dsmyth12

New cyclist here. 19 years old. I got my first road bike about three weeks ago and have clocked up around 800km so far. I did an FTP test yesterday. It has my current FTP at 257 watts or 3.21 w/kg (since I weigh 80kg). What sort of level is this at for someone untrained with no previous cycling or endurance experience?

Also, would anyone be able to point me to some resources or research on FTP or power training?

rubiksoval

It's at a beginner level, which fits, since you're a beginner.

There are lots of books on power meters. The one by Andy Coggan is one of the better ones, in my opinion. There are lots of training articles on google. There are also lots of threads on slowtwitch and in the training and nutrition and the 33 forums on this site.

Essentially, after three weeks, there's nothing to really say other than to ride, and ride more. And play with the power meter. And try different efforts and durations, etc. It's tough for you to read a whole bunch of stuff and really apply it at this point, because you simply don't have the knowledge and experience necessary to adequately utilize everything.

So, just ride. 19 isn't that old. I started at 17 and was a Cat 1 by 20, and we didn't even have power meters back then (well, except for $2000 SRMs which no one had).

ReLLiK75

Beginner level???? I've been riding for almost 20 years and my FTP has never gone above 218. And it's not because I'm not fit. I'm 5'11, have an average weight of 175 lbs, keep under 10% body fat, and have a V02 Max that varies between the upper 40s and mid to low 50s.

rubiksoval

His power is at a beginner level in regards to competitive cycling.

If you're not concerned with competitive cycling, then it doesn't matter too much.

Branko D

That is pretty good as a starting point, imo. I started riding in fall of 2017 at a tender age of 34 and after a year of progressively riding more and more, my FTP in fall of 2018 was 227W on my first FTP test.

In 2019 I rode a lot and did interval rides with some regularity as well as some races and by the fall of 2019 it was about 250W.

2020, again, riding and training (now with some running and swimming for triathlon) and it got up to 265W. Not much FTP growth but my endurance improved significantly.

Weight all the time is around 70-73 kg. If your starting point is 3.2W/kg and you are 19, my feeling is you could get to 4W/kg in a relatively short period of actual training which is pretty good.

caloso

https://www.velopress.com/books/trai...a-power-meter/

jfranci3

Your off-the-couch number is meaningless as you've got a number of directions to improve. At any rate 260w and 3.21w @ 176lb are a very fine starting point. You'll get a better number from just going the test again a few times as you'll be able to set a more definitive target and pace better; offsetting that, the shorter 8min test tend to overestimate newer cyclist. Maybe 25-40% improvement is a decent range from off-the-couch to perfectly trained. You'll improve FTP via repetition, volume, and time cycling just below FTP. At some point your FTP stabilize, as this isn't like your bench press. You don't improve to infinity, you're limiting by the sizing and layout of your plumbing, slow twitch muscles are limited in how much you can grow them, and you are limited in the number of red blood cells you can produce/flow (among a dozen of other reasons).

Flat watts matter for group rides on flats, Watts/Aero for solo flat road speed, and w/kg only matter for going up hills or hopping around on a MTB. Power, within your current hardware, is a shorter term prospect. Most cycling disciplines don't require max power beyond what you've gotten from most sports (for example, I think a Tour De France Sprinter is only throwing down about ~150lb of force on the pedals on sprint, Track much higher) .

For road, you can train the following in addition to FTP-type power (others will add):
1) Endurance - If you're doing road cycling, you'll want to add volume. You can probably do 40min-1hr no problem, but after 1.5hr you might "bonk" because you've used all the energy in your liver and haven't activated additional fuel sources. Once you're over 2.5-3hr and used to getting energy from food intake + fat + liver, adding more endurance is no big deal. The big thing is getting your body to burn fat and figuring out how to eat. The key here is to manage your efforts, as if you can easily over-train yourself.
2) Aero position / flexibility - get used to working with your upper body lower.
3) General efficiency on the bike- knowing when to not apply power, what is a good amount of power, knowing how to maximize your legs power without abusing one muscle group or wasting energy. Keeping hydrated and feeding too.
4) Misc Muscle fitness - developing some underdeveloped muscle group specific to cycling. Maybe some knee muscle is missing fitness or some back muscle.

