View Single Post
Old 11-24-21, 06:06 PM
  #22  
PeteHski
Senior Member
 
PeteHski's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2021
Posts: 8,020
Mentioned: 12 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 4193 Post(s)
Liked 4,616 Times in 2,852 Posts
Originally Posted by genejockey
(Pssst! That's SEMI-monthly, or bi-WEEKLY)
/pedant

I don't know if my FTP has not gone up, or if I'm just measuring badly - the problem with the Ramp test, IMO, is that there are steps, and when I've just done a minute at 340W, the idea of a minute at 360 seems impossible, so I probably drop out before I'm really spent. I do know my last two FTP tests were within 1W of each other. However, one was done before doing Zwift Academy, and I found the workouts were only doable if I reduced my listed FTP from 256 to 249, AND reduced FTP Bias for the later sets in each workout. A month or so later, I'm re-doing the same workouts, at a listed FTP of 257 and without reducing the FTP bias, and I'm finding them no harder to complete. Perhaps I should do the 20 minute test?
This is a fundamental limitation of both ramp tests and a single FTP metric to set all your power zone targets. It's always going to be a generic guesstimate of your abilities. I think the 20 min test will improve your FTP metric, but it still has to guess what all your other power metrics are i.e. VO2 max, AC, NM and your recovery times between repeated efforts. That's one of the reasons I moved to Sufferfest (SYSTM) for interval training because their benchmark test measures your 10 sec, 1 min, 5 min and 20 min power to build a more comprehensive power profile with which to set interval power targets. It works well, but the benchmark test itself is not something you would want to be repeating bi-weekly! So they do also have a ramp test for interim progress checks, which in itself is more sophisticated than the simple Zwift ramp.
PeteHski is offline  
Likes For PeteHski: