FTP is a term that you hear a little bit on GCN and it stands for your functional
threshold power in this video we're going to tell you how you can find your
FTP or if you don't have a parameter the equivalent with a heart rate which is
your functional threshold heart rate now first of all they a bit more detail what
she is your FTP well it's a term first coined by dr. Andrew Coggan and it
refers to the maximum average power that you can sustain for an hour so for an
experienced cyclist that might be like a 14 kilometer time chart and it's really
really useful because it gives a great indication of your cycling performance
refers to the point at which any work done above it is anaerobic and any work
done underneath it which is aerobic do you increase it and you increase your
cycling performance yeah FTHR is your heart rate at FTP
now to achieve that and to get it and to measure it you're going to need some
sort of power meter now there's absolutely loads now on the market for
the ones we're using our garment vectors with it at the edge 1000 head unit on
board it's very very important that you make sure they're accurate and
calibrated or at the very least repeatable to themselves now to measure
your ft HR FTP it's going to mean digging in a going pretty hard so you
need to be mentally fresh and ready for the job at hand I want to mean that you
need to feel you're going to feel a little bit of pain in your legs or now
come to think of it a lot of pain in your legs a mind-numbing about pain
definitely
with FTP being by its very definition the average maximal power that you can
sustain for one hour kind of makes sense then the most accurate way to test it is
to ride as hard as you can for one hour now if you're going to do this then you
need to think very very carefully about the route that you choose so avoid
traffic or junctions or descents because any time that you have to stop pedaling
it'll dramatically skew your power and it'll skew it downwards when it comes to
pacing that is absolutely critical so the first two to three minutes of this
it's going to feel quite comfortable it really important to get clipped in as
well before your threshold effort right here we go so the first couple of
minutes are going to feel slightly easy we're going to wait for the effort to
come to us at 10 to 15 minutes your effort is really going to start to bite
and at this point you can kind of gauge how hard you can try looks now as I
mentioned an hour flat-out is really physically but also mentally demanding
you don't really want to repeat it too many times because it's so horrible but
fortunately there are other slightly nicer ways for finding out your FTP
now there is another way that's not too dissimilar to the last method to
determine your FTP but this one's about 1/3 shorter so rather than do it for an
hour you just ride hard for 20 minutes now the first thing you need to do is
have a good warm-up so 15 to 20 minutes nice and steady
on the road but within that you need to do for about 5 minutes 2 3 4 30 seconds
very hard intervals just to get used to what's coming up now it's also very
important to do this session on a stretch of road where you're not going
to be interrupted and we can keep a nice smooth even rhythm so no road junctions
no descent ideally a nice full flat a little bit like this and then you're
ready to roll
now after your effort get home and download your data onto something like
garmin connect or training peaks you then find your 20-minute peak and
multiply that by zero point nine five to find your pretty accurate functional
threshold power now most people can actually ride at 95% of the twenty
minute power for an hour give or take a few percentage points depending on your
physiology but generally speaking this is a great method to determine your FTP
a couple now though establishing your ft HR is relatively straightforward you
need to bear in mind a few things a few factors that could change things
somewhat it can be float in your heart rate could be elevated or sometimes even
decreased if you're particularly fatigued and also training in warm and
hot conditions your heart rate could be elevated to by as much as five to ten
beats now it also takes a while for your heart rate to increase so although
you're actually riding at FTP from the start of your effort it could take
between five and fifteen minutes for your heart rate to catch up with your
power yeah so because of this to calculate the threshold heart rate we're
recommending doing a thirty minute interval so the first ten minutes of
this you can pretty much assume that your heart rate isn't going to be your
functional threshold heart rate so actually what you need to do is record
your heart rate for the last 20 minutes of the effort and that'll give you an
accurate reading but in terms of pacing you simply go as hard as you can for
thirty minutes although obviously measuring your effort
over the first part of it the third and final method for
calculating your FTP is also the easiest it's not quite as easy as just sitting
on a sofa however it does rely on your having done some really hard grip rides
or races that you've recorded on your parameter and that you've also got the
data form simply download your data from your device onto a software package like
training Peaks or golden cheetah and then you need to search for your maximum
peak 60-minute normalized power normalized power is another concept to
have come from dr. Andy Coggan and it's essentially an algorithm it takes into
account the effort needed for any fluctuations in power during your ride
or your race so for example a criterium race you might have averaged 250 watts
but your normalized power is likely to be much higher
say for example 300 to 330 watts and that's because normalized power takes
into account all those times when you've accelerated hard out of corners or you
accelerate to get to breakaways or you're simply just dangling off the back
of the bunch now it has to be said as well that any method you choose for
calculating your FTP people find generally that their power is higher on
the road compared to on their home trainer so when it comes to choosing
your method and do take that into consideration so now we've got our FTP
or our F thr what are we going to do with them well why not click up there to
that video which is how to train with a parameter or you can click down there
and you get through to a playlist which is all about GCN's training videos now
if you've liked this video make sure you give it a thumbs up and you liked it and
subscribe to GCN just click on me