Redbullet

In my opinion, 3.21 W/Kg for an untrained beginner is very much. I wonder how accurate the measurement was.
An untrained person usually needs a few thousands km and a few months of training (with a little bit of structure, not only junk riding), to reach that level. Then, he needs at least 8000 km/year (again - with a little bit of training structure, not junk km), to preserve that performance.

dsmyth12

I did it with my road bike on a flat section of road (I also have the Assioma Pedals, which I made sure to calibrate before I did the test).

rubiksoval

What did you do, though?

Did you do 45 minutes plus at 257?

Did you do 20 minutes slightly above that?

Did you do 8 minutes even higher than that?

It all makes for different numbers, with the shorter the duration, the more susceptible to error the estimation being.

RChung

Maybe. We don't know enough about the OP's situation to know for sure, but getting to 4 w/kg "in a relatively short period of actual training" isn't alway possible.

We have the Golden Cheetah Open Data project, which allows us to examine power data for thousands of athletes. This gives us a better idea of the range of power among riders who are serious enough to use a power meter. Unfortunately, we don't always know their weight but from what little we do know it appears relatively few would have an FTP as high as 4 w/kg. So, since we know so little about the OP's background, perhaps he can easily attain 4 w/kg but simply being at 3.2 w/kg today, 19, and a beginner is no guarantee of that.

Here's a quick approximation. Greg Lemond famously claimed his VO2Max was 92 ml/kg/min while Armstrong's was "only" 85. But more importantly, we know that many "normal, regular" athletes will tend to top out near a VO2Max of ~ 60 ml/kg/min. We also know that, ballpark, FTP is in the neighborhood of 80% of VO2Max (that is, VO2Max is 1.25x higher than FTP). Finally, we think that cycling economy tells us that it takes, on average, around 1 L/min of oxygen to produce 75 watts. You can substitute different values for these if you want but if we use these estimates, we can get a rough estimate of FTP for an "average normal regular" rider of (60 ml/min/kg) * (0.8 FTP/VO2Max) * (75 watts/L/min) = .06 L/min/kg * 75 W/L/min * 0.8 = 3.6 W/kg. Coincidentally, at my best, I topped out at 3.7. (Maybe you can see why I'm familiar with this approximation).

Perhaps a rider can do slightly better than these, and can top out at 65 ml/min/kg, and can attain a slightly higher ratio of VO2Max to FTP of 1.2 (i.e., ratio of FTP to VO2Max of 0.8333). Then, approximately, we'd expect that rider to max out at .065 * 0.833 * 75 = 4.06 w/kg. But I'm not sure that would be quick, or easy, cuz I never got there.

[Edited to add:] BTW, oxygen comprises about 21% of normal atmospheric air, so if it takes 1L/min of O2 to produce 75 watts, you need to breathe in around 5 L of air to produce 75 watts. The average sized adult male has a lung tidal volume of around 0.5 L, so just to exchange enough air to produce 75 watts, you need to inhale-exhale about 10 times/minute. To get enough air to produce 225 watts, you'd need to inhale-exhale about 30 times/minute. These are all ballpark figures, so if your tidal volume were larger (and your lungs were better at exchanging CO2 for O2) your respiration rate could be lower.

jadocs

Interested to know if you did a 1 hour test or 20min. Are you using the Duo or Uno? Either way, a beginner at 257 is very very good IMO.

hubcyclist

I'm sure you might recall, but I often point people toward a Dr. Coggan posting on slowtwitch in which he goes similar calculation, I think he got 3.9 or so as his calculation.

All I know is I'm currently training based on 4.3w/kg (at 41 years of age this coming week) and have averaged 4 when I did a zwift race this fall, so I'm happy with whatever I can get, slightly above average is a good thing!

Rides4Beer

Everyone is different, some can get there, some can't. I didn't start riding until I was 44, and hit 4.2w/kg in my first year on the bike (ultra running background, so had a pretty good aerobic engine to start with), haven't tested since, should probably see where I'm at now with another year and another 12k miles under my belt. But power isn't everything, as jfranci3 pointed out, there's a lot more to it. So many other factors when you're actually riding/racing.

rubiksoval

Yep. I posted this in the other (very similar) thread the OP made.

https://forum.slowtwitch.com/forum/S...e%3F_P2830186/

jfranci3

I'd agree that assuming the OP can get to 4w/kg ( "bare min pro level" for a cat1 / regional pro cyclist) assumes he can up his FTP from 257w to 320w which means he'd have to be really green OR lose 33lb of fat@257w......or something in between that. 320w of trained, sustainable power is a university level athlete, and the OP would know they are a pretty decent athlete off the bat.

