engage every single muscle in your body.
There's no wattage goal on these because everyone
has different neuromuscular power.
And they're not a percentage of FTP whatsoever.
You probably only want to do around
one to two sessions of this a week
because of the muscle damage.
Pick a sign in the distance and sprint for it.
- [James] Based on the descriptions of the zones,
you should be able to build a picture
of how they fit into your training program.
But if not, a quick summary.
Endurance is the mainstay of your weekly program.
Zone 4 is the focus for making aerobic gains
and is a great zone for training your ability to get faster.
Zone 5 is a goof place to sit to
improve your short climb ability.
Zone 6, anaerobic is the time to focus
on your ability to attack or surge when in a ride
and sprint for getting to the cafe first,
which is, well, the most important.
- Ugh!
One big thing to remember when it comes to power numbers
is that no matter how hard you try,
you won't always be setting PBs.
So don't bother getting disheartened by even trying.
It's a bit annoying.
Now is a chance to talk about fields.
No, not those fields,
data fields.
If you are a bit of a numbers geek, like myself,
then your data fields are your first chance
to get a glimpse of that incredible information
coming from your power meter.
But we've got a few tips to help you get the most out of it.
I like to set mine up with instant watts at the top,
my average watts for the lap, my cadence,
my lap time,
so I know how long till the end of the interval,
my elapsed duration of the session,
heart rate, max speed, cause I love to go fast,
average heart rate, just kind of curious.
Instant speed, so I know if I should be getting aero or not.
My lap cadence, cause that's important for certain sessions.
And then I've got lap average speed, as well.
On the next page, I've got temperature,
elevation, that sort of thing.
And then next up, I have a navigation page,
which gives me my distance
and then if I am using a route,
it tells me how far until the next turning,
and my heading.
Then my favorite page, which tells you max watts,
it gives you a training stress score,
your normalized power, your intensity factor,
kilojoules burnt, left right average balance,
max five second power, max 30 second power,
max one minute power, max five minute power,
max 20 minute power,
because I'm a complete nerd
when it comes to that sort of thing.
I personally tend to keep my screens
identical between racing and training,
'cause I like to look at the same screen in front of me.
But I know many riders who will just switch it to
duration and speed or distance
and try and ignore the power numbers.
After all, in racing, we're not
really riding to the power numbers,
we're merely collecting the data.
- Right, a note on power numbers.
If you're like us and you ride indoors and outdoors,
there's as much as 15% discrepancy in your numbers.
I mean, take this for an example,
we're riding
a solid
350 watts.
And I mean, look at our faces,
I mean, he's smiling!
- Ha!
- And then you look at Chris riding the same wattage inside.
- [Chris] That was a particularly bad day
for me though, James.
- [James] Um, yeah. You did look pretty awful.
- You may not discover this discrepancy yourself,
but be mindful of the fact that it is something
that can happen when riding indoors.
And whilst we're talking about numbers,
it's always nice to compare yourself to others,
but please remember your numbers are relative to you.
And just because you've averaged a certain amount,
it doesn't mean that that correlates to what
the person next to you has averaged
or even the person at the back of the bunch.
- Yeah, I was wondering why you put out
so much more power than me.
- Well I'm a lot heavier and I'm less aero.
- I wasn't going to say it! Ha!
- I think they can see it, James.
- Right, I would like to offer you
one last bit of advice.
It's all very well having, well, numbers,
but how you feel is one of the biggest
indicators to potential performance.
- Yeah, so make sure you keep a note
of how you felt doing which efforts on which sessions.
Use this new tool you have
to build a better understanding of your performance
in order to build a new training program.
You don't need to be obsessive,
but you can learn a lot from keeping a good training diary.
- If you did enjoy this video,
then don't forget to give it a big thumbs up.
- And for more training videos, click down here.
- Right mate, we need to go
and sit on some certain wattage, don't we?
We got zone 6 to do, don't we?
- I thought training was behind us.
- Here we go!