66 Watt FTP Improvement In 6 Months [Case Study]

This case study is of a triathlete, Ben. And if you listen to one of our recent case studies with Beth, Ben is actually Beth's partner. And we spoke about how Beth saw the training that Ben was doing and jumped on not long after him because she loved exactly what she was seeing. And with both of them seeing massive improvements in the last six months, we thought we'd better do a case study on Ben as well. And the title here is that Ben has improved 66 watts on the bike in a 20 minute FTP test. But the truth is he has been unreal in all three disciplines and talk about his bike and that improvement. But also he's running better off the bike now and in half marathons than he was running fresh 10ks before he joined us. So as always, we'll go through his stats, what training we've done. But dad, take us through. Where was Ben as an athlete when he first joined?

Yeah, to be fair, Ben's an absolutely enthusiastic young guy who really wants to improve across everything he does in swim, bike and run. And he was so motivated when he contacted us that he was actually thinking about doing ultra distance running as his goal. And we had a fair bit of a discussion about that. And I, I kind of directed him away from that a little bit to try and give him a little bit more endurance into his body before he actually went and did those 50 100k trail runs. And ultimately he wants to do an ironman. So. So originally the discussion was around, you know, endurance running and, and I really, when I looked at the stuff he'd been doing before he joined us, there was, because he's a shift worker, he's an ambulance driver, that's got really variations in work times. So it's really hard to coordinate when you're doing it by yourself, when to train and what days to do it. And because you've only got certain days where you've got more time and then other days you have no time as a shift worker, as an ambo, you've got days where you've only got one hour to do some training and the rest of the time is working or sleeping. So it is really difficult to manage a program like that when you're doing that by yourself. You know, do I do hard sessions or, you know, and when do I recover? And because you've got four days free, four days rostered off, you're trying to cram everything into those four days and you know, you're just messing with your recovery. And so it was really great that he Reached out and we started with just basically trying to get some consistency into his training program and with the goal that he might aim for a marathon and then switch back to triathlon. And that's been the journey so far since he started with this in March.

So he really was craving some training structure, which I guess most of us are. What else was he missing in terms of what was he, what do you feel like was letting him down actually.

What sessions to do? Yeah, he didn't know anything about really training to power except for what he'd heard on our podcast, ironically. So he was really trying to implement that, but really just didn't know what sessions to do that were going to help him improve his bike riding and what sessions to do. As a runner, specifically, what should I be doing each time I run, you wake up and say I'll just go for a run or I'll just go for a ride, knowing full well that he should be doing some sort of intensity, but just lost as to how that program should look, what the session should look like and what should look like the next day. So they were kind of frustrations, I suppose, that he was having. And really it was such a relief for him to have to wake up each day and know that today I'm doing this because the coach has told me that if I do this today then I'll have these days following it with the right sessions, knowing that I'm not putting, putting myself into the ground by training too hard or not training hard enough.

Yeah, for sure. And the beauty of his position is that he actually had a lot of data pre signing up to us, which always helps us because one, it gives you a great indication, you know, as a coach what they've done previously and a bit more specifics about their background because if there's more data to look at, the data doesn't lie, the numbers don't lie. Whereas a lot of people do come to us without ever using something like training speaks before, they don't have a power meter. So their first you use of power meter is often the first session or the first FTP test they do. And that's the benchmark, that's the starting point. But we've been able to see what he was doing previously and then compare that to now. So if we look at some stats, we will just start with kind of the stats from his first FTP test with us. His 20 minute result was 215 watts, which gives you an FTP at a estimated FTP of 204. We're really going to hone in on that estimated point. And basically he's now at an estimated FTP of 270, but. Or his best 20 minutes is 284. So depending on which ones you're looking at, it's a 66, a 69 watt improvement over six months. And that is just absolutely outrageous. And we'll focus on the bike before we move on to the run. But some of that previous data we were talking about is looking at his speed. And so in previous triathlon races in 15-20k sort of efforts so well under an hour, he was averaging 28-29 km per hour. And his speed now actually last week he just did a 60 minute time trial. You average 37ish ks an hour. So when we talk about these FTP numbers, it's great to hear a 66 watt improvement, but it's even more important to hear what that actually results to on the road and how much faster you're actually going with that improvement.

