here at GCN we've got several videos
about how to improve your ftp, your
functional threshold power, which is the
power that you can sustain around about
an hour but just how important is ftp to
cycling performance and could you be a
professional road cyclist is without a very
high functional threshold power at the
interesting question probably a
complicated topic I so what I suggest Matt
is that we go and discuss it at a bar
can we have a coffee
ftp is one thing that we also talked a lot
about power to weight ratio the higher
that ratio is the better the climber
you're going to be so to take some current
examples like Chris Froome
Alberto Contador and Nairo Quintana
have enormously high functional threshold
powers but they also weigh next to
nothing
that's why they are world-class climbers
so then what about the riders with the
biggest FTP's in the universe riders
like Fabian Cancellara and Tony Martin
who've got FTP's bigger and higher than Chris Froome
so the question is why don't those guys
win the Tour De France? Well the answer is
because they're too heavy
or is it really simple as that or
perhaps not because both Tony Martin and
Fabian Cancellara at their very best
have proven in the past they can sometimes
keep up with the best climbers in the
world on a single mountain. However what
they do seem to struggle with is
replicating that over multiple
mountains on back-to-back days so it
seems like the extra weight they're
carrying up those climbs compared
their adversaries and therefore the enormous
power they're having to put out to get up there
with them takes a bit more out of them and
it's a bit more to recover from the
recovery is a key component for striking
to not only you need to be able to
recover between mountains but also
between days and stages as well if you
get any hope of ever winning the grand
tour is more complex than that you need
good endurance to yes you do
so there are riders in this world who've never
made it to a professional level they do
have a very high functional threshold
power and they don't weigh very much set
them off with the best riders in the
world at the bottom of a single climb
and they'll probably do very respectively
there are thereabouts however ask them to do
exactly the same thing at the end of
a four hour race or two and a half
weeks of intense racing a grand tour and
they probably wont fair quite so well
so you need to be able to have the
ability to reduce close to or on your
functional threshold power even after
he's already complete some very hard
racing and that is not something that
many people can do so where does that
leave the sprinters the likes of Mark
Cavendish and Marcel Kittel for
example with their ftp and
power-to-weight ratios are relatively
low when compared to the finest climbers
and time trialists in the world but compare them
to the best amateurs in the world and
actually they compared it favorably in
fact their ftp still have to be world
class if they're ever going to be in a
position to use their sprint at the end
of a race. - Exactly i mean you don't win a
race like Milan San Remo unless
you can produce a very high power for a
decent period of time and in fact both
of those riders are capable of producing
good performances in shorter time
trials and prologues. Kittel in fact was a
double world champion of the junior in
the time trial discipline
and Mark Cavendish and had lots of great
results in prologues and short time trials
and also you don't get to the end of the
Tour de France and be able to sprint
on the Champs-Élysées
unless you have a decent level of FTP, so perhaps
the characteristics of a really good
road sprinter is the innate ability to
put themselves into the red and then
still deliver an effective sprint at the
end of the race
probably for periods under 10 minutes
let's say they're able to produce higher
percentage of the ftp than a good time trialist
or climber and as we've already
said they wouldn't be winning any races if
they didn't possess a very good ftp if
you could win races on the road without
it the likes of Chris Hoy or Robert
Forstemann would have forged incredible
road careers because their peak sprint
power is in fact quite a lot higher than
that of Mark Cavendish or Marcel Kittel
no those guys road sprinters only look
like bad climbers when they're compared to
the very best of the world has to offer
and finally we have the Puncheurs like the
Philippe Gilbert and Greg Van Avermaert
those guys might not necessarily be able to
sprint with the best sprinters, time trial with the bes
time trialists or climb with the purest
climbers but what they do have is a
superhuman ability to deliver power
on short climbs
yeah these beasts have the biggest
disconnect between their functional
threshold powers and the power they're
able to produced over short climbs and
maybe one to five minutes in duration
they are anaerobic monsters not only have
they got an amazing ability to go into the
red they can do and multitude of occasions
over the course of a single race and
and this in fact is kind of what made the
Olympic road race in 2016 so fascinating
'cus really Greg Van Avermaert on
paper should not have been able to win
that race with the climbs involved
however, on the form of his life he was a
able to dig deep, go into the red stay with some of the
best climbers in the world and then
easily out sprint them at the end so
exactly how important then is FTP to
road cycling performance
well I think we've shown it really
depends on what you want to be good at
for a climber or a time-triallist it's
incredibly important but they also need the
powers of recovery and endurance too and
if you want to be good at short climbs
or sprints, you're still going to need a
really good FTP in order to use that
strength in the first place
otherwise you are not going to get to
the finish of the race or you're going to get
there too fatigued to use your strength
Track racing on the other hand is a
completely different beast altogether
and the subject perhaps for another
video
yeah I think we'll leave that because this
discussion has been incredibly long and
we're running out, it's gone, it's dark
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do that by clicking on the globe. Two
more videos for you to watch now with all this
talk about FTP, you'll probably want to know how to
improve yours you can find that by
clicking in this corner just down here
on the other hand, if you want to see Mark
Cavendish giving me tips on sprinting
click just there
Ooh, look at that. It's like a Hologram with a video in front of me
absolutely nuts