3 Minute all out test as measure of CP

[LarryA]

Could this be a sub for a full blown FTP test?

(PDF) The predictive validity of critical power and functional threshold power for mountain bike race performance.

[LarryA]

Found this as a follow-up
https://journals.humankinetics.com/d...jspp.2016-0376

[Too Tall]

Found this as a follow-up
https://journals.humankinetics.com/d...jspp.2016-0376

Well that answers that.
Larry, in all my years coaching I never found a good substitute for a 20 min. test (using a factor to account for NOT doing a 60 min. test). That generally nailed the numbers. That 3 min. test just sounds painful and unnecessary.

If you are looking for weird new ways which take significantly less time than a 60 min. FTP try rowing. If you perform a all out 2K effort the watts are real real close to bicycle FTP/60 mins. Ask me how I know.

Thank g-d I don't "train" anymore...but you have at it boy-o. xxoo

PS Go nuts >>> Pace-to-Watts Indoor Rowing Calculator | Concept2 Rowing Machines *F.Y.I. if I plug in my last known FTP from a few yrs. ago when I was "training" hahahahahaahah the calculator spits out within a few seconds my erg time. Curious but true.

[marley]

Well that answers that.
Larry, in all my years coaching I never found a good substitute for a 20 min. test (using a factor to account for NOT doing a 60 min. test). That generally nailed the numbers. That 3 min. test just sounds painful and unnecessary.

If you are looking for weird new ways which take significantly less time than a 60 min. FTP try rowing. If you perform a all out 2K effort the watts are real real close to bicycle FTP/60 mins. Ask me how I know.

Thank g-d I don't "train" anymore...but you have at it boy-o. xxoo

PS Go nuts >>> Pace-to-Watts Indoor Rowing Calculator | Concept2 Rowing Machines *F.Y.I. if I plug in my last known FTP from a few yrs. ago when I was "training" hahahahahaahah the calculator spits out within a few seconds my erg time. Curious but true.

Interesting - my 500m split/2km times calculate/translate to within ~5% of my FTP on the trainer using the 2 x 8 min protocol and the RAMP-X protocol from Trainer Road and that is with poor rowing form and only using the rower at most 1x week for 20-30 min.

[Too Tall]

Interesting - my 500m split/2km times calculate/translate to within ~5% of my FTP on the trainer using the 2 x 8 min protocol and the RAMP-X protocol from Trainer Road and that is with poor rowing form and only using the rower at most 1x week for 20-30 min.

Pretty cool eh? I randomly discovered that ten'ish years ago when I entered my first Crash-B event. At the time I was strictly rowing watts, had no clue that people used pace. During training I noticed how consistently 2K all out efforts very closely matched 40K avg. watts. +- nominal pct.

There are probably other weird tests that can extract very similar results...like climbing a rope hand over hand or shucking oysters ;)

[LarryA]

Depends on what you mean by "train" ;-)

I'm just trying to find my current numbers by suffering the smallest amount of time possible (and the longer I "study" it, the longer I can delay actually doing it;-)

Even more recent study here:
Validity of the 3-Minute All-Out Exercise Test on the CompuT... : The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research

[Crowemagnon]

There is literature in the human kinematics database suggesting that a 3 and a 12 min test can be used to establish CP and W' here; https://journals.humankinetics.com/d...jspp.2016-0371
But I'm not entirely convinced that the single additional 5 min test would be as telling (accurate) as an additional 20min test.

[defspace]

I'm just trying to find my current numbers by suffering the smallest amount of time possible (and the longer I "study" it, the longer I can delay actually doing it;-)

That river might be narrower but it runs faster and deeper.

[BSUdude]

Having done 3 minutes all-out a couple times, and many 20 minute tests, I would much rather do 20 minutes. The suffering for 3 minutes all-out is profound.

[LarryA]

So....not just a Wiggins thing?!

[DOOFUS]

Long rant that is and is not answering your question.