Yeah, and that's the, that's the thing that makes sense to people. You know, you can just yell out numbers, 300 watts, 200 watts, 150 watts, they don't really mean anything. But when you align it to speed, people understand what 30Ks an hour is, people understand what 40Ks an hour is. And you only have to the world Tour riders who ride a time trial at 55Ks an hour, that just seems out of this world. But if someone said 400 watts, you would just go, well that seems a lot, but doesn't have any perspective. And so the average speed, that is what's more important. The power is how you get the speed. But the actual average speed in racing is what we're trying to do. We're trying to get from point A to point B as quick as we can. And the average speed that you're doing is a result of the power you're putting in, the effort you're putting in. And that is a really important number to look at. And, and to be fair, 60 minutes he did, I think 35 and a half Ks an hour and he did 20 minute FTP test at 38 Ks an hour. So, so we're really, we're really looking at, you know, his best 60 Minutes was if he's in an Olympic distance. That would be around 40K. Or you know, not everybody can ride 60, 40K in 60 minutes, but you know, 40K has got somewhere between 60 minutes and an hour 30 for most people, depending on your ability. And you know, generally he's been riding that, that 40K an hour 20. And now he can ride that 40K, around 65 minutes. If we, if we rounded off the distance he traveled in 60 minutes would be about 30, 35K. So, so they're numbers that, that make sense to people and, and then you get a realization of, well, that, you know, that's probably 5Ks an hour faster than what he could do. And admittedly this is, this is not in a triathlon. So we're only comparing 60 minute efforts with, and 20 minute efforts with 20 minute efforts. But when you look at his Olympic distance races that he's done since he started with us, as compared to what he was doing before in an Olympic distance race, he's able to average 3 or 4 kilometers an hour faster now than he could before he started with us. So that's 3 or 4ks an hour over 20 minutes or 60 minutes is, that's a, that's a long way further up the road. You know, I would be probably 2k ahead of myself if I could ride 3 or 4ks an hour faster. And that's how you think about it. I would be way up the road compared to where I am here. And, and they're the things that are fun to look at and you know, especially after you've just done an event where you've smashed your swim pb, you've smashed your ride pb, you've smashed your run PB in a, in a race, and you've smashed your actual individual times and efforts for those, for those legs. So we're not talking, you know, fresh, we're talking you're smashing your fresh numbers in a race.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's also great to just remind people why you want to test regularly, because if you look at his test In March was 215 watts for 20 minutes, and then in May it was 235, and then in June it was 250. In September it was 284. So it was a nice progression there to look at. And it's just, you're really stoked every time you're seeing that number go up every single test. And I think that's the response he had to you, where you, he just says it just keeps going up, you know, every single time.

And you've got to be understanding too. You know, it's great to have feedback to see improvement. But imagine if we just kept training at 215 watts from March till September and never tested. Where's the improvement going to come from? Because once we test at 215, we spend the next block of training training at that number, and then we test again, and all of a sudden he's gone from 215 to 235. So now we adjust all the numbers in his next three weeks training around 235. And that's why he gets to 250 after another three weeks of training, because we're actually changing the sessions to match the fitness that he's at. And if we had left it at 215, he would still be riding around 215 or 220 or 225 instead of 280. And that's another really good reason as to why it's important to keep measuring where you're at.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, he might have got that initial improvement that takes him to 230, but then he'd plateau from there because there's just no overload. So if we move on to the run. Interesting, because we've been training for different things. You'll make a point about the 10k time trial, but some key stats we want to point out is that he's just recently done a 5k time trial off the bike, and he actually beat his fresh 5K time trial from six months ago by 20 or 25 seconds. And that's a sign of good triathlon training and someone who's ready to perform well in a triathlon, because really, you do want your fresh 5k P, for example, and your 5k off the bike to be as close as possible. You don't want a massive gap there.

