The 12 Week FTP Program That Will Explode Your Cycling

This podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo Coaching, Jared Donnelly. In today's podcast episode we are talking about how to improve your FTP over a 12 week period. We see plenty of programs out there online about what's the best way to improve your FTP over 12 weeks, what's the fastest way I can improve, and there's a lot of FTP builder workout programs out there. So we wanted to tackle the question ourselves and let you know what is the best or most effective way to build your FTP over a 12 week period. So we're going to dive deep into that. What kind of sessions should you be doing, how to tackle the 12 weeks, how to get the most out of yourself, and our thoughts on the FTP building topic in general. But first let's get into our normal segments of the podcast and we'll start with gratitude and dad, what is your gratitude for this week? And welcome to the episode.

Thanks, Jordan. I was reminded last night when I was watching the famous Ventou stage of the tour and it just instantly reminded me of having ridden that climb and many climbs like it in France and in Italy and in Spain and how fortunate I have been over the journey to get to some of these places. And it's only now that you can't travel for the last year and a half where you just get reminded that boy did we have it good for a period. And I just loved watching the riders on a, on a hill that I've climbed and how badly I suffered on that climb and I'm very grateful for having the opportunity and you know, five years in a row we were in Belgium doing the tours and riding some unbelievable stages of spring classics and you know, really sort of becoming like Belgian fans. And then to watch Woot Van Aert last night demolish the field as a non climber to me was unbelievably outstanding and I was so grateful that, that I, I feel an affinity with the Belgians and, and knowing that the hill that he was climbing, it's a brutal hill, it's. I don't even know how to describe it. It destroyed me. I rode it really poorly, rode too hard. I was so excited leaving the township of Abedouan and climbing the 22 kilometers, not the 15 that it said on the segment last night and you know, an hour and a half at sort of your threshold and I just was too excited, too early, it was too steep and I was loving it. And then by the time I got halfway up to the turn, I was cooked and but yeah, grateful that I had experienced that even though I stuffed it up. But watching those guys, even those guys suffer on that climb and I know they've done it twice from one side, then the other side, but knowing that that course intimately, yeah, it was. I was just so grateful that, you know, that I've been having the opportunity to be a part of that whole journey.

I love that your gratitude is watching the Amazing Wout Van Aert. I like to call him wow Van Aert because he's so good. But the fact that he's so good and you love him so much that you're grateful just to watch him is a great one. And we'll be talking all about his performance in detail and the Tour de France details of what's been happening in the episodes in our special Tour de France podcast. Episodes. You can get them anywhere you download this actual podcast. They're audio only so there's no video for them, but we've been doing episodes every couple of days reviewing the last few stages of the tour. So we'll definitely dive more into that stage because there is so much to talk about. But I love that gratitude because it is amazing riding over there and I'm yet to take it off the bucket list into riding up Von 2 or Alp D'. Huez. I've done the bowflungs, we've a few times but I would much rather do the real thing so that's something definitely on the bucket list.

What are you grateful for, Jordan?

My gratitude is actually for our trivelo athletes, our trivelo community. I just really love the tight knit feeling of the community. I love seeing trivalo athletes out on the road sporting the kit. I love the camaraderie and friendship that a lot of our athletes have formed and just grateful for the athletes that we get to coach because it is a rewarding experience when they improve or send you messages of gratitude themselves. And we had a really nice message a couple of weeks ago from an athlete that I was just gonna because it was just really sums up my gratitude for why I'm grateful for athletes. And so this athlete sent us through an email just saying just want to say thank you so much. I've learned so much in the last 12 months and become a much better triathlete. Even after my knee broke down back in September. I still managed to PB cans Ironman by 32 minutes, do a 16 minute marathon PB and that's all on a bad day and a bad day because he was, this athlete was sick coming into the race. I'm now looking forward to the next training plan and a race and hopefully the body holds together. I can get it get to race in 100% health. A huge thanks to both of you. The setup of the plan is really well done with the videos about the different parts of the training plans and how to execute them. The coaching calls and even the podcasts all contribute towards becoming a better athlete. And those kind of messages are just really what it's about for us. So I'm really grateful for that.

That's awesome, Jord.

Moving on to our next segment and what has caught your attention, and this was something that has caught your attention before the Tour de France started. And now this topic is kind of relevant for the Tour de France as well. And we promise we won't just spend the whole podcast talking about the Tour de France, because we're already doing extra episod, but this is quite relevant.

Yeah. And the aging athlete, as I like to call it, but it's kind of not really. When you talk about a guy who's in his 30s, he's not really aging, is he? I mean, it seems like you're in the prime now. Yeah. So there seems to be a myth, and it's across, I suppose, non sporting people, that once you get to a certain age, it's over. And I just don't, I don't accept that. And I, and I don't live my life like that. And we get reminded when someone like Cavendish does what he's done this time in the Tour, winning now three stages and possibly could win four or five if things go his way. But you know, we started rattling off athletes who are still, you know, Valverde's 41, he's still riding the Tour. Jens Voigt was 40, still riding the Tour. Cadell won the Tour at 34. Robbie McKeown was still winning stages at 34. So I suppose the aging athlete is the wrong term. It's more you're coming into your prime athlete. You spend all these years in your 20s and teens almost preparing for your 30s, I think. And for people to think that once they hit 30, they're on the downward spiral. I think you've got the wrong mindset. I think you should be excited by what's going to happen in the next decade. And you know, I've still got examples of 40 year olds, 50 year olds, 60 year olds who are still improving. So it was just great to see Cavendish come back from five years in the wilderness of not winning, you know, anything to start to win races again. And it just reminded me, and I thought it was just really important that we, that we touch on this and remind all the listeners out there that, you know, when you get to 45 and you think, what's the point? You know, training hard? Well, there is lots of point because you possibly have got another 15 or 20 years of doing what you love at a competitive level.

It's a long time, isn't it? If you think about the fact that you in your 20s, late 20s or 30s, you might have been doing the sport that you're in for maybe 10 years or so or a bit longer, and you've got almost double that time to keep improving. You know, 15 to 20 years is a long time, so you can keep improving on it. And the person that first sparked this thought of you wasn't actually Cavendish before the race, it was Richard Porte right after he won the Dauphinet.

Yeah. And then, and we said this a few, you know, the Dauphine was probably five weeks ago. And I said, oh, gee, this just reminds me. And Richie did well on the Tour last year. Remember, he got on the podium and no one expected that to happen. So he backed it up this year with the Dauphine win. And it just really reminded me that, you know, people are very quick to write you off. And it was a great example of how that's a mistake. And then you look at a guy like Pagaccio, who's 22.

Yeah. You know, he's peaking probably.

What can he do when he's 34?

Yeah.

Wow. It's quite scary. I just love to go back to this podcast in, in 12 years time and he could possibly be a 10 time winner. He could, he could have won more stages than the great Eddie Merckx.

And anything can happen because everyone was saying the same thing about Bernal three years ago. Everyone said no one's going to beat him for the next five years, but he hasn't won. He won the Giro this year, but things happen. He crashed, et cetera. And he hasn't been able to ride as well.

So, you know, and that's the point I'm making. You know, things, things definitely change in people's lives. They get better, they get the same or they get worse. And, and you don't know what the world is going to throw up. And you don't know what your environment, your home life, your particular circumstances are. So it's so important that even if you're 50 or 30 or 70, to make the most of what you're doing right now today. And, and I think that's the thing that we want to, you know, it's never over. And I think Robbie McEwen summed it up last night when he was doing a study on the sprint that Cavendish won. And he finished off by saying, you know, believe. And if you believe in yourself, it doesn't matter what your age is, as long as you've got an idea that you're on the right track and you're putting yourself out there, you know, anything can happen on any given day. And we don't want to talk about the Tour de France, but, you know, it looks like Picach is going to win the thing, but anything can. There's still 10 more stages.

I love the point you made and the fact that, you know, Richie was a great example of everyone had written him off as a Tour contender. He was now just riding to support other people. Yet he came third last year, his best ever Tour result. And he just had, after so many years of bad luck, it was an incredible result. And then he backed it up this year, winning the Dauphine. And so it shows that age is no barrier. But then the argument could be made, well, that's true for endurance athletes, because you could get better. And then you said, well, Cavendish has just proven it's not just that, you know, he's a sprinter. And most people would say you lose that electric edge as a sprinter and he's showing he can still be the world's best.

Yeah, we were talking about that last night when Matt Keenan mentioned to Robbie, do you realise that Cavendish just broke your record for being the oldest triple stage winner in any Tour de France? And Robbie was 34. So, you know, there's plenty of examples of sprinters who are still turning the clock back and beating the so called up and comers. And you can't sprint as well. The myth of you can't sprint as well when you get older and it's just endurance athletes with low intensity who can still perform well. Well, that myth's broken. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. And there's plenty of examples in other sports worldwide where this. I mean, we listened to a podcast with Kelly Slater yesterday, which we really enjoyed, and he's 48 and still competing on the world Tour circuit as a surfer. And surfing is not a nothing sport, you know, it's not a Sport that's easy on the body. And people might make the argument saying it's more of a hobby kind of sport. That's why he can do it. But that's just absolutely not true. You know, John, John Florence is the world's best surfer at the moment, and he's barely been able to surf last couple of years because he's ruptured his ACL twice. That's how tough the sport is on your knees. So the fact that Kelly Slater at the top of his game for 30 years and he has kept being better, and he said on the podcast that he's competing against guys who weren't even born when he won his first World Tour, let alone there was one guy on the Tour who, Kelly Slater is older than the guy's dad. That's just another example of, again, age is no barrier. And you know, there's in the NFL, Tom Brady, he's just won a Super bowl at 42. It's ridiculous. Playing NFL, one of the most brutal contact sports in the world. LeBron James has been dominating the league for 20 years as well, still at the top of his game. All these examples of athletes.

And you and I were discussing that in the car when we were listening to the podcast yesterday, and it was absolutely true that, you know, no matter how old you are at any given point of your life, you can still compete if you want to. And, you know, kelly being at 48, you know, he was still in the top five of his, of his category in his last Tour. And, you know, if we had, you know, you said to me, imagine if I was, you know, your age and I was born with the knowledge of a 60 year old when I was 18. What a, what a great concept. You know, how different would your last 10 years have been if you had been born with the experience of a 60 year old?

Yeah. Then the wisdom.

And I said, oh, far out. If I, knowing what I know now, I would have made so many different choices. This isn't a regret statement. This is just, I would have done so many things better.

Yeah. Yeah.

And the experience factor as a competitive athlete is what I'm trying to say. You know, the enthusiasm and the youthfulness of the younger athlete is what really is their trump card. But go up against a really crafty, experienced cyclist or triathlete and you'll come off second best more times. And not only have we said this a thousand times, but, you know, bike riding, it's never the best rider who wins. You know, there's two facets. There's the best rider and the smartest and I reckon the smartest is worth 51% and the best rider is worth 49. And if you don't have both of them, you're not going to win many races. And the Italian champion at the moment, he's got diamond legs. Yes. Tony Korgoli, they're calling him Diamond Legs because he is in the form of his life and so far he's got zero out of any of any stage. And that is another example of just, you know, really his tactics haven't worked yet. He's in the form of his life, he's sprinting better than anybody else in the Tour, but he's got nothing.

It reminds me of. This is a little bit off topic but I'm a big Survivor fan. If you know the reality TV show Survivor and a couple of years ago they had champions versus contenders and they had these ex Aussie champion athletes versus normal contenders of the population. And Matt Rogers, ex rugby superstar was on there and there was these one on one battles and he was put against the same young guy every time. And this guy was just this meathead. He was physically as aesthetic as you could. He looked like a Greek God, you know, and he walked around like it as well. He was puffing his chest up and he was amped up. And Matt Rogers is relatively skinny looking rugby athlete and he was 45 or something, so a little bit older coming up against this youthful, like you said, 26 year old, that that was his trump card. And Matt Rogers had his number in every battle and they weren't game like little games or anything, they were strength challenges, they were physical. And just his experience he knocked over and the guy could not believe it because he was, he would have been 30 kilos heavier than him. You know, it was such an unfair weight matchup and experience just can just beat out so much. And I think dad, you're an inspiring story for this yourself as well and a leading example because if I'm not mistaken, you are putting out probably the best power now compared to 10 years ago when you were 50.

I am actually. I don't want to talk too much about this but definitely my training method is better now than it was when I was 50. When I was 40. When I was 30.

It's better than when you're a pro athlete, right?

It is way better and of course I have better equipment. We've talked about that as well.

But certainly refined training program.

Yeah. And what we're going to talk about in a minute is really about What I'm saying now is I understand how to train better now. Even though I had vast amount of knowledge as a exercise physiology graduate, I had lots of information about training methods and studies that had been done. I had that all at my fingertips and I'd read millions of them. And so I thought I had a really good program and I did because it was very successful. But have I have the experience now of how to coach myself, then I would have been further up the road and won more races.

It's a pretty incredible stat itself though, that you can ride better 10 years on. That just shows the age is no barrier thing to a T. And I take the piss out of my mates a little bit because cycling's not as popular in the younger generation and they see that I'm quite fit on the bike and stuff. But they often make jokes about the old men in Lycra. And I say these old men in Lycra would just absolutely belch you down the street. You know, it's embarrassing that at your age these guys are 100 times fitter than you.

Yeah, look, Matt Keenan, a really good example the other night when he was riding on beach road with the world record holder from 1968, Derek Clayton, for the marathon. A marathon runner, not a cyclist. And he was riding the Hell Ride, which is a famous ride in Melbourne, which is not one that we recommend people do, but it's a little bit of an out there ride, but it's a really tough like a race ride. And here's this old guy, Derek Clayton, who was a runner, mixing it with these young and most, most of the guys in Hell Rider are young, you know, really NRS level, National Road Series level riders. And this guy was mixing it with them as a 50, 60 year old. And you know, that was another example of what we're talking about. You know, just don't use that. You know, I can't keep up with these guys this Saturday in the group ride because I'm just getting older. That's just not acceptable to me anymore.

Yeah, well, that was quite a long winded what's caught your attention. But quite a great topic, especially for our listeners. You know, we do do this podcast for ourselves and our athletes and the age group athlete. And I think the age group triathlete or cyclist is just the epitome of fitness in society and people that really are getting the most out of themselves and their body. And we talk about longevity a bit on this podcast. I think that's what it's really about.

Which is really awesome, just finishing on that. But that is the big picture thing. And I think we shouldn't, you know, we should really congratulate the people, especially the people who are listening to this, who are trying. They're listening because they're striving to get more information about improving themselves and they've already accepted that I want to be better and I'll listen to whatever I can listen to or read, whatever I can read that will give me more information to become a better athlete in my chosen sport, whatever your chosen sport is. And I think that you should be commended. And you've already passed the point that you don't care about your age and don't let anybody tell you any different. You have the mindset and if you believe in yourself, you can achieve whatever you want. And talking to Shauna last week was an example of that. That's the thing that I want everybody to think about, is well done, you're on the right track and you're on the right journey.

Yeah, spot on. What's got my attention is we did have Cairns over a month ago now, almost a month ago, and, and we were looking at all the athletes and how they recovered over the next few weeks after Cairns, and you were really just assessing and analyzing a lot of the athletes. And a point you made that really stood out to me was how well a lot of the Tribalo athletes recovered. And you just made the point that that's a really good sign of fitness to be able to do an ironman and it's still going to take you up to three weeks or maybe more to recover because it's such a. An extreme event. But a lot of the athletes recovered really well and were able to bounce back. And that is just a really good sign of fitness compared to, you know, getting through the day just. And then being out for four to six weeks or longer because it just took too much out of you because your body wasn't ready. Whereas the faster you can recover, the more your body was actually prepared for that kind of day.

Yeah, it's a great observation. And one of the things that I had had to do with a lot of the athletes was hold them back from starting again. I've recovered, I'm ready to go. What's next? And I'm saying, no, you'll regret that. That's a poor decision. Let your body really recover and take it easy for a period of time. And that's, you know, they're so used to the opposite. Before they joined us, which was like, had no intentions of resuming training for some people for three months because it had taken that much out of them and some people hadn't recovered at all. So it was really good to hear and see people just chomping at the bit to get back into it.

Yeah, exactly. And I have friends often ask me, I want to do a marathon, what do I need to do? Can I do a marathon? And the answer always is, and I've just copied this from you, but anyone can do a marathon, it's how well do you want to do it, how old do you want to get through it? And yeah, what do you want your recovery period to be? Because I have heard a lot of tales of people who do the marathon off not enough training and they can't walk for a month. And someone who prepares better, you don't have to prepare like an elite athlete, but prepares better and prepares their body well, isn't going to suffer the month after.

And sometimes those people who are under prepared and get through it, but they are end up out there for five or six hours, which is just horrendous. Not horrendous as in your ability, but if you're a four hour runner and you end up doing six, that's horrendous. I'm talking if you're a six hour runner and you end up doing 6, that's absolutely fine. But if you're a four hour run and you end up doing 6, I guarantee you're probably not keen to run again for a long, long time and you could possibly never run again. You might have injured yourself and you might have dented your confidence that much and it's only because you're under prepared.

Moving on to today's topic, how to build your FTP over a 12 week period, what is the best 12 week program builder we could possibly come up with? Well, let's start with the keys to an FTP building program. And I want to start by talking about training zones because the amount of time spent in certain training zones is going to affect your improvements, probably one of the major factors to impacting your improvement. And so what kind of zones do athletes do you think normally spend their time in and what would be the ideal differentiation in zones that they should be doing?

Ask me that question after I answer half of it. So the key, the keys to the safe, to use the term you just asked then, and taking it as a different meaning, the keys to the safe, that's what everybody wants to know. How the hell can I improve my FTP? My answer is does that really matter? Is it that important? Is the FTP the key to your unlocking your door? Well, the answer is yes and no. And at the end of the day, the way you train, like we talked about in the observations of part of this podcast, is the outcome that you'll get. So the number one key to the vault is training in the right zones. And if we get that across as our message today, then we've achieved something. And I want to make it as simple as possible because we don't confuse the listeners that, you know, you should be doing this and that, and all we get back is, I don't know what to do and I don't know when to do it, I don't know how long to do it for. I don't know how much time to spend in that range. I'm lost. I heard what you told me, but I can't remember. And that's exactly what happens when I start talking to people about where to train them and how to do it. And they're just telling you, they're just saying to me, just tell me what to do. And that is also a problem. If you can understand what you're doing and why you're doing it, then you will be on board more with what to do and when to do it.

So what are the typical mistakes you see with training zones?

I think to start with, people don't know from the outset what their actual FTP is to start with, so therefore they're doomed. So that would be the first mistake. So not knowing what your actual number is means you can't train in any particular range because you've got no clue. So we get past that hurdle. That's great. Tick number one. They've actually done a test, so that's got past the initial problem. So once they've got their best one hour, their best functional threshold power for one hour, then they can implement that into their zones. And the next mistake they're making is they're doing pretty much all of their training, hardly looking at the power that they've just tested. And they're going on all a bunch of rides and they're in between zone 2 and 3 for the majority of their training. And in those sessions, the average will be between zone two and three, but there'll be bits where they've got zone six, zone four, zone one, but they repeat that day in, day out. So they're just doing the same sessions every day. And you can disguise it however you like, but a guy says, oh, today's a recovery ride. And they go with their mates and there's four guys and one of the guys did nothing on the weekend and he's fresh as a daisy. And the other three guys train properly and they're looking for a recovery ride. The one guy who's fresh starts off talking as a recovery ride and then in 10 minutes he's starting to half wheel the rest of the group and then he starts to accelerate and then the other guys start chasing and all of a sudden the Monday recovery ride is now the same as it was on the weekend. So you've done your third day. Tuesday is meant to be the hard session. Off we go. Can't train hard enough because we're tired from Monday, Saturday and Sunday. So we end up back in zone three again because that's as good as we can go. And so the story goes, Wednesday, I'm supposed to be doing zone two, if that's what the program says. And all of a sudden I've selected the wrong course, it's got hills, and I'm spending majority of my time between zone three and four. And therefore the next day I might be doing a high intensity session, which is supposed to be zone four to six. I'm that exhausted, I'm back in zone three again. So. So I'm giving you an example of exactly how a typical week would end up with the everyday cyclist or triathlete where they've got good intentions, they understand that they've got the FTP number, but they forget to actually implement it into their program. And if you summarise, and if they look back at their data and analyse what their percentage of time was for the week, and also go into each individual session and work out what percentage you spent in zone 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 or 7, and go and get those percentages and tell me what your average time was. And you, you will get a completely different percentage than what you're meant to be doing.

So I want to touch on what you're meant to be doing in a second, because that'll be the next big question that everyone has. But I just want to clarify, when we're talking about zones, everyone uses slightly different zones to what suits them. You know, with. If you look at VO2 max testing, or a lot of the studies that look at kind of VO2 max training and that kind of thing tend to refer to zones as three simple zones, which is your zone up to your first kind of lactate buffer, and that's like the top of zone, what we call zone two, which is that easy training. And then zone two is up to the next lactate threshold, which is almost the max you can hold before the lactate gets too much. And then above that is pretty much above threshold, where you can't sustain that for much longer. So they use it kind of in three specific zones. But we use a travelo method in conjunction with training peaks where there's seven zones. And we do that for our own personal reasons. There's benefits for that that we like and that will be different to other people that use four zones or five zones. And so it can get a little bit confusing when you start trying to compare zones, because our Zone 2 is different to someone else's Zone 2 sometimes, but sometimes it's the same. So don't get caught up on which zone is which. Just understand the principles behind the zones we're talking about. And as we're having this conversation, we'll kind of refer to what each zone means. And so for this conversation, when you're talking about zone two, it's more active recover above active recovery, where it's not endurance based. Yeah, exactly.

And look, that is such a great point. And I suppose to simplify it, you know, if you wanted to use a number, you would be better off saying, what percentage did I spend in zone one this week? What percentage did I spend? So what percentage did I spend of my FTP throughout the whole week? And you can work that out. I spent 10% at 100 watts, I spent 15 at 200 watts, etc. So it's irrelevant what zones you are. You could just work that out.

We understand that can get confusing. So to go back to the question, the person who's just ends up riding in all the wrong zones because they're just not really following a program. They're doing what? We're just following what other people are doing. They end up riding the whole week somewhere between zones one to four, and they end up with maybe they're spending 30% of the time in zone one, 20% in zone two, 20%, 25% in zone three, 25% in zone four. Why is that a problem? And you can answer that by giving me the question what should you be doing instead?

It's a problem because you're not going to improve. So that. So that's the answer. And you could go into why if we wanted to, but in the answer of what should you be doing? Gives you the why of why they're not improving.

Give us why, dad. Give the listeners what they want.

Okay, that's such a Good question. Because you could get so caught up in the detail. And so in summary, we're going to talk about detail, but in summary, you should really only be spending 20% of your time at high intensity and the remaining time should be zone two or one.

It's quite a generic 8020 rule. There are studies that go really specific into 77%, 15%, 5%, that kind of thing, or 77, 23. But 8020 is the general of what you're saying. 80% of time, easy. 20% high intensity.

Yep. And, and I don't want to complicate it. I absolutely don't. I don't want to speak too much about percentages, but I want to speak a lot about percentages. So that's, it's almost the paradox. Yeah, it is. And, and if you start looking at your own data and you know, when you're listening to this, start, start thinking, right, as soon as I finish listening to this, I'm going to go and find out what percentage I'm spending in what intensity bracket. And you know, on a high intensity day, some of the sessions we do, there's only a percentage in that session that's high intensity, even though the session's called high intensity. Because you've got warm up and cool down and recovery in between efforts. If you're doing efforts. So out of an hour and 10, you might only have 20 minutes. That is at your, if we use zones or percentages at 120% and above or zone 6 and above if it's a high intensity session. So people think, well, that's, you know, that session went for an hour and a half. So there's an hour and a half of high intensity. Well, it's actually not, it's literally 20 to 30 minutes. So that's how specific you need to be when you're actually trying to work out how much time you're spending at that high intensity. Yeah.

To make things even simpler, you've just got to allow yourself to be spending a couple of sessions a week doing those high intensity bouts because that's what's going to improve your FTP. And the rest needs to be easy so that you can do those hard sessions. Hard and lucky. The example you gave, if you're going too hard in the other sessions, if you're doing too much of mixed zone one, up to four, for example, you're just fatiguing yourself too much and you won't be able to do those hard sessions hard enough.

Yeah. And we've got to be careful because these are such sweeping generalizations because it's hard to say I'm talking to John Smith and John Smith might be an elite athlete and then Brian Smith, to use a funny term, because we know a Brian Smith, he might be a beginner. And if I said to those two athletes do the same thing, one will cope with that very well and the other one won't. And so therefore we're talking very generally and that's what the listeners need to understand. We can't be very specific to everybody because everybody's different. So at the end of the day we've got to understand that there has to be some intensity and there has to be some tempo, style, writing and some recovery.

Yep, spot on. Quick shout out to Brian Smith. He's not actually a beginner athlete for Trivelo. He's won the last, last two Trivelon races in a row. We do the Thursday night Swift races and he's won two of them.

So he's got under the handicap.

Yeah, so touching on that. I mean, you saw an example which shocked you of a FTP builder program out there that had almost no high intensity training. And maybe the program thought it had high intensity training, but when you looked at the numbers, that wasn't high intensity enough. And that's not going to improve you.

No. And the majority of it was based around zone three for that particular style. And we did talk about this at the start, it would be confusing, but around that 70 to 90% of your FTP, that's better than talking about zones. So 70 to 90% of your FTP was the majority of that 12 week FTP so called builder, which I was really disappointed when I saw that and I thought you will improve just because you're being consistent with your training. But if you put two people side by side with one doing 20%, you know, above 110% of your FTP and compared that to a person who's doing what I just described as between 70 and 90% of your FTP, the person doing that option one will be about 10 to 12% ahead of the person doing the one with no basic high intensity. And that's how significant the difference is.

Yeah, and I know where you get that 10 to 12% number from because there are studies that have shown those kind of comparisons. But again, it's hard not to talk in sweeping generalizations because these tests cannot be perfect unless you are able to clone someone and put them side by side and have them in the exact same conditions, but they just can't do that. So there's always something's wrong with these tests, which is why we have to use sweeping generalizations and apply the principles.

Yep. And to be fair, I've been my own guinea pig for 30 years and I'm forever experimenting. And the minute I do do some more reading and find another research study that's done some testing, then I'm searching for them in the medical journals all the time, because I'm really trying to find what is the best training session to build this or what is the best training session for that. And the best place to look is in these test studies that have been done. So at the end of the day, we really want to use those studies to our advantage. And I have been doing that to myself over the last 30 years. And, you know, I just even found more information in the last 12 weeks about my own level of rate of improvement. So those who don't know what happened to me and could happen to anybody. I had a crash, fractured my pelvis. I wasn't allowed to move for five weeks. So no training, no walking, basically sitting still in a chair and on crutches.

An athlete's nightmare.

Yeah. So up until that point, I was riding at the top of my game. Just done a half ironman 90k ride and my FTP was as good as it's been in 20 years. So it was going to be interesting when I came back from this injury after five weeks of nothing, where was my FTP going to be? And I'm giving you this example to show you how important it is to know where to train to and how to get back to where you were doing. So the experiment, I used it myself, was I'm going to spend the majority of my time in my comeback after I did the FTP test and I did it in week one, it went from 299 to 270. That was a very disappointing result. 29 watt loss in five weeks. Anyway, that's what I have to train at because that's my new number. And so I'm going to spend the majority of my time in zone two and zone one and I'm going to riding easy. Yes. Endurance and recovery, they're the two. And just have pressure on the pedals, which is basically between 65% and less. And then I'm going to spend the other time really pushing hard in these high intensity sessions and to see how long it's going to take me. And I continue to test myself over the next 12 weeks. I tested myself four times, which is really hard, punishing. To do that to yourself. But anyway, that's what I did and slowly but surely my power went. And last week we did the last test and my power is back to within one watt of what it was pre. So I've improved again back to 29 watts from where I was from 277 weeks ago. 12 weeks ago. Sorry. So I did that test on myself and from the crash to 12 weeks later, which I had five weeks off and seven weeks of training. So only seven weeks of training with five weeks off in the 12 weeks, it's got me back to where I. Now you can say there's a number of things that influence that. How long I've been training, the years of fitness that I have in my bank, and they're all contributing factors. But the point I was making was I've tried to come back from other injuries doing different methods and I've never responded so quick. And yet I'm older than I was before.

That is a common thing. We get as well that as you get older, it is relatively well known that you won't recover as well from things. But. But that's an important point to make.

Yeah. So just an example of specific training in the right zones, how quickly it enabled me to get back to where I was happy again in a happy world, have a smile on my face, not being a grump and geez, I'm riding a ride again and not getting too carried away because, you know, anything can happen the next day or two. But the example is there that once again, it reminded me of proper structured training. Knowing what to do, what, what percentage to ride at for the majority of the time where it was hard work.

Yeah.

You know, it wasn't easy. People think I just go and do that training. Well, the hard sessions, I'd lost so much, you know, even the easy sessions, I'm talking about the zone 2 endurance type pressure on the pedals where you're riding that uncomfortable 65%, you know, sitting there, you know, if you're sitting on the trainer for an hour and a half doing that, your legs are aching, you know, you got a toothache in your. In your legs. So it's not easy. And for anybody to dismiss that, you know, it's. It's hard, dedicated work. You need to be motivated to jump on the trainer and do that.

Yeah. It's not, it's not fatiguing like a high intensity session is, but it is fatiguing down the way.

Yeah, yeah. So I just want to just get across to people that you can do this. And it does depend on, you know, we're talking about how to improve quickly. Well, it depends on what your background is. You know, for someone who's got a really long history of lots of fitness in their, in their bank. Yeah, you know, they've trained for a long period of time, will get back quicker than the person who's new to it. It will take them longer if they've had a bit of a setback. So that's important to remember as well. So if you jump on any of these online 1212 week FTP boosters, you know, it's just written for the general public population and you know, if you fit into the general person, fine, but I probably think you won't.

We have our own 12 week FTP builder that we think is pretty good so we recommend you use that one. Two things stand out but before you.

Having just said that, we don't give our people just straight out a 12 week from scratch. They have had to have done something before they get to that they have to have done a fitness building program before they get to do this specific training program. You just, you just can't say that the race is in 12 weeks. I'm going to do this program. You know, we will be shaking our heads at someone who just says, right, I'm doing a 12 week without any.

Preparation or the context of where they're at in their program. Yeah, spot on. Two things stood out for me in that, in that example. One is that again, I wish we could have just cloned you 12 weeks ago and then put you side by side, given the exact same circumstances, kept every other factor the same and just done the same training session to see what the results would be. Obviously that's impossible. So we have to use the anecdotal evidence of, you know, anecdotally how you recovered from previous things. And you compare that to this and we can't draw empirical conclusive evidence, but in your coaching experience this is a, has been a much faster return for you. And the second part was what did Shauna teach us in last week's episode? It's to, you can't put your self worth on your FTP number. Which when you said you're a grumpy walking around grumpy because your FTP was down, that made me laugh.

But you know, the people I coach and there's many, we all do it. There's many people who come back to me, oh, that, that number sucks. I said, look, that might suck but that's where we're at and. And the incentive is to make sure that we're not there for very long and we move onwards.

Yep, spot on. So I want to touch on a specific example session which is thrown around a lot in the cycling world with regards to improving FTP. And it's the kind of the famous 3015 session, if you're not familiar with it. It's repeats of 30 seconds on, 15 seconds off. And it was made famous by a study in 2013 that basically showed a group improved more by doing sessions. The high intensity sessions include 3015s. And then it was backed up again by another study a couple of years later which because the first study, as you mentioned before, looked at amateur athletes and then they decided to replicate it with elite athletes and Both times the 3015 has created great improvements. I just want to touch on this session as an example of how we can use this kind of thinking in applying to trying to improve your FTP. Because there's pros and cons to this test and example and it's a session we like to use and put in our program for various reasons. But you've got to be able to apply sessions to the athlete and to the program where it fits accordingly. And you can't just take these studies and blindly follow it and think that that is, like you said before, the key to the safe that is going to unlock everything. And one of the pros to this study was that obviously your ability to when your FTP improved. That was one of the results of the study. The athletes that did the 3015s improved FTP. But one of the limitations of the study was that they weren't sure if they couldn't conclude specifically if the athletes in the group that improved improved because of the session specifically or a range of other factors like the fact that this, this session for example, is a is less intense on the body, to use that specific word, meaning that they're shorter efforts. So it's almost akin to a taper period where it's less volume on the body but you're still keeping up the intensity. So do they just perform better in their post FTP test because they were fresh? So that's an example of a session that has a pro and con and you need to weigh up these things when deciding how to use these high intensity sessions in your program.

And look, we've trialled them all the studies and there's been many other studies with particular sessions. We've trialled them all and we have come to the conclusion that this is the best bang for your buck. And it's giving away one of our secrets, probably, but that's okay. It's really good for the everyday cyclist or triathlete out there to know that that is a great session to do. But when to do it, that is the key thing. And as you said, is it because the athletes were more fresh, because these sessions are particularly valuable because they're not actually spending a lot of time at intensity. It's literally 20 to 30 minutes at intensity once a week. So is the fact that you're doing that in conjunction with lots of recovery in zone two that's enabling you to ride at a higher power in those sess. And I think that is definitely one of the key considerations. And for you to do this session the day after you've done a different session other than recovery, you will get a different outcome and your FTP will be lower at the end of the program. So that in itself tells you straight away that, well, when I do this session, it has to be in the right part of the week and when I'm fresh. And that is a key consideration that a lot of the studies don't actually take into consideration. So when you do this session, you can't be tired. So don't do it on a Sunday after you've done a four hour ride on a Saturday.

Yeah. And look, your ability to handle some of these high intensity sessions is really important because they're hard like you said before, unless you're used to them, unless you've got that fitness to do them, a lot of people can't get through these sessions. And so you don't prescribe an insanely hard intensity session to a beginner athlete because their legs just aren't going to be able to cope. 110% of your FTP to one athlete is much harder compared to 110% to another athlete. Even though it's the same percentage, one athlete is more well trained than the other one.

And the beginner athlete probably won't even get through the whole session. And that's why you have to reduce it and gradually overload it. So when to do it and how much of it to do and what part of the program to do. It is really key to getting the best bang for your buck out of this particular session. And we use it in variations throughout a season, throughout a year. It comes in and it comes out and it's not something you can do for 52 weeks. And so, you know, that's the first thing we've Got to tell everybody. If we're going to tell everybody about a session, you can't just continue to do this and expect that you'll succeed because the law of diminishing returns is you're going to get tired doing it. So you need recovery. So there's going to be periods where you don't want to have it in your program. And you know, it's basically learning your body to buffer lactate. That's what we're trying to teach the body by riding high intensity. And if you did that early on in the program, it will actually stimulate a lot of fitness gains. But then you can go and train with other sessions and then come back to it when you're trying to taper towards an event. And that's the beauty of this particular session. It can be used in many different ways.

Yep. So yeah, we wanted to look at that specific example of a session to give the listener an idea of the breakup of a specific high intensity session. Obviously we can't go through the entire detail of every single session for a program for 12 weeks, but hopefully that gives you the principle of what we're talking about. And it reminds me of when I used to do a similar style session on the bike back in high school when I would do some sessions on the bike. I think I was injured at the time, which is why I was riding instead of running more. And there was no data back then, so I was just using a stopwatch, sitting on the bike, sitting on the trainer. And the session was something similar like with one minute efforts or something. And obviously you're just going as high as you can for a minute. And I would love to see my power from that session because it would have been all over the shop. And I remember actually you said, you told me to try and stay at a cadence around 90 and so I would count for six seconds how many times my did a rotation around the.

Corner and multiply it.

Yeah, to get my cadence. Um, and that, that was how I was tracking that the cadence started then. But regardless, I was getting fitter on the bike. And this is the key, that you can perform the sessions pretty poorly and still get fitter. You know, you can, you can stick to a structured program for 12 weeks and you will improve, but there are ways to help yourself improve faster and get more bang for your buck.

And imagine if you actually had a lot more information how you know, the Difference might be 6% improvement compared to 12% improvement doing it properly. But there's still going to be improvement, as you said. As long as your intent is to do something and obviously the better equipment you have. Like we've said this so many times, you know, don't go into a program with no equipment because you're just blindly training, you still improve and you've just proved that. But the improvement could be 6%, 3% or 12. Which one do you want? Have more information, get 12, have stuff, all information, get 3%.

Yep. So to conclude this chat, I want to kind of summarize our thoughts on on FTP Builders and the fact that we promote FTP as a great metric to measure yourself against and something that you definitely want to improve, but you can't improve it forever. You will start to plateau eventually and the gains will become really incremental, really small gains at a time. But most importantly, FTP is not the only thing to focus on. It's a bit of a paradox again because we test it constantly and we want people to be focusing on it. But at the same time we don't want it to be the only focus and we don't want it to be the be all and end all of a especially a triathletes program. But even cyclists, you know, depending on your event, a 20 minute test is not indicative of your the ability to get a good outcome.

Yeah, and we've said many times you could be really good for 20 minutes but have sucked at endurance. And so you're trying to put your FTP number to a 90k time trial and you can't actually function over 45k so it's not going to work. The number is useless because you don't have the ability or the fitness to sustain that number. So the number again can be really valuable or it can be a useless piece of information. So having the athlete get to a really good fitness level is the primary goal that we have in our business is firstly get them fit, then we can throw a 12 week program at them. So they're sitting under this, simmering under this point where they've got their fitness to a point maybe it's taken six months, maybe it's taken 12 months and in that time they've had a couple of a races which we've pointed out to them that you won't be in your career best form and you have to build and at that point then you can then jump up from the fitness you've got to the next 12 week period and specifically train to the next level and then you need to recover and your FTP will drop. Whether you're injured or recovering your Number will drop. So you're forever on this cycle. You can't keep doing 12 months of improvement. And if you're thinking like that, you're in for a root shock.

