Ten Minute Tips #74: FTP Training Mistakes (And Solutions)

Our three most experienced coaches discuss common mistakes when training and building FTP. We look at testing, interval execution and progression, adaptation timelines, periodization, fatigue management, lactate testing, and much more. We also answer your listener questions on FTP training.

We tackle the ideas of unique responders, the role of performance variability in differentiating training response between individuals, pitfalls in interpreting typical individual response data, and the experimental setup required to actually tease these things apart. Then we walk through a couple easy principles to apply the takeaways in your own training.

We talk about things we wish we knew earlier about training, racing, and coaching. Nutrition, skipping workouts, setting process goals, finding your strengths, athlete feedback, and more. We also find out what our listeners wish they had known sooner.

Following up from the last episode, our coaches dig into the balance between training stimulus and recovery capacity, with practical ways to diagnose which is a potential performance limiter. We also touch on low volume athletes, very well trained ones, overlapping stimuli, periodization, short and long term tradeoffs, and more.

We walk through an analysis done on almost 15,000 people with data up to nearly 7 years in length and after finding similar trends in Kolie's client and personal data, we apply what we can learn about diminishing returns to our training expectations, season planning, stimulus and recovery needs, our ultimate potential, and what it means for interpreting scientific literature.

Our coaches discuss what panic training is and how it manifests, common reasons for it to occur, ways to plan now to avoid falling into the trap, and ways to pivot before and even during panic training mode. We touch on all sorts of related topics like nutrition and panic dieting, setting milestones and assessing realistic goals, the impact of social media, and a couple ways to rethink training or goals to fit your season, plus answering your listener questions.

Our coaches dig into non-FTP related aspects of training and physiology that that lead to better race results, and workouts that can be done for each. We specifically consider road racing, criteriums, mountain bike and cyclocross, plus gravel and ultra racing, and a couple things to train that can easily apply to everything.

This episode we make our case for why endurance and recovery rides can and probably should be paced easier than expected, even for time crunched athletes. We look into the issues that can occur from riding too hard, then delve into physiology, power and heart rate zones, RPE calibration, fatigue and energy management, and more. Plus we answer your listener questions.

We take a deep dive into the published literature on durability. First a critical look at the paper coining the term, the next establishing a widely used measurement, and another on the definition and differentiation of several aspects of endurance performance. Then discussing aspects of measurement and trainability, plus the relative statistical strength in the literature vs typical interpretations. Finally some advice from coaching experience, and answering your listener questions.

This is a critical look at how our coaches use data, like its use in creating a logical framework, the challenging parts of analytics and data in decision making, and how much "the science" can really inform our decision making. Plus we discuss the seeming need for heuristics over nuanced takes, the role of the scientific process in coaching, our favorite metrics, and answer your listener questions.