Yeah, and that's one of the things I tell all athletes. Our aim is to see if we can match what our fresh 5 or 10k or half marathon is in an actual race. That's not easy to do, and that's a sign that you are really developing good running fitness. And the minute you can get that closer to your PB fresh, that you know you are actually at your top end of your ability and. Or your freshman execution needs revisiting, because it's actually probably better than what it's indicating at the moment, because you shouldn't be able to run the same fresh as you can off the bike. They should be different, but our goal is to get them close. So we've got to find out what you do fresh so that we can actually use that as a benchmark and then adjust it to the fatigue factor from the swim and the bike before it. So fresh numbers are important, but they're really good comparisons. And we use that A lot in the evidence that we collect to give predictions as to the percentage difference between what you can do as a fresh runner as what you can do in a race. And seeing his numbers go from a half marathon, I think he was in space of six months, he was training for a marathon. So I think his improvement was nearly six minutes over, over a half marathon from, from when he started to only halfway through that program. So we, you know, we haven't really tested that half marathon again with a, with a race situation. I'm sure it would be way faster than what it is already. So that six minutes was sort of from March to May and now we're in September. So I can imagine that number has changed that.

Yeah, exactly. And that's. There's two really funny kind of things to point out here because yeah, his half marathon PB was about the 142 mark and he did a 137 in May, which is a five minute improvement. But he also did a 25 kilometer session that you did him, which is obviously in training for the marathon. But he ran a 137 in that 25k in a training session. So that's really important to point out. And you said that when we're talking about this episode, you said, oh well, because the 10k time trials haven't aligned with the goal of the race. You haven't actually done one. But normally in a triathlon program probably would have done more 10k time trials because he's obviously going to do a PB because before he came his PB was 46 minutes. And in fact just today he did a running tempo session and he's around a 10kpb of 43 minutes in a tempo session. And mind you, this was a tempo session with rest. So it was four by eight minutes with two minutes rest. You're just trying to get him to run this tempo kind of pace. And it's funny that we use the word tempo because it's training him for his marathon tempo. But he's ended up doing a 10k PB and that just shows the progression of his running and how much better runner he is now because that's a comfortable pace for him. And that just shows again that if we did a 10k time trial, flat out, the improvement would probably be a lot bigger.

Yeah, it would be somewhere around the 40 to 41 and a half minutes. And you know, from a 46 minute 10K six months ago, I would be over the moon if I could improve my 10k by five or six minutes. And that's the reality. That's where you've got perspective of, wow, this really works. And you know, to be fair, Ben was doing the best he could prior to coming on board with us. But the consistency that we give him in his program and his confidence and trust, knowing that each day he wakes up that he's got a specific session to do. And when you get the results of improvement, you are more in on the program, you, you buy into the program way more than if you're actually not, not getting the results you want. And, and for both Beth and Ben being partners, they're actually very competitive in the house to see who's improving the most. And, and you know, that's, that's great fun. But you, you are, you are going to get that because you are consistent and the more you can understand the consistency is the key. The sessions are very important, the particular order of the sessions, the recovery you have, but you need to maintain that consistency. And if that's the one thing I could point out that he's done differently, there were sessions before he joined us where I could see clearly that there were lots of gaps in what he was doing and there was no really structure with intensity and recovery.

And before we finish off with some specifics around his training structure, I mean, just to your point, then, how is Ben feeling now and how is he feeling about his progression?

Yeah, he's just over the moon. And every time he comes to end of a training block, instead of fearing the testing period, he's embraced it to see what he can do. And that's the mental attitude that I'm really trying to instill in people, to not have a fear factor about what's happening in the testing period, because you get some recovery in the testing period and then you line up and measure yourself against what you've previously done and using your data from what you've previously done as your starting point. And if you've had a good training block and you know yourself whether you've nailed the training two or three week block that you've just had, if you've had no inconsistency there and you've nailed most of the sessions, you go in super confident. But the minute you have periods where you've not been able to train the way you want, there's doubt in your mind. And we're trying to find a couple of things here. We're trying to find whether you're staying the same, whether you're improving or whether you've regressed. And therefore we can train properly for the next period. But we're also trying to find how well can you execute with the form you've currently got. And execution is really key to when it comes to race day. So practicing this in your actual testing week is really race ready practice for what do I feel and can I do better than the pace or the power that I'm currently swimming or riding or running at? And then just continually asking yourself through that journey, can I improve whilst I'm in the middle of this or is this all I've got? And they're the key things about. It's just not one reason for doing this. There's many really positive outcomes and getting your body used to the race stress, they're the things that he now embraces because he knows that it's really important and imperative that he trains accurately now.

Yeah. And to finish off the shift worker kind of cycle is a real problem for a lot of endurance athletes or triathletes because it doesn't fit a typical mold. Can you give us an example of how we broke up the training, depending on whether it was day shift, night shift or even the four days off where you can get some more in, because there are shift workers out there that are on an 8 day cycle, on a 9 day cycle or even a 14 day cycle. Can you give us a bit of a breakdown where you try to fit things in and where you're trying to allow enough recovery so that you're not burning the candle at both ends?

Well, even in shift work you will have at least two days off somewhere in seven days generally. And that's a generalization. So you've got to actually maximize those two days if they're a Tuesday and a Thursday or Monday, Tuesday or Thursday, Friday, you know, that's why you've got a coach, so you can manipulate the week so that the endurance days are going to be used on those days where you have off. And if it ends, the normal Monday to Friday worker has Saturday, Sunday and it's a no brainer. You've just got your endurance days there. But when it happens to fall on a Tuesday and a Wednesday, we have to be really careful what happens before the Tuesday and that has to be sort of an easy day. And if the two days off you have is Wednesday, Thursday, then the Friday has to be some sort of recovery. Just because you might have three days in a row off or four days in a row off, such as what happens to Ben, the temptation is you've got all this time is to do more training and that's good in some ways because you've got more time to do it and more time to recover. But it's also bad because you end up doing too much and then you end up actually being exhausted. So it is a really hard thing to get right and needs a lot of attention to detail.

Yeah. And then I guess that really covers the endurance in terms of any high intensity work. You are trying to fit them in around your normal work days, as anyone would. But I guess it's making sure you're managing that you are recovering outside of that as well as not doing too many hard days in a row.

Yeah. And you know, there are some days where I have to say to Ben, you know, you've just done a long endurance run and tomorrow, you know, because you've only got limited time, we actually have to do a high intensity ride. And that doesn't happen that often. But because your schedule in the next five days doesn't allow us to fit this session in anywhere else, we have to do that. And then the next day becomes really recovery, where he actually does something really easy, a 30 minute recovery run or something like that. So you're really having to look ahead and keep an eye on what's happening ahead. So as a shift worker, he would send me his four week shifts so I would know what's happening ahead, where his RDO days are and where his days where he's got the least amount of time. So it enables me to really work as his coach around that schedule.

And the last point we kind of really wanted to mention, this is quite important and we really want to point this out, is that there was you recently gave him a 60 minute bike time trial and it's really important to do this and not just do the 20 minute test. And it highlighted an area of improvement for Ben and that was when you do a 20 minute test, you'll get a number and then it gives you your predicted FTP, which is your predicted 60 minute predictor power. You can ride for 60 minutes. And then when Ben did a 60 minute time trial, his result was actually 30 watts lower than the predicted FTP. And that is a big argument against FTP test. But we really don't mind is because this is expected for the athlete that Ben has been and with the, you know, starting this training structure, he's still at the quote unquote beginner stage. So it's great to be able to see this gap because you know that it's probably expected for the type of athlete he is and he's got a lot of areas or this is a big area to actually grow and the more training we do, and you know, this is the goal over the next one to two years is become an athlete where those numbers actually that gap closes just like the gap needs to close between, you know, your fresh PB and your PB off the bike. You're running PB off the bike. The more he improves as an athlete, the fitter he gets and the stronger he gets, the more that 20 minute test will be closer to that or the FTP number of the 20 minute test will be closer to the actual 60 minute number. And I think that we do really want to point that out because most beginner athletes would see a bigger gap, but if you're a more experienced athlete and that gap is still there, then you're really missing an area. And this is something that he can definitely improve on.