Yeah. So let's summarize kind of what we're saying here because we're saying on one hand, if you want to improve your FTP, quite simply, you need to be doing two sessions, high intensity sessions a week and the rest easy. And that will get you approximately 80, 20. But, but the goal for most athletes shouldn't just be, I'm trying to solely improve my FTP here. You've got to think about your event in conjunction with the improvement that you want. And whether you just a half Ironman Ironman, if the cycling event, like it's an endurance event or it's road racing or time trialing, you need to be practicing other zones as well and practicing yourself in other positions as well as getting this improvement. Is that correct?

Yeah, it's, it's a tough one to summarize because there's so many facets to it and it depends on what part of the season you're in and what your long term goal is and your short term goal is. So for those who are really well planned, it's really easy. You can fit in these important short blocks of improvement right at the right time. So someone might have a big race in February and another big race in October and so they spend from the last race, maybe October as well, and they spend a little bit of recovery and then they ramp up their endurance fitness build and then they get specific with the race ready phase to February. Same thing happens, recover, do some strength and some endurance and some fitness building and ramp it up and get to race day. And as you do that each cycle, your numbers will become layer upon layer, better and better. And there will be a point where you get back to what your best FTP number was, which it was previously, and you want to add another percentage and they're the things that are exciting part for the program. And that's where it's important to understand that you may not improve there, but you're already coming back from an improvement point. So there will be a point where you've reached your limit, your ceiling. But I'm saying that just because that's what your ceiling was two years ago doesn't mean that you're going to accept that there are opportunities to do things a little bit differently, tweak your program different to what you've done before. So repeating the same program repeatedly over and over again is like training the same way. So we want to actually add some other aspects and 1 percenters that would maybe give you another 2 or 3 watts in your training. I'm not talking about off the bike, I'm talking about just on the bike here.

Yep. And it's relevant to the age group athlete because most age group athletes aren't specialized in one event. You know, they're doing a mix of things. So you, like you said before, you want to be a well rounded athlete that's simmering at a really good fitness level. Improving that and then you can jump up to something specific from that level.

There's a great example. You might want to do three peaks which is 245k 4000 meter road race that takes 8 to 15 hours. Or you might want to do a 20 minute time trial and improve a 25k time trial. Or you might want to do a criterion racing season. Or you might just want to concentrate on Ironman training or sprint triathlon. You know, you can do this well rounded program with all these sessions we're talking about with the same percentages of effort intensity and then be specific. So get your fitness going. Then be specific to what you. Okay, I'm going to do Three Peaks. Okay, I'm going to do an Ironman. The training changes between an Ironman and Three Peaks. They're completely different. But you've still got your got the same process which is build your fitness and then be specific. So everybody needs to do that first and then be specific and take your own example.

You know, you were focused on your FTP number and you wanted to get that back up to the level that you know it can be. But more importantly, when it was at that 300 plus watt level which was your aim, you were then really focused on how long can I hold as close to that as possible for 90 kilometers. You know, how long can I hold 91% of that? How long can I hold 92% of that? If I can hold 93% of that for nine kilometers, that then becomes your goal. And that is the example of becoming a well rounded athlete and applying the FTP numbers to your event.

Exactly. And using the same thing to say, right, I now want to do hill climb race which is separate from triathlon. But I'm still a bike rider. From one point I'm doing steady state 90% and now I'm in a bike race that has hills in it and I'm using the numbers as well to ride the 25 minute climb or the Von 2 climb, which is an hour 30, using those numbers to get me the best result. So it doesn't matter what sport you're doing, you can apply the same principle to anything. So we can be talking about skiing if we wanted to. It's still the same measuring of your effort according to what you've trained to.

That's a good way to finish. And our aim for this podcast wasn't to do a traditional topic on this, where we just break down the same kind of topics we've spoken about a lot on over certain episodes. If you want to hear a breakdown of what sessions give you the best bang for your buck and how to break up your week, we have plenty of other podcasts on that. Just search for any podcast relating to improving your bike. We wanted to come from a bit of a different angle on this. Talk about the philosophies behind training and understanding how your training works within your program, where you're at at the moment with your current level of ability, where you're at in your season, how far away from your a race you are, are. And come from this other perspective because it goes without saying that all of our normal principles apply and you've heard us talk about them plenty of times. And I'll finish off the podcast by saying consistency is king. Your favorite saying, obviously we want people to be doing endurance sessions. We want people to have a really good breakup of your week, of that difference between easy rides, high intensity sessions, endurance rides, periods of their program where they've got sub threshold in there, all those things are really important. But when people ask a question, I want to do an FTP 12 week builder program, this is how we answer it. And I really like how often someone will ask you a question like this, what's the best way to do this? And they just want an easy answer, but you don't give them that satisfaction because the easy answer isn't actually the right answer. You could answer with, well, here's exactly what to do, but it's not going to help them in the long run with their performance.

Yeah, spot on. I think you've summarised it really well and at the end of the day the well rounded, consistent athlete will be able to achieve any event that he chooses, he or she chooses to enter into. And if you are too narrow in saying I'm just going to train for FTP, then that is not going to help you become a better athlete. And that's the message of this and that's why we talked about it. How do I become a better FTP rider. Do I just do the FTP 12 week program? Well, yes and no. But definitely the method we've tried to do in all the podcasts is to be consistent and well rounded in your training so that you can jump to a specific goal race by being as fit as you possibly can before you get to that point.

Perfect. That's it for this episode. Thank you very much for listening and we'll see you next time. Keep.

On I can give you back.

Keep on I can give you back Keep on.