The 28-Day Program To Skyrocket Your FTP This Year

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, Jarred Donnelly. Every sport has a key metric. Golfers measure their handicap. Marathon runners track their pace per kilometer. Bodybuilders measure how much they can swat or bench. And cyclists we measure FTP. For some reason, FTP is still a divided topic among the triathlon and cycling world and we have no idea why, because shouldn't be when 99% of the world's top pros use it. And once you get hooked on power, you won't go back. What usually follows once you start using power is a new gold FTP number. Everyone just aims for an improvement. Or maybe there's a target number that is just your dream number. You might want to get to 200 watts one day. Or maybe it's 300 watt FTP or even 400 watts. And whatever it is, FTP is undoubtedly one of the most useful metrics to use, and it's worth basing your entire training program around. But as we'll explain today, we have to be very careful. As useful as it is, it's just one metric. It doesn't tell the full story. So in this episode we're going to reveal a 28 day program that will skyrocket your FTP, what you need to pay attention to and the mistakes you need to avoid. And whether you're a pure cyclist or a triathlete, improving your FTP should be the goal. So this episode is for you. And as always, this episode is brought to you by our proud sponsor, Giant Australia, for all your bike training and racing needs. Ride life. Ride Giant Dad. Welcome into 2024. How's the year treating you so far and what are you grateful for?

Thanks Jord. Great to be looking forward to a whole year ahead and a new journey for a lot of people. A lot of people use the change of the years to refocus their goals and I love this. The start of the year is great and there's so much happening, so much to talk about today. I don't want to waffle on too much, but yeah, I'm absolutely grateful for. I've probably mentioned this before, but when I was young going to uni, I met a whole group of people that, ironically out of the six people that I'm talking about, we all went to the same university, did the same Bachelor of Education, course. And all married each other. So there's three guys and three girls and. And we all married from the same uni. And we have been on holidays for now 30 years. The same week in January, going away. When you were little, George, you joined in. So these other two families have got three kids and four kids, plus we've got four kids. So we had 11 children and six adults going away. So we had 17 people going away, plus a couple of dogs. And we went away every year to a different destination and we spent a lot of time in Barwon Heads at Phillip island, at Wilson's prom. And. And this year there's no children. None. None of you kids want to come with us anymore, which is absolutely okay with you and with us. And I wonder whether the fact that we're in Robe, which is six hours drive from Melbourne, is incentive enough for you guys not to come and join in. So just the six of us again. So where we started as six going on holidays and then we had the kids and now the kids don't come anymore. So we're back to where we started. This is quite ironic for us all, all six of us are all having a bit of a laugh last night at dinner, how quiet it is without the kids and no tents in the backyard. And I'm really grateful for the friendship and we actually have always had it as a. I hate to say this, but it's a holiday with the families and it's like boot camp, isn't it? Everybody gets up. Even when you were in there, three.

Very fit families, I would say very sport oriented.

So we've got some unbelievably talented runners and, and swimmers and marathon runners and triathletes and anyway, every morning everybody gets up and they got their own program to do and we all meet at brunch almost and talk about what did you just do? So it's really good and it's really motivating because everybody's doing something and if you actually sleep in, you feel a little bit awkward because everybody's training. And then we spend the rest of the day just going to the beach and relaxing and, and doing podcasts like this and really enjoying this time. So, yeah, I'm really grateful for that friendship. And amazing as it is, we've kept in contact with each other and we're really close.

That's great. And I will say that the kids do love coming still where we can. And often when you're a bit closer to the city, then we'll normally send a group text out to Each other saying anyone going to head down, what day is you going down? So we can try and meet up because we don't get to see each other throughout the year normally. But yeah, you're right, when you're seven hours away from Melbourne, the motivation to get there isn't as high and there was actually no group text this year. I wonder why. So my gratitude is family based as well. I was just having a good chat to my cousin this week. He's actually one of my best mates as well. And we actually were just talking about gratitude and we both said that how lucky we feel that you can't choose your family but you know, a cousin of ours is become one of your best friends. It's pretty lucky. And we both just said to each other we're pretty grateful for it. And that was a nice real life gratitude moment. I thought so. Moving to today's episode, before we get into the main topic, we do want to do our segment on what's caught your attention because we just had the nationals road titles here in Australia and that includes all the masters nationals titles as well as the elite road race, road races, the time trials, the criteria and the road races for the women's and men's and so we just wanted to do a few mentions about what happened over this past week because it's really exciting week in cycling and we want to give some shout outs to our own athletes as well as talk about the elite riders. It's so good to see these elite riders come back from their World Tour racing over in Europe, come back to Australia and you just sometimes you think you're a decent rider and then you see these elites go around and you just go far out. The level they are on is just outstanding. So we'll run through some results from our own masters athletes. In the individual time trial we had some great results, A lot of athletes on the podium and firstly a shout out to Joe Spano, one of our riders who took his fifth individual time trial national champion jersey in a row. That is just awesome. But one of the best parts about that for us was we clean swept the podium. So we had first, second, third, Joe, Al and Mick first, second, third in Master Six. That's just great to see, isn't it?

Yeah, it's exciting. And look, we don't want to spend too much time on this because it's almost like self gratifying, isn't it when your coaching group is dominating a nationals event. But, but it's, it's true. Guys train well. We have Great programs, obviously, and, and these are the results. And pretty much everybody who went there, you know, got something out of the weekend in terms of improvement. And you know, it's not all about getting on the podium, but, you know, when you train for a specific event, it is about doing something that'll make you train harder for next year if you didn't go so well and be satisfied with what you've done. But yeah, it was great to have, you know, two national champions, both Joe and Nick Lecandro, who's one of our coaches, obviously, who we've spoken about a fair bit on the podcast in recent times, and we speak about Joe a lot. But there were some other really notable performances. One of them was a shout out to Kim Peterson who got to the, to the technical stand where you get your bike tested and her bike unfortunately didn't pass the standard for UCI time trial bike. And rather than panicking, or she did a bit of panicking, but rather than losing the plot, she, we just had a quick discussion about what her options were and in the end she grabbed my small road bike and jumped on that and got her head back focused in trying to, trying to ride, you know, a road bike in a time trial. It wasn't hers, it didn't fit her. There was so many things wrong with it. She ended up riding, you know, to the best of her ability. And I want to mention this because, you know, your mindset could be, oh, what's the point? You know, why am I doing this? But she didn't, she said, I'm here, I've trained, I'm going to ride this bike and I want to see what I can do. And, and she ended up getting third in the race, which was, which is fantastic.

Yeah, yeah, that's really, it's just a really good lesson of, you know, things can go wrong and it can really mess with you on race day and you know, if you can just yet not panic and take whatever comes. It's getting third after that whole bike debacle is a great effort. So big shout out. Other shout outs, Greg Redford, silver medal, Chris Benton, Dave Ross both got the podiums in their respective categories with a third place. Lindsay in an area for 70s got second in the TT and the road race, which is awesome. And finally a big shout out to our teams. Time trial gold medal winners. We had a bunch of teams on the podium, but this team of gold medal winners really not far off time wise amongst the open and younger masters categories. So really exceptional result to take out the gold in the teams tt.