Yeah, and there's specific sessions that'll help bridge that gap. And it is common that Most people's best 20 minute and then their predicted FTP from that best 20 minutes is way higher than their actual if they went out and did a 60 minute time trial. And that's why we do that, so that we can show the athlete that, you know, this is what the FTP is predicting. But, but when you actually went and did 60 Minutes, you were nowhere near it. And, and that, that's kind of a shocking feeling for them, but it's also something they can work on where you know, it was 20 watts difference between his, his 60 minute best power compared to his predicted off the FTP. So, so we've got work to do with being able to hold that, that 250 watts number for the hour. And that's what our goal is to try to, try to get used to that. And when we're doing sessions that are going to help get his body to cope with, with riding at that number. So that when it comes to race day, whether it's an Olympic distance with a 40k ride, he can actually know the number he's capable of doing for 60 minutes and whether he does an hour 10 or an hour 20 or an hour 5 for that 40k, we can just subtract some watts according to adjustment for, for the extra time he's going to be doing that 40k. So, so the goal is always to have that aspiration to match those and the guys at the pointy end of who can, you know, who can really nail the FTP number and they're 60 minutes to be as close as Possible. And that's the elite guys. That's what everybody should be aiming for.

Yeah, for sure. And it's really important to understand that, yeah, for an athlete starting out the training program, we're just trying to maximize that top end, you know, and a 66 watt improvement at that top end in 20 minutes is unreal. And then, yeah, when you're getting closer to thinking about your Olympic races, your half Ironmans, your Ironmans, it's about that strength and overall fitness to be able to hold that power or as close to that power for longer. And that's where a difference in sessions comes in compared to such high intensity VO2 max work, compared to some longer tempo threshold or sub threshold sessions where you're holding close to that FTP number or between a range of, let's say 75 to 95% of it. And depending on the style of session and the structure of the session, for long periods, you know, they become 4 by 10 minute efforts or even 4 by 20 minute efforts where you drop the power or even longer in an Ironman case. So it's good to provide that example.

Yeah. And also if we had tested his 60 minutes, and I don't do this at the beginning of most people's program because it is a real hard thing to do 60 minutes at threshold. So that's why the 20 minute is used as a common tool. So knowing that his 60 minute has progressed the same as his 20 minute. So if, if we had a test, well, we have tested him in races, you know, his 60 Minutes is, is, you know, 180 watts and now it's 250. So, you know, it's gone up the same way as the 20 minute has. So it's not like that's been left behind. It's just, it's just still behind the 20 minutes. So, so the progress is there. And that's because he's been able to nail those, those endurance sessions and those, you know, those particular VO2 and Threshold sessions that we've been given to him in his program.

Yeah. Any last thoughts before we finish off?

No, I just love these case studies because, you know, it just sounds like we're, we're just. Everybody we talk about is improving. And that's actually true. And, and it's not just elite people who are improving. It's. It's people who are starting their journey as a triathlete or as a marathon runner or as a cyclist. Everybody starts somewhere. And, you know, it is expected that if you do reasonable, proper training with structure that you will improve, but that's not necessarily the case. So the people who actually do the work get the results that we're, that we're showing and talking about. The people who are doing half versions of programs, they're getting half the results. And the correlation between nailing the program structure as it's written and doing a version of it are very high. And I want to really point that out to people. That's the conclusion I'm getting, is the people who are able to stay consistent get the best outcomes. And these are examples. We've got many more examples we can keep doing these case studies of. And the same result is happening because they are actually understanding and taking ownership of their own destiny and knowing their numbers and doing the research about what they're at at the moment and what the next training session's asking them. And these are all the things we talk about in our podcast that people are actually doing and getting these results. It's a privilege to talk about our athletes, and I love when they do another test and we just have a great texting or conversation about how fantastic was it. And their enthusiasm for what they've just achieved is like winning a race. It's so much fun when things are going well and you're executing and performing.

Great way to finish. And we will keep doing these case studies every week because we like them. We've had some great feedback so far. People really like hearing the specific examples of how the coaching advice, especially that we talk about in the normal weekly podcast, actually applies to specific athletes. So we will keep doing them. We really enjoy them and we hope you do too. And we'll see you in the next episode.