Seriously, I think that unless you regularly do full gas efforts at every point on the power-duration curve from 5 seconds to 60 minutes, it's hard to get an accurate FTP. Call it FTP, call it CP, call it MLSS (maximal lactate steady state), whatever, the duration that you can hold a maximal steady state will be somewhere between 40min (you're a sprinter) and 80min (you are a slow-twitch TT monster). The power-duration curve in WKO 4.0 is pretty close to the mark, but only if you do the efforts to keep the P-D curve tuned up.

This week I cranked off 340w for 90min. So what's my FTP? I have no freakin clue. It's winter, I'm just doing steady-state efforts and trying to keep my HR *out* of zone 4, except for one day a week. Maybe FTP is 360, maybe it's 345. Bleh. Zones are descriptive, not prescriptive. For this time of year, I look at HR -- I keep HR below 80% of max for all but two workouts a week. Twice a week, I give it a little more gas, but keep it from going into the pain tunnel.

The important thing isn't what your CTL is, or whether it's exactly accurate. Power metrics are just ways of trying to quantify training load, and they are, at best, ballparks measures, unless you have Team Sky's brain trust picking through your data. I think that the important things during Base are what the watts are at 70% and 80% of max HR -- those two levels are really good benchmarks of your aerobic fitness, and your AeT (aerobic threshold, or the 2mmol turnpoint) is somewhere in between those two (exactly where, well, you need a lab to tell you that).

After 25 years of using powermeters, I'm more and more convinced that, for aerobic efforts, it's best to look at HR and be sensitive to perceived exertion (what your heart is doing and how you feel tells you what you need to know about how your body is handling stress), and for those 1-4min efforts, feel is still king. Use the PM to gauge what the "consistent pace I can hold on these things" is, but feel is the driver, watts are the descriptor.

[cbiker]

That new Trainer Road ramp test was consistent with my 8min and 20min estimates. It worked well for a few
teammates also. A cool side benefit was a new max HR estimate

[cbiker]

Long rant that is and is not answering your question.

Seriously, I think that unless you regularly do full gas efforts at every point on the power-duration curve from 5 seconds to 60 minutes, it's hard to get an accurate FTP. Call it FTP, call it CP, call it MLSS (maximal lactate steady state), whatever, the duration that you can hold a maximal steady state will be somewhere between 40min (you're a sprinter) and 80min (you are a slow-twitch TT monster). The power-duration curve in WKO 4.0 is pretty close to the mark, but only if you do the efforts to keep the P-D curve tuned up.

This week I cranked off 340w for 90min. So what's my FTP? I have no freakin clue. It's winter, I'm just doing steady-state efforts and trying to keep my HR *out* of zone 4, except for one day a week. Maybe FTP is 360, maybe it's 345. Bleh. Zones are descriptive, not prescriptive. For this time of year, I look at HR -- I keep HR below 80% of max for all but two workouts a week. Twice a week, I give it a little more gas, but keep it from going into the pain tunnel.

The important thing isn't what your CTL is, or whether it's exactly accurate. Power metrics are just ways of trying to quantify training load, and they are, at best, ballparks measures, unless you have Team Sky's brain trust picking through your data. I think that the important things during Base are what the watts are at 70% and 80% of max HR -- those two levels are really good benchmarks of your aerobic fitness, and your AeT (aerobic threshold, or the 2mmol turnpoint) is somewhere in between those two (exactly where, well, you need a lab to tell you that).

After 25 years of using powermeters, I'm more and more convinced that, for aerobic efforts, it's best to look at HR and be sensitive to perceived exertion (what your heart is doing and how you feel tells you what you need to know about how your body is handling stress), and for those 1-4min efforts, feel is still king. Use the PM to gauge what the "consistent pace I can hold on these things" is, but feel is the driver, watts are the descriptor.

Also those are some monster watts!

[LarryA]

Thank you all, and especially Robert - there's gold in them that rants! I've archived some of your longer posts and keep going back to them. Sorry (I am after all, Canadian;-) if I was being too naive.

The HR/feel combo particularly resonates with my own (limited) experience.