It was, wasn't it? This is for people who aren't across what the masters teams time trial is. You have four riders and your average age has to fit into a category and there's 90, year category, 120 year category, 150 year category, 180. So three riders have to be 60 years of age to, to qualify for the 180 and three riders have to be 30 years of age to qualify for the 90. So this 150 category group won the national title. Weren't far off the open which is, you know, the best riders, any age group. So. So they were, you know, what an outstanding performance by Richard Abel and Al and Mick Valani and Joe Spano. It was fantastic.

Yeah. Moving on to the elite race on the women's side, Ruby Roseman Gannon had a very emotional win after a really strong international season last year where she was really coming into her own. She had a great top 10 finish, was fifth I think at Drawers Van Blun last year which really showed she was mixing it with some of the best riders in the world. And her emotional interview afterwards I thought was just great where she said that she'd wanted this title so bad for a few years and it had just eluded her. She just, just hadn't come together. And it all came together on the day and she won the sprint finish which was awesome to see. And then on the men's side there was a great race where Luke Plapp took his three in a row, which is unprecedented. But shout out to Chris Harper who we added the podcast last year before the nationals. He spoke about a bit of the prep and Jake Ola took the title back both on the, on the women's and men's which they really wanted. It was awesome to see Chris and Luke up there in a breakaway and Chris just his strength is hill climbing and he looks so good. But PLA was looked even stronger. So incredible race on both fronts.

Yeah, it is fantastic. And look, Ja just had dominated both races and rightly so because you know, it is an Australian based only national championship. Just like every national championship around the world is you have to be a resident or citizen of that country to race in the national championship. So you know, Jaco Alula is an Australian based elite pro team. So you know, guys in the race who aren't in that team are really fighting against a massive army of riders. And. And that's, you know, leads us to the Jimmy Whelan story from. For those of you who remember from last year when when we've had him on the podcast talking about trying to get a contract and using the Australian El race last year to get his name out there. And therefore he had a tactic last year that, that, you know, pushed his name to, to be on the camera all day where he's up, up in the break and, and you know, probably that was a tactic that didn't give him the result he wanted. A podium is probably going to give you more kudos than being out in the break all day. And, and that was sort of something I thought, well, maybe he should have, you know, been a bit smarter last year and tried to get on the podium. And, and, and this year he changed his tactic to be smarter and try to ride a better, better race. But, and, and a different tactic but didn't really get a, a result there as well. So. Yeah, interesting to look at that, Jordan, isn't it?

Yeah, we were just chatting about the lesson there because I, I just said to you, what, what is, what's the learning here? What does he do? Because two different tactics he's tried to change. He's been smart about it and he's gotten no outcome both times. And a great point that you made that. I mean, firstly, it's just a terrific story. We've mentioned it a few times, but, you know, last year he was, his time was running out and he was just doing everything he could to get some TV time and show teams around the world how strong he is on the pro tour circuit. To be attacking the bunch like he was last year really does show his talent. And then halfway through last year, he finally got signed. He's part of a pro team, so he's coming to it this year in a much more secure position and he can ride a smarter race. And he posted online after the race and just said, look, I tried different tactics this year. I tried to be more conservative and it did not work at all. He just felt like he was on the back foot all day. He just felt like he was under pressure from the Jayco Alula guys, couldn't do anything about it. And he said, maybe I should have done what I did last year and been more aggressive. But I said to you, what's the lesson? And I really like how you just said, well, every race you've just got to keep learning, right? And your big thing was as long as you're not repeating the same mistakes, you're happy for someone to keep trying something different to try and get a different outcome.

Yeah, I would have loved to see him in, in Impose last year's tactic this year. And you know, that sort of sounds easy to say in hindsight and critical last year of what he did, but he had a reason for doing that because he wanted to get noticed. That was what his point was. But I think for him, aggressive riding is the better way for him to go. And if he had a, if he had done that tactic this year, look, at the end of the day, Jayco were too strong, they had too many numbers. So whatever he did, I don't think it would have made much difference. But he would have had a better feeling about, about his effort in the race. Because when you attack and when you're aggressive, at the end of the day, you feel like you've justified yourself and you've put yourself into a position to win. And as Jens Voight always said, you know, if I stay in the bunch, I have zero chance of winning this race. If I get in the break, I have 0.5 of a percent chance of winning. Which chance do you want? 0 or 0.5. And I'll take 0.5 every time. So that's kind of what I'm trying to say here. I still don't think the outcome would have changed. I think, you know, Jaco were too strong and he, he, but he would have felt better that he had given himself a red hot crack. I think that would have been a different feeling after the race. That's what I think.

It is really hard because the race is so dominated by the Jayco team and it's hard for someone outside of that to win because the numbers are against them. But like you said, that 0.5 chance, that could be something happening, that could be a Jaco rider taking his teammate down or something or, or Luke Plapp, who was clearly the strongest rider, getting a flat. And so honestly, it is a little bit biased, but it is really nice to see the OZ jersey in both the Australian World Tour teams. I'm really excited for what Ruby can do. She's. She's got a big spring classic season. She wants to really give the classics a crack and she's shown that she can mix in on her day with the best over there. And Luke the same. You know, he's really coming into his own. He's had a few years under his belt in the World Tour circuit, is having a great summer. So, yeah, really excited for both them to rock the Australian jersey on international circuit.

Yeah, I think it's important that the Australian jersey is ridden in the peloton in the big races and I'm so wrapped at these two athletes are representing Australia. It's fantastic. And, and look, Kel o', Brien, who we've also had on the podcast, got on the podium. You know, Jaco got first, second and third, which, which is pretty amazing. But. But I'm really looking forward to seeing what Kel can do in the Spring Classics. That's what he loves. And he can't. You know, last year he couldn't wait. We interviewed him just prior to the Spring Classics, and, yeah, he rode really super strong on the weekend, so he's in great form. And. Yeah. And, you know, to have Chris, who's also been on the podcast, come second, you know, they've got great years ahead of them and I, I think this is, this is an exciting. And to have Caleb back in the Jayco team. I'm very biased here because we're really promoting the Australian World Tour team here, but it's almost like they've all come back to join together. And Luke's had such a good learning experience with ineos. I think. I think he would learn a hell of a lot in his. In his couple of years there. And, and he's super confident now. He won the individual time trial here at the Australian titles and he had to change bikes in that and still won, which is pretty impressive. So, yeah, I just think.

Just astounding. That just shows how strong he was.

Yeah, I just think I can't wait to see what happens this year. It's, it's, it's really looking good for, for the Jayco team and for Australian cycling in general. There are a lot of good riders out there who aren't in the Jayco team who are riding for Bora and for Dimension. You know, there's so many teams out there represented by Australian riders now. It's super exciting.

Yeah, it's. In such. It's hopefully a really good year for OZ cycling. You know, Grace Brown, can she go one more level? She got second at the ITT World Champs. Can she go another level? And it's an Olympic year as well, so there's another chance to potentially get an Olympic medal. And she won the OZ titles. She's in great hands with Ken Ballhouse, who we had on the podcast. Podcast about getting the most effective position possible. She's riding Astounding in the itt. So keen for a really big season from her again. Let's get to today's topic. We want to talk about FTP and everything about measuring your FTP. And it's funny that you know, we're talking about the elite road race and Nick, we've spoken about who was in that and you know, you do all this training best around FTP and his FTB number is just out of control at the moment. You know, his watts per kilo is literally just at that elite standard, which is why he can be in the elite race. And you get there and then bang. First lap in the elite road race and you're not even looking at your power. He forgot to start his Garmin because the race was so intense and bang, they're just doing 600 watts up the first climb, like it's just out of control. So it is funny. We're going to talk about this a lot, but we're going to talk about why it's not always relevant, especially for cyclists or triathletes, depending on the context. So every athlete is different, but majority of the time the goal is you want to improve your FTP or improvement in FTP will mean you're an improved rider. So explain to us the difference between what improving your FTP does versus what does it not do.

Yeah, there's so much to digest here. Like doing an FTP has so many positive outcomes. I mean, doing an FTP test and training for improvement in your functional threshold power. And I was just talking during the week to an athlete and I was saying, look, we do a 20 minute test because we can't really put you through a 60 minute test. It should be 60 minutes, but that's too grueling. It really is too grueling mentally and physically. And you don't want to actually make your FTP test so important that you have to taper for it. It's something that we just want to measure.

I just want to really like, try to simplify that as much as possible. Functional threshold power means what is the power you can hold for one hour? So it's trying to give you a threshold number. Threshold means in this context, what can you hold for an hour? So you've just said that. Well, to test what you can hold for an hour, you go and ride for 60 minutes and see what you can hold for an hour. That's what the test should be. But as you just said, that's just so hard. Doing an hour time trial is just so grueling. So yeah, as you were just leading into, do a 20 minute test instead.

Yeah, and we take a percentage of that and it should equate to what you could do for 60 minutes. But you know, out of all the athletes we've ever coached over the journey. Not many can match their 60 minutes. Their 20 minutes number is so much higher than what they can do for 60 minutes by about 10 watts on average. You know, some people, it's worse, it's 15 watts. Yeah, they're 60 minutes is 15 watts lower than their best 20 minute percentage.

Again, I just want to explain that. So if we take a 200 watt, you get 200 watts for 20 minutes, times that by 0.95. We've done this equation on the podcast plenty of times. I should know it off 190, but 190 is. So you take 95% of that 20 minute number, it should equate to that equation, should give you a six minute number. So 190. But what you're saying is most cases an athlete who does 200 watts for 20 minutes, they can't, they can't hold 190 for 60 minutes. They more can hold 175 or 180. Really good riders, you know, they would be able to hold 190. Then the equation works well. But in most cases we find that it could be even be as low as 170 for 60 minutes. That's how much the discrepancy can be. But again, we're getting a number for number's sake and there's a lot of positives to it.

Yeah. So not only is it good to get that number to train to, that's really important. We've got a number and if it's within 10 or 5 or 4 watts of what the exact number is, then we're getting close. And remember, most of the training sessions that we provide, we give you a range and the range is around 10 to 15 watts. So, so that allows for that variation. And, and so you can, if you're, if you're able to ride close to your 60 minutes in an FTP test, power wise, then you can ride at the top of the range in that, in that training session. If you're an athlete who's 10 or 15 watts down off that number, then you would ride at the bottom of the range and anything in between is the athletes in between. So that's an example of how you manipulate your training session based around what your actual FTP test is. So there's that aspect of you being able to train accurately and be guided through your whole program knowing that you're not wasting a session because you are doing zone two today based on your FTP. You're doing VO2 today based on your FTP. So these testing sessions that you do regularly every four to six weeks are going to help you train accurately and not waste sessions. That is a number one function of what we're trying to do here. The second thing is you get this unbelievable practice at executing. So if you know that, that 200 watts is what you're capable of, you're not going to start at 220, you're not going to start at 180, you're going to start somewhere around 200. And you want to be on the line, you want to be on, on the, on the line of going too hard and not hard enough. And so this execution is really key because if you're a triathlete come race day, if you haven't practiced execution, how are you going to implement that on race day? You have no, no idea how to measure your effort. So this is a key component in this test. You get this other advantage of oh yeah, I get to practice execution. And you should be doing that in your other sessions anyway. If you're doing five by five minute efforts, you should be practicing execution over five minutes times five and measuring your effort according to how you're feeling. And this is what execution is. Execution is so important in racing and so do it in your training session so that when race day comes, you are across how to execute so well.

It'S really hard to measure an effort over 20 minutes. You can get away with cheating a little bit in five minutes. If you go a little bit too hard in the first one or two minutes, you can generally just hold on for five minutes. But if you do that in a 20 minute test, you go too hard in the first five minutes, you will blow up and you will suffer because of it. And therefore that's why execution practice is so important.

And so Jordan, lead that on to a 40k time trial, to a 90k time trial or 180k time trial. Imagine the mistake, mistake you're going to make if you're out there for five hours or three hours or, or an hour 20 minutes is bad enough. Making a mistake and hanging on for eight minutes when you've, when you've gone into the red zone for 8 minutes. Imagine blowing up in a 90k time trial. You've got possibly an hour to hang on where you're trying to reduce your power so you can actually finish the 90K. So it's really, really good practice. Well, the third thing is it's actually a high intensity training session. So don't think of it as a test or an Execution practice there. It does those two things, but it's a high intensity training session which is part of your program. And so you should be putting yourself into a situation where you're riding at the intensity that you think you will have on any particular day. You might have a 20 minute time trial that you've entered into a race. And here you go, you've got an FTP test that's giving you exactly that practice. And so riding at a threshold in your training is what we're trying to do in training sessions. So why wouldn't you implement, you know, does it have to be 4 by 8 minutes or 5 by 5? Why can't it be 1 by 20 as a high intensity training session? And as you know, when I was coming back from my injury, I was throwing myself a 1/20 minute effort every week to see if my FTP was improving. I'll do another FTP. Has it gone up 5 watts? Great. I'm going to train this week 5 watts higher than I did last week. And I was using that 20 minute test a as a high intensity training session, B as an execution and C to see, to see where my new number was. And they're great reasons why this is a good thing to do.

It should be said as well that 20 minute test isn't the only way to try and find your FTP number. You can do a ramp test. You can also do. I had this situation overseas where I could not find a 10 minute flat stretch of road. I say 10 minutes because you could do out and back. I couldn't even find a decent five minute out and back road to do four times. And that's not preferable anyway because in your U turn I know it's only 10 or 15 or 20 seconds, but you do lose a lot of wattage in that. And even, even still. And the only thing I could find was an about an eight minute hill climb which worked out perfect because you can do a 2 by 8 minute test. And so that is an alternative where you do an eight minute effort pretty much maximum, not full maximum, because you've got a second one coming, you have a full 10 minute break to recover and you do a second one and then you take the average of the two and then give that an equation. I think the equation is a bit different. I think it's 0.9 instead of 0.95 to give you an FTP number, but just shows that there's different protocols. But we love the 20 minute one for so many reasons. As you've just Mentioned. And some bonus reasons are that not every single time, but often we get the athletes to treat it as a race. So get your race wheels on, get your proper race set up on, get your race kit on, warm up properly as if you're warming up for a race. And it really gets you in that mental state of maybe there's a little bit of nerves around it, which is okay to practice because that's what you're going to feel on race day and really treating it like a proper race. And especially if you've got your full race set up, that's important because then you can measure what your power is against your speed. And that's really important to understand for race day that if I can ride at 200 watts, what speed does that equate to when I have my best setup possible? It doesn't always have to be like that. If it's too much pressure, sometimes you can just go out with your training wheels, just go out and treat it a bit more casually. Just get the session done. If the nerves are too much. But these are all these bonus points that can come into the actual session.

Yeah. And look, you just mentioned you can find out what your best power is for 20 minutes and then you can actually look at your speed. And this is really helpful. And this is another bonus to doing this session, is the minute you understand that 200 watts equals 30ks an hour, or 220 watts equals 32ks an hour, 240 watts equals 34, then instantly you can work out that if you ride 34ks an hour and you're doing an Olympic distance, you can work out that 34ks an hour will give you roughly a 108 time. So instantly now you're starting to understand how long you're going to ride for. And if, if you can transfer that to a 90k time trial, you know 30ks an hour is going to give you three hours for your race time in that race. And so then you can start to work out how long you're going to take to do your half ironman or equate it to an ironman. So, so speed is good. And speed is also good. If for some reason your heart rate meter, your power meter doesn't work, you know that if you're going out and back and you're doing 30ks an hour, that is the number you've been trying to, trying to race at because you've done this in an FTP test, then without these other metrics, you can actually use speed to keep you on track and not blow up.

It really does help in with wind conditions as well. You might go out for a training session. This happens so often at a velodrome where I'll ride the session to what I know my normal power numbers are. And just because of the nature of the day, air density, wind factors, I might be riding my effort at 43ks an hour one day, but then another day it's 46ks an hour and you're just kind of going, okay. So on a really good day, when I've got some favorable conditions, my speed's right up there. And then when it's not so favorable, it's a bit down. So you kind of get to understand that range. And then that really does help because when you're doing a session, you can kind of get a feel for the numbers, but also, okay, this day is pretty tough conditions. I might need to really adjust my efforts here because the bike's just going a bit slower than I would normally like if it was absolutely ideal.

Yeah. And look, finally, I think, and if we haven't convinced you by this stage that it's a good thing to do, perspective of continually testing yourself over a year, two years, three years, five years and over one block, four weeks, two blocks eight weeks, three blocks, 12 weeks, all of those macro and micro perspectives that you get. And over a year's journey, your power FTP can be at 200, then it can be back to 180, then it can be up to 210 over the course of 12 months. And you might say, well, how's that possible? Well, the reason is because you're not going to be in peak form for 12 months of the year. You're going to be in a base period, you're going to be in a race period, you're going to be in a recovery period. So your FTP is going to be up and down. And so it's important that you keep finding out where it is so you can train accurately in your base, train accurately in your race. Ready. Train accurately in your recovery. So these are factors and the perspective of mentally knowing that, okay, I'm in my recovery phase, I've had a break. My FTP was 200. My expectation shouldn't be that it's going to be 200. It should be that after four or five weeks of easy training and break, it should be probably around 180 or I'm in the race ready phase. I should be 205 now or 210, so that when I come to my actual race, I'm at my peak.

FTP, that is just so underrated and that can't point be emphasized enough. The perspective that you get. And it's so valuable for us to have athletes who have been with us for two, three plus years and to be able to look back. Three years ago we've got their FTP test, the date where they did it, was it what conditions they did it in, you know, was it outdoor, indoor, what was the course, was it a velodrome, was it an out and back course, was it an indoor test? That data is just incredible to look at over a three year span because as you just said, it is never linear. If you look at someone's FTP test over a year or again over a three year period, it is constantly going 200, 210, 220, back to 206, then 225, then 235, then 199, that's a shocking day. Then 211, then it's down to 188 because they had an injury and they were off for six weeks. And then that slowly creeps up again, they get to 240, 250. And so it's not this linear progression, but over time it is slowly increasing. And so often what happens is someone gets their FTP to 300 watts over a couple of years and then maybe one day they have a good training block but they have a bad FTP test and they go down to 290 and they're really upset with themselves and you can kind of look back and go, hang On a second, 14 months ago you were at 198 for your FTP. You know that is just perspective in that. Yes, that test wasn't very good compared to what you just did last block. But look at where you've come from and just always keep that in mind. And especially three years down the track when you're potentially 100 watts higher, 150 watts higher than where you were three years ago, it's always important to remember and that just can't. If you didn't have that data, you wouldn't know, you would just be guessing. And if you weren't training the power, you might have a. You know, you might really get down on yourself because you're not looking at the objective data.

Yeah, you're right. If you didn't have that history, you just have no idea if you are a better rider than you were before. And if I use my own example, going into my back operation, I was at 280 and then I had six weeks of no movement and I was able to ride the trainer at the six week mark. And you know, straight away I wasn't allowed to ride hard. So I could only ride at Zone 2 for the next four weeks. But after 10 weeks I gave myself a 20 minute test when I was allowed to ride seemingly hard, but I wasn't able to ride hard because I had no ability to ride hard. And I rode 180 watts for my 20 minutes. I was 100 watts down. And that's an example of how, how you've, you've just explained how this can have fluctuations and, and sure enough, you know, after four more weeks I got it to 220 and then after another four weeks it got it to back to 250 and then after six months it's now back at 260, 270. So I'm still probably 20 watts off. But you know, my expectation is that I wouldn't have thought that it would be back to 100% after six months. So this is an example I'm giving you of, of how you're using FTP to get perspective of. You know, I understand that this is where it should be, but I've still got a goal target to aim for. Where I was before this, this, this break in my, in my training, mentally.

It'S just such a big win, isn't it? Because you've just got this clear metric that you can always refer to not just for your overall improvement over time, but inside training. You've just got clear metrics that you can look at to give you instant feedback about how you're going. And we often get it. The pushback against power or the argument is that it's too serious. I don't take, don't take training that seriously or it's too expensive, it's not worth it. And we just say, hands down, it is probably the first thing, if not definitely the first thing that we just want cyclists and triathletes to get. If you're going to be training, if you're going to be putting in the time and effort for this, it is the number one thing that's worth it. And don't spend your money on anything else. Put it all into getting your power meter first so you can start looking and reading your power. And it's just the opposite of too serious. It actually makes training more enjoyable and actually takes the load off a little bit because you can just clearly see objectively how you're tracking each week rather than guessing.

I think sometimes Jord the people who say that it's too serious. Look, anybody who rides a bike wants to enjoy it. Number one, they want to enjoy the experience of riding a bike. And look, there are a lot of people who are just happy to ride their bike because they're getting fit and they're getting healthy and that's as far as it goes. They don't need a power meter to enjoy things. They're just happy riding their bike. And we're not talking about that category, we're talking about the person who's riding a bike because a, he still does like it, he enjoys that process of riding, but he wants to get better. He wants to improve his ability to ride with his mates or ride with his group ride or, or have a crack at some gran fondo. So he actually wants to get to that event or with his bunch ride and be better than he was last year or last month. And so that's why the power meter is such an important tool to enable you to do that, if that's what you're after.

Yeah, spot on. And the last thing that we haven't mentioned is that the FTP number improvement itself isn't everything, especially for triathletes. You know, we're really focusing on this in this episode because it's awesome to do. And I'll get you to explain in a minute why it's important to prove that 20 minute number. But just because you improve your 20 minute number doesn't mean you'll, you'll ride well in triathlon because the triathlon is very, it's very much not a 20 minute ride. You know, as a sprint at a minimum, it's probably 30 minutes upwards and then everything above that is, you know, 40K 90K, 180K time trial. How good you are at 20 minutes does not represent how well you're riding that. So that's a really important point to understand.

Yeah. And the event you're doing is totally relatable to how important that 20 minute number is. So, so if you're a triathlete who's purely concentrating on Olympic distance, then the 60 minute functional threshold test is bang on in your, in your area, isn't it? A 40K is going to take you somewhere between 50 minutes if you're a gun and an hour 20 minutes if you're, you know, a newbie to the sport. So the range is, is around that 60 minutes. So 50 minutes to a, to, to an 80 minute is, is where you're going to race at. So this is perfect for, for what you. But, but you know, to say that, you know, I'm really good, I can ride, I can ride 300 fantastic watts or 200 great watts at 20 minutes, but I'm training for 180k. The relevancy to that 20 minute effort is, is quite insignificant. We are manipulating it to, to understand that, yeah, we need to know what your best 20 minutes or 60 minutes, if we're really doing it the correct way, what can you hold for 60 minutes? And then we can take 75% of that for 180k Ironman bike section. And that's where it becomes important. So what can you hold? 75% of your FTP. That's the number we're trying to actually get you to train at. So on race day, that's why the FTP number is so important because we know from all our data that that's about where, you know, we're being very general here, but that's about where the average triathlete can hold. And I'm talking probably, you know, 65 for the newbies, up to 75 for the people who've done this and have experienced bike riders. And the elite pros can ride anywhere between 75 to 82% of their FTP. And there are some exceptions.

You can ride higher, but it seems obvious to say. But that's just a generic equation that we go with. You know, the range is about 65 to 75% of that FTP number. But if you just trained to improve your 20 minutes and you never did any endurance riding and you didn't do any specific training for Ironman, which is the 180k time trial, there is no way you can hold 65% of that number for 180k because it's all the other training that counts for that. So that's where we're really making this distinction that we're in this topic and the subject of this is a 28 day program to improve your FTP, which is what we want to do and we're really trying to improve that number first. But depending on your event, the training that comes around that is really important. But I guess the last thing before we go into the actual programming is why are we improving this 20 minute number then if it's not relevant to an hour or a 90k time trial, 180, why are we trying to improve it?

Well, we want to have an engine in our body that's capable of improving. And so the only way to be a better bike rider is to improve your VO2 and your threshold. So if you can fix those two components of your physiology, if you can absorb higher intensity and able to ride and cope with a capacity that's going to enable you to ride your bike faster, then that's important to improve your VO2 and your threshold in your training sessions. But they go hand in hand. You can't improve your threshold without improving your VO2. What does that mean? Well, the example that's been used many times in lots of podcasts around the world is if you use a four cylinder car and you're trying to become an eight cylinder car, if you don't actually change the size of your engine, four cylinder to eight cylinder, or the body, the human body, make it able to cope with higher intensity level, then you actually won't ride any faster. You will get to a ceiling where you will not improve, you will not be able to ride harder unless you improve your VO2, get a bigger engine, get your car to have a bigger engine, get your body to have more capacity to cope with more intensity. And so where do we do that? By doing VO2 sessions. And guess what? That improves your threshold. And so doing all of those hard efforts at a VO2 level, acting like you've got a VO, acting like you've got a V8 engine instead of a four cylinder train, like you're pushing yourself to this new V8 capacity. That's what we're talking about. VO2 is pushing yourself to train as if you're getting a V8 engine in your body. And if you avoid doing this VO2 training, you will keep riding as a four cylinder. Keep driving a four cylinder car, that's your ceiling will stay that low. You can't improve your riding.

It's really simple, isn't it? If you had someone with a bigger engine versus someone with a smaller engine, you use the 4 and 8 example, maybe someone with an 8 cylinder has that capacity, but they haven't been doing enough for the right training. And so they're only using four cylinders out of the eight anyway. So they're actually the same level as the person that has the four cylinders and is using it all. But the difference is the person that only has the four cylinders has nowhere to go. You know, that's where they need to. You know, they might be really good at their threshold for that level, but they haven't. They can. They need to increase their ceiling. And then the person with the eight cylinders has the capacity to do a VO2 block, which is what we're basically going to go through here. And get that their ability to get the most out of their engine way up there. And that's that kind of how big your engine is. Is this 20 minute number basically that we're talking about. Can you improve that 20 minute number? That's, that's the size of your engine and then how well can you use that engine? Which is what we're talking about with. Okay, well how does it translate to a 60 kilometer time trial, 90 kilometer time trial, 180 kilometer time trial. That's kind of the two key parts. So on that note, I'm ready to go through 28 day program. So. Yes. What were you going to go through there?

I was just going to say. Yeah, just, you know, using the ceiling example, the person who's got more room to move, they haven't reached their potential. That's what you're saying. Give yourself more room to moves so that you can keep improving to reach your limit. And there is no limit. But if you've got a four cylinder car, you can train your VO2 and your threshold to that point and that's your limit, whereas the other person has got a bigger room for improvement. Reaching your limit is where we're trying to keep pushing yourself to. So let's talk about the. How do you do that now?

Yeah, and so our focus is let's do a 28 day block to improve your FTP number to get that improvement. And what do we focus on? Well, we think you focus on some real high intensity training to increase the size of that engine. So to start with, we just do exactly what we just spoke about for 15 minutes. And you need to do an FTP test because you need to measure where you're at. To start with, you need to see what your starting number is because there's no point doing this block if you don't do a start and ending test because you actually won't know if you've improved or not. So let's just get that out of the way and then. Okay, what are the sessions made up of over the 28 days? What do you need to include over this 28 day block? And look, we're going to stick to a general seven day cycle. It doesn't have to be exactly seven days. You can fit it around your kind of schedule. But here are some of the core sessions that you want to be doing over the next 28 days that will guarantee your improvement. And we want to start with what you just said. Some VO2 max sessions, some real high intensity sessions. So take us through if you want to do one to two of these a week. What kind of example sessions can you do to get that real high intensity?

Well, we use a couple of these methods and we use a really short hard burst where anything under a minute, you can do 30, 15, you can do 40, 20s, or you can do 60, 30s. And they're all equally as hard as each other. And you're trying to ride them all. All of those efforts at VO2. And what is VO2? It's about 110 to 120, sometimes 130%. We don't want to go into anaerobic too much, but we want to stay in that VO2 range where you can repeat the effort. The minute you go anaerobic, you cannot repeat the effort without extended rest periods. So we don't go that far into zone six. We want to stay in that VO2 level where you can repeat the effort with short recovery. And repeat it, repeat it, repeat it with short recovery. So it's, it's a, you know, 2 to 1 effort where you're, you're doing 30 seconds and 15 seconds off. That's an example. So, so at that 110 to 120%, you're trying to rev that engine and make your heart rate go through the roof. It should be in your mouth. And we don't want you doing low cadence. So we want you to rev your legs and try to get a cadence above 90, even up to 100, if you can sustain it. But not trying to get the power, the high 110ftp power number from a strength effort here. That's not what we're trying to do.

Yeah, and let's, let's look at some numbers to make it really clear, because you're saying 110 to 120%. Again, what's the percentage of. It's a percentage of your FTP. So let's say you've done the test. Your FTP number is 200. Very straightforward. It's 30 seconds on, 15 seconds off is the example, one of the examples you gave. So you're going to do 30 seconds high intensity. 15 seconds rest at 30 seconds high intensity. What is that actual number? Well, it's 110% of 200. So that's 220 watts to 120% is 240. So you're writing 30 seconds at 220 to 240 watts. That's your high intensity. That's VO2 max zone. And you have 15 seconds rest. That's one set, how many do you do? Around 10 is a good marker to start. You do 10 in a row, then have a bit of a break and then you can repeat that for two sets. That's just a real generic program. Depending on your ability, you might be doing more or less, but we can't cater for everyone here. But that is just a real generic VO2 style session that you've just described.

Yeah, that's brilliant, Jordan. You know, for those who are listening are wondering, what should I be doing in the VO2? We've just given you one session and there are many varieties of that, variations of it, and depending on your ability, as you've summarized so adequately, this is just one aspect and the second example we're going to give you. So we want you to do two of these VO2 sessions in this. If you are trying to lift your FTP, remember that's the goal here. This is not a year's program. This is just you spending a little bit of time trying to lift your engine and improve your FTP. Doing two VO2 sessions per week for this 28 day block will really help you along that journey. So the second session, we want to keep it under three minutes. So we've got that one minute and under and now we've got between one and three minutes. So anything in that range of time is going to still be in that VO2 zone. And VO2 can be up to five minutes for some elite people. I'm not in that category. I can't last at that level. Not many people for five minutes. But, but if you are at that level, then sure, push it out that far. Try to make it manageable though, you know, don't try and do something where you can't actually finish the session. So that's important too. So in the, in the 30 15s, the example we gave before, if you get to the second set and you're not able to push through that, well, you've probably got too many, you know, in the session, you know, cut that back. And the same with if you tried to do say six by two minutes or six by three minutes at 105 to 110% of your VO2. You know, if you can't get through those six efforts, then, you know, probably three minutes is too long. You know, maybe two minutes is better. So we're trying to get the extreme, where it's short, repeatable efforts, which is really helpful to get stimulation for your heart rate and then try to get it almost like an extended effort where you're great for 30 seconds, but how good are you for three minutes? And that is a really tough session. 30, 15 is tough, believe me. But trying to do those three minutes at 110%, that is really going to extend you mentally and physically. And again, we want to see your heart rate being really stimulated here. High cadence will do that. Don't ride low cadence in this VO2 stuff.

Yeah. So like you said, you can pick anywhere from, you know, you might do six efforts at two minutes or six efforts at three minutes or six minutes at one minute 30 or eight minutes at one minute 30, just around that range where you're trying to get somewhere between, you know, 12 and 20 minutes of stimulus. Again, we're giving you big ranges here because it does depend on the athlete. A beginner athlete really will struggle with even six by two minutes or two and a half minutes. And a more experienced athlete, like you said, can handle 6 by 3 minutes or even 5 by 5 minutes at that 105 to 110%. So I know we're saying a lot of numbers here. To simplify it, let's use this 200 watt example, this 200 watt athlete. They're doing those 30 second efforts at 220 to 240. They might be doing these one to three minute efforts at 105 to 110%. That's 210 to 221 watts. That's that example. So they've got to hold that, try and hold that effort for 210 to 220 watts for two minutes, for example. And that's. You've given two really good VO2 style sessions that you're trying to get in your week that are really, you know, get you going. And they're tough sessions.

The rest ratio is important. As we said in the 30 15s, it's two to one and it's one to one in the two minutes or three minutes. So two and a half minutes on, two and a half minutes off or three minutes on, three minutes off, or two minutes on, two minutes off. It's gotta be one to one.

Yeah. Whatever work you do, have the same rest when it's those longer efforts. And you'll need it because you are, it's really hard to hold that power for that length of time. And so you want to take that full recovery time. So that's, that's the two VO2 sessions. If you try and get those two per week for 28 days, then you're going to do really well and you might need two days off. In between, you might just need the one day off. You know, if you do it Tuesday, Thursday, it depends on the athlete. And if you're not coping too well, it doesn't happen too often with athletes. Most athletes be fine, can handle two. But if you're not coping too well, you might need that extra day in between. That does make the week a little bit hard because you've really got to figure out where to fit your endurance rides around that. So our general recommendation is a Tuesday, Thursday. But we understand that doesn't work for everyone. Yeah, well, the next key session is the endurance ride, and I just mentioned it. But really once per week or once per block, whether your week is seven or eight days or so, really over 28 day cycle, you'd want to try and fit in four endurance rides. And that's generally one per week. But this is such a key ride. So you've got your high intensity sessions. This is a session where the intensity doesn't matter, it's all about the volume. And basically the starting advice is where wherever you're at right now with your endurance ride, you just want to push yourself a little bit further over this block each week, Try and progress a little bit. So if your current endurance ride is 2 hours, next week you want to push it a little bit more and go to 2 hours 15 or then 2 hours 30, then 2 hours 45. If you're already at 4 hours, you still need a bit more stimulus if you want to improve. So go to 4 hours 15, then 4 hours 30. Just increase a little bit per week. And that's the key to this endurance ride over the 28 days.

Yeah. And the duration, as you've spoken about just then, the overload is the key and the endurance has to be in zone two. And you shouldn't be pushing yourself out of that range during this 28 day training block that we're prescribing. This is specific. Sure. And some are other endurance blocks. You would be trying to do some intensity, but this is not the time to be doing it because the key sessions are the VO2 sessions midweek. And if you're actually stimulating yourself too much on the endurance ride, there's no way you'll be able to do the VO2 tests during the week because you'll be that tired from the endurance ride with intensity. The endurance ride is not intensity. It can have undulations where you're getting stimulus from some strength efforts, but those strength efforts need to be at zone two for this particular block. And, and that has to Be really rammed home. You cannot get carried away. And if you, if you are going to do it with a group in a bunch ride, you will never be able to stay in zone two. And that will be detrimental to this particular block. If you're asking us how to get your improvement in threshold, do it this way. Stay away from your, your bunch for this particular block. Unless they're all agreeing and staying in zone two, then fine.

Can you define what you mean by strength efforts in an endurance ride? Because that sounds like intensity.

Yeah, so. So generally people think strength efforts should be at threshold, but you can also do strength efforts low cadence. Low cadence, which is, you know, 60 RPM to 75 RPM. And if you don't have a hill anywhere, like where I am right now, I could be doing low canes just by being on a flat bit of road and, and putting it into the biggest gear into a headwind, and I could still ride located 60, 65 RPM and I can select whatever percentage I want to ride at. So I can select 60% of my FTP low cadence and hold it there, or 75% of my FTP. Or I can ride at 90 or I can ride at 100% of my FTP. So. So a strength effort can be written at any percentage of your FTP. You select the gearing to enable you to ride the power.

Yes, but we don't want to do that in the endurance session. So what, what kind of strength effort do you want to do in this endurance ride?

I want you to be riding the hills where you've actually riding zone two, where you're just getting a stimulus from the uphill, so it will cause you to be, you know, a lower cadence when you're on a steep hill anyway. So you've got no choice. As long as you keep the threshold number in that 75% or less, then you have reached the goal of getting strength at zone two.

Yeah. So it's such an important clarification because it's easy and the temptation is when you get to a hill just to ride it hard and get that heart rate up and really spike it and you're really making that clarification that no, you want to stay in zone two for the ride, but you can still get some strength work out of it by one, the hill naturally lower your cadence a little bit. But two, don't be afraid to keep your cadence a little bit low and you're getting some strength training while that power output and that heart rate output should stay in that Zone two range.

Yeah, you've summed it up exactly.

And so the last type of training session to include in your week, and this is only if you have time, if you're a pure cyclist, you'll have time for this. And if you're a triathlete, you might not. Is those actual zone two specific rides, those shorter 60 to 90 minutes, two hour zone two rides, and we just mentioned zone two for the endurance ride. That's why I want to bring it up right now. But how do you actually know if you're in zone 2? So we've spoken about the VO2 max percentages. What kind of ways do we know to be in zone two? I think the first is there are just some generic equations out there. If you use training peaks, you can put your FTP number in and it will spit out what it thinks your zone two is, or there's just generic equations online. But talk us through that process and how to make sure that generally you're actually staying in that zone two range.

Yeah, well, look, the torque test is really helpful, isn't it? If you, if you can sit beside someone and have a conversation and even if you, if someone rang you and you're, and you're riding your bike and you shouldn't be doing this, you shouldn't have your phone on when you're riding your bike. But if you're indoors, indoor trainer, on a stationary trainer, and someone rang you and you want to talk to them, you should be able to talk to them without being out of breath. And the minute you start having to gasp, that means, or have to have two or three or four seconds in between each sentence, then you are actually riding too hard. So that is the number one talk test is rpe. Call it whatever you like. Rate of perceived exertion. You need to be able to be comfortable in what you're doing. And sure, using heart rate, where you're trying to stay at 75% of your max heart rate power, trying to stay under 75% of your, of your threshold power and the torque test, they're the key things that we would be using to make sure that you're in the right range in the right zone.

Yeah, and once again, that's why the generic equations are there, the generic ranges. But a really fit person, they could be in Zone 2 at 85% of their FTP and a beginner athlete would might, you know, be out of breath at 65% of their FTP. And so yeah, it really does depend on the person. That's why we can use some other arbitrary generic rules like the torque test. Like you said, we also have this sustained power rule. So really you should be able to sustain the Zone 2 for a decent chunk of time, for an hour or an hour and a half at a time, as long as you're properly fueled and hydrated. Generally, if you're starting to fade at the back end of that, then it's probably a little bit too high intensity. You really want to be able to hold that for the full amount of time. Once again, the caveat is beginner athletes, no matter how, no matter what your fitness level is, you might just not be fit enough to ride for an hour and a half, hour and a half to start with. So it doesn't even matter. You know, trying to stay in zone two, it's just about getting the volume in. But generally that's kind of that sustained power rule that we want to use. And the last point is rpe. So perceived exertion, you can just use. Okay, where am I on the perceived exertion scale? We like to use the Borg scale, which is 6 to 20, rather than 1 to 10, and 6 being extremely light, 20 being maximal. The zone 2 is up to about 12, 11 or 12 on that scale. So if you're thinking about how hard is this, you should be about 11 or 12 out of 20.

Yeah, they've covered, you know, a lot of good things that if, if you didn't have the metrics we've been talking about in general, you can use these as a, as a backup. And, and for sure, it is so easy to, to float in and out. And if I used a ride for myself, if I'm, if I'm not at a really good level of fitness, if I started a zone two ride and I knew that my, my percentage FTP and heart rate. Let's give the example. If my, my zone 2 upper limit was 230 watts and my zone 2 upper limit heart rate was 135. If I start the endurance ride and I want to ride for an hour and a half in zone two and I start bang on 230 and all of a sudden I see my heart rate creep to 140 instantly, I know that my fitness level isn't good enough to hold 230 watts, so I would immediately drop my power back to 220 until my heart rate went back to 135. And then if it crept up again, I would drop it back again. So this is an example of me being on top of the session whilst I'm in the middle of it, monitoring what's happening to my body physiologically and using my heart rate as the main reason. And the heart rate can be stimulated by poor fitness, which could be the reason why the heart rate's going up, or it could be the temperature of the day, or it could be my body's overheating. It could be I've run out of nutrition. It could be that I'm actually exhausted, I've had poor sleep. So there's so many reasons why the heart rate could start to go up. It doesn't matter what the reason is it's going up. So we have to adjust our session to stay in the right zone. So I hope that's clear to everybody and you should be able to use your perceived exertion. Boy, I'm feeling tired. Well, it's probably because you aren't fit enough to sustain this zone two for three hours or for an hour and a half or for an hour. And that's something you should be saying to yourself, heck, I need to do more of this if I want to be able to improve my endurance. My endurance fitness is key to everything I do on the bike. So you want to be able to ride for three, four hours. If you're going to do events that are Ironman or Half Ironman, you need to have that under your belt so that you can be strong at the end of those races and not fade and not see a heart rate spike because you've practiced it in these zone two rides.