To do that just on weight: He'd have to start at 180lb and get down to 147lb @6% fat ( athlete training fat %, sub4 or 5% is not a ). This means he'd be starting at about 25% body fat or would need to atrophy the equivalent amount of upper body muscle.

More sensible for a 19yr old, he's probably 13% fat. He can probably get down to 77kg lean, so would need a 310w FTP for that 'magic' 4w/kg number.... this again is only realistic if he's pretty green.

NOT trying to kill any dreams.... and that number doesn't really matter..... Just highlighting some aggressive math by everyone in the thread. Starting FTP and weight give you wildly different rooms for improvement in a vacuum without more info.

OP wanted to know what ball park he's playing in. I'd say he can be in the mix on a flat surface and might fare better with some light hills. If he responds to training well, is pretty green, has room to hang with the big dogs - probably not a climber or TT specialist though, would need a lot of "punch" to stay with the group, and would need to be able to hold near this power for longer than an FTP test ("Fat max" close to FTP).

RChung

Very nice. Thanks for the link to the thread.

I recall Coggan making essentially the same calc back on the old Wattage List maybe around the early 2000's, which is where it first entered my brain. At the time, since no one could get VO2Max testing except in a lab, we were trying to go the other way: to estimate VO2Max from our FTP so we could see how we compared with Greg or Lance. That was sobering. It was after a bunch of calculatin' that I realized I was never going to play with the big dogs but I might be able to stick with the lap dogs, maybe, if I paid more attention to drag reduction.

caloso

Interesting. I ran those numbers on myself and it's within the ballpark of the VO2max that my Garmin calculates.

ZHVelo

"What sort of level is this at for someone untrained with no previous cycling or endurance experience?"

He wasn't asking for a comparison to competitive athletes but how he stacks up to other beginners. Compared to most beginners his FTP is not low.

Redbullet

I still have a different opinion: that FTP is abnormally high (not that "it is no low") for an untrained beginner. I needed hard work for much more than 800 km, to reach such performance, then I lost it due to lacking time for training (only 7000 km/year).
For reference, you can also make a research on Zwift Power. On a scale from A to D (D=beginners), 3.2 is ranks as B. Riders in B category are very strong and have high mileage on Strava (much higher than my 7000 km/year or OP's 800). Such performance does not come from God, but from a high cost in effort, time and km for training. I don't believe in super-humans, I rather believe there is an error here.

dsmyth12

I've got the Garmin Edge 530 but am reluctant to trust the VO2max number though I have seen a few things that reveal it is actually quite accurate.

dsmyth12

I have done a few group rides the past few weeks as well. The last couple I did with B graders (in Australia) averaging 30-32 km/h over 2-2.5 hours. Managed to stick with them reasonably well until towards the end. Idk how that stacks up because as I said, I've only been cycling for four weeks.

guachi

I really like Dylan Johnson's Youtube channel. It's all about science-based training.

257W FTP at 19 years with little training is really good. My FTP peaked in early 2020 at 289 Watts at the age of 46. I was able to do fair in group B races on Zwift, though my sprinting is atrocious. For most of 2013-2019 when I only rode a few hours a week on an exercise bike for about 6 months of the year I was probably at around 240.

What FTP test did you do? The 20 minute version or a ramp test?

Rides4Beer

This. It's more than just w/kg. I'm 84kg, can freight train it on the flats and rollers, but even with good power, the smaller guys are pulling away on the climbs, it's just physics. Youth counts for a fair bit tho, if you're willing to suffer. We have some inexperienced young guys that can come out and hang with the A+ group, even if they're hurting. Keep doing that, and you'll keep improving.

rubiksoval

He's made three threads.

The first thread was asking about a good starting FTP. The second thread was about getting a coach. This third thread was whether his estimated ftp is good.

So yes, he is asking within a competitive context.

Frankly, there is no "good" starting FTP for a cyclist outside of a competitive context, because good in and of itself denotes competition.

In any case, what the OP will hopefully have the chance to learn if group rides and racing resumes is that at the end of the day FTP is not what determines how "good" you are. It can put you on the field, but there are other, more crucial, components for actually getting results.