[s_curran]

We've found the trainer road ramp test decently accurate and still allows you to do a workout after as well, its good for mid season stuff when the training is more specific and the work load is low. I'm pretty set in my ways and guage myself on 20 min efforts. I sort of enjoy it, especially if its outside (but you have to remember the numbers will always be higher). I'm not always doing a true test, but can usually guage myself compared to previos perormances. If its been a while I'll do a more formal 2x20 test on the trainer, and have even confirmed it with a 60 min test (BRUTAL, but its nice to know that you actually can make it last).

2x20's is also a great, quick workout as well. So while im not always testing, I can tell when I'm at the 95% or so, and can usually do a third.

[BSUdude]

We've found the trainer road ramp test decently accurate and still allows you to do a workout after as well, its good for mid season stuff when the training is more specific and the work load is low. I'm pretty set in my ways and guage myself on 20 min efforts. I sort of enjoy it, especially if its outside (but you have to remember the numbers will always be higher). I'm not always doing a true test, but can usually guage myself compared to previos perormances. If its been a while I'll do a more formal 2x20 test on the trainer, and have even confirmed it with a 60 min test (BRUTAL, but its nice to know that you actually can make it last).

2x20's is also a great, quick workout as well. So while im not always testing, I can tell when I'm at the 95% or so, and can usually do a third.

This makes a good point...unless you are VERY serious...you just need a test that is repeatable to track progress. Duration/protocol/location is less important than doing it the same way every time. No 20 minutes on the road one time, and 20 minutes on the trainer the next time. Or no 20 minute hill climb vs 20 minutes on a flat road. You get the idea. If you've been doing structured training for a few years, and you're in the FTP boosting portion of training, you can almost get away without testing because every workout is a mini test. If you're hitting the top of your range for your intervals & HR is in check, you know its time to bump up the target power range 10 watts or so.

[DOOFUS]

2 x 20.

Yes, and no.

Coggan settled on that duration because it ended up being 20 minutes to his stop sign turnaround in Indiana. Yes, 20-minute efforts are long enough to stress MLSS, and short enough to be tolerable if 95-105% of MLSS is what you are holding.

However, an unintended consequence is the "20 minute revolution" than Dean Golich and others have commented on. Just because your MLSS/FTP is higher doesn't mean you can actually maintain higher power for longer durations, which is what race performance often demands. Additionally, the mental and physical stress of those workouts, especially on a trainer, can become too draining. The result is riders can kill themselves to get this higher MLSS/FTP, but then be too brain fried to do anything with it, and not have developed the other component -- stamina/fatigue resistance -- that makes the higher MLSS/FTP mean something in a race.

To continue the annoying name dropping, Colby Pearce recommends longer intervals at lower levels -- like starting out with 2 x 20 at 90% of MLSS/FTP, and then extending them out, rather than doing them harder. Lactate removal actually peaks at 90% -- so, you are getting a very beneficial training stimulus. Also, it is less stressful physically and mentally. Going from 2 x 20 to 2 x 25 to 1 x 45 to 2 x 30 to 1 x 60 at 90%, for example, can have a better combined effect on both raising MLSS/FTP and increasing fatigue resistance, than hammering away at 2 x 20 all winter and doing them harder.

[LarryA]

Robert - regarding 2x20 etc.@ 90% MLSS, is that HR as well as power or do you need a different target?

[DOOFUS]

Both -- I've found that a 90% of power effort over 30-60 minutes puts HR around 138-140. My LTHR is 153, so that's just about 90% of LTHR.

Because a lot of my training has to be done on a trainer after DST ends, I'll do two days a week of 2 x 20 or 2 x 30. The intervals end up in Friel's HR zone 3.

And before someone who's read a lot of Seiler's work says "but isn't that the no-go zone?": Seiler himself says all levels have a use, and doing five workouts a week in HR zone 1-2, and two workouts a week when you get in 40-60min of HR zone 3 is a well-proven way to build Base. If it was good enough for Lydiard....