So what have we got so far? We've got two key VO2 sessions. We've got the key endurance ride where you're holding zone two. And trust us, that holding zone two for two, three, four hours, really trying to stay in that zone and not backing off the pressure on the pedals and not going over is really tough and really grueling and it'll do you wonders. And if you're a triathlete, that's probably all you can fit in the week. You know, those two hard sessions, especially if you're doing a VO2 block, if you're doing this FTP block to improve your bike, FTP, you know, this is where the key sessions are. If you have time, this is the zone. Two extra rides where, if you're a pure cyclist or even a triathlete, if you can fit in one extra or even two extra mini zone 2 rides per week, that's going to help, but it's not absolutely crucial. And one bonus session that we want to Talk about is actually threshold riding. And for cyclists this is definitely possible. For triathletes, this becomes even harder to fit in. And not everyone can even handle this throughout the week. Just recovery ride. But take us through an example of what we mean by some bonus threshold session that if you're a bit more experienced, you could chuck this in. That will give you massive benefit.

Yeah. And again, this is just for that one block, this 128 day block. If you're trying to improve that threshold, I would be absolutely doing some sub threshold sessions. And whether you're on the road bike or a TT bike, it doesn't matter. You want to ride between 80, 90%, that gray zone that we are trying to avoid all the time. Well, this is the, the time to be doing that session when you're, when you're trying to do repeated efforts such as 2 by 20 minutes or 2 by 30 if you can handle it, or even 2 by 40 up to 2 by 60 if you're, if you're elite level. And, and I'm, I've really done a huge, massive range there from, you know, two 20 minute efforts is pretty tough at 80 to 90%. But if you're at the elite level, you could handle two by 60 minutes. And we have athletes that have done that in their training at 80 to 90%. And this is an unbelievable execution practice. It's an unbelievable session where you're doing training just under threshold and it doesn't tax you like a threshold session does. It's so repeatable because you're not really going into the red zone. You're staying right under it. You're not really doing zone two. You're in that uncomfortable period where your body's getting a real stimulus, but you can recover quickly the next day because you didn't go into threshold or VO2. And that's what's good about this session. And so it doesn't really hurt you that much, even though it's valuable, doesn't hurt you like threshold or VO2 does. And it's not endurance, like endurance hurts you in a different way in fatigue. But this is something that's very specific and you could, one of those four weeks out of the 28 days, throw in one 20 minute effort to really see what it's like to ride at that threshold. And this is something that's a bit advanced, but if you want to hear what the perfect program is, we're letting you know.

Yeah, so you've given, you know, do potentially three weeks of sub threshold sessions at 80 90% and then do one threshold effort, which threshold means at 100%, you know, do 100% for 20 minutes or you know, you might even, you mentioned before, do a 40k time trial at 94 to 98%. You know, really as close to that technically you should be able to hold 100% but as we said, not everyone can. So, you know, really getting as close to that 100% number as possible and holding it for 40k, holding it for an hour, you're really testing yourself over that decision. Just doing it once.

This is the time to do it. And you know, and perfect for your Olympic distance athlete, you know, going to do that 60 minute effort, you know, 20 minutes is, is, is the, the bare minimum and you can do anything in between 20 and 60 minutes on this day. That's what we're trying to do.

And so where would you fit this in? You know, We've got the two VO2 sessions during the week. We've got the endurance ride potentially on the Saturday and you might, if you can fit this sub threshold session on a Sunday. And that's what a lot of our athletes do. And to be honest, even our triathletes do fit it in, especially if they've got a cycling focused block. They will do it on a Sunday because it's not as grueling, it's still tough, and then they'll get off and do their endurance run after. So that's a big weekend, that's a big day. Again, not everyone can handle that. Only certain athletes do that kind of session. But that's. If this is a bonus session that you want to include and you're up to it, then that's where it might go in.

Yep. And you will know you've trained if you do this as your extra on the, on the Sunday, especially after your, your fatiguing Saturday, your long day on Saturday and you potentially, you know, if you're a cyclist, that's, that's hard enough, but if you're a triathlete, you would have done a short run off the bike in our program and then lining up the next day to do, you know, some sub threshold or a 60 minute threshold effort plus a reasonably long run, you know, you know, you've trained and, and that will be really helping you build that engine to, to lift its ceiling. And then, you know, after some recovery and some, some testing, you'll find that, you know, your threshold will, will jump incredibly.

That's the key part to finish off with you do you know, 28 days of this training, give yourself a few days to recover, freshen up, taper if you will, you know, three, two or three days to really just have some easy riding, some easy volume of training and then finish with the test. Do a 20 minute FTP test again and see how you've improved. See where your number goes to. And if you do this, then we can almost guarantee some improvement. And if you do this, if you follow this along, let us know in 28 days how you go. Any final notes from you on this, dad?

No, I really love talking about this because it's so important. I think using this for a 28 day cycle and then implementing a lot of the stuff we've talked about, we've covered a lot of things here in your whole year's plan. It's good to start this year with a topic like this because once people understand what their goal is and yes, I want to improve my FTP, I want to ride my bike faster. Well, this is the real, almost the bible. This is the instruction booklet you get with a new toy. Do this at periods throughout the year and you will actually become a better bike rider. And implement these sessions and understand that the FTP will have highs and lows over the year. But at the end of the day, you know you want to keep lifting the ceiling so that you can improve. If you have a limited ceiling, you're going to reach it. And if you don't do some type of work that's based around VO2 at some state or stage during the year, then you will stay the same rider for a long time.

Perfect way to finish. There's a lot of caveats in this episode, a lot of numbers thrown out there. We've got a lot of ranges between beginner and experienced athletes. So if that was confusing first time, once you've got all this in your head, if you want to re listen to it again, go back to the start of where we start talking about the topic and listen to all the numbers again. Once you hear it a second time through, it makes a lot more sense because you get a grasp of what do we mean by percentage of FTP and that kind of thing. The first time hearing it, you're really trying to keep up with a bit of lingo all at once and then second time through it often makes a lot more sense. So thanks for listening to another long episode. We hope this has really helped and we really do want to see that. If you take on this over the next 28 days, how does your FTP improve? Definitely let us know thanks, as always, for listening. We'll see you in the next episode.