A Simple Framework For Raising Cycling FTP

Want to increase your FTP?

Many cyclists assume the answer is simple: do more FTP intervals. While that can help, it's only one piece of the puzzle.

In this video, CTS Head Cycling Coach Adam Pulford introduces a simple coaching framework, Push vs. Pull, to explain how FTP is really built. You'll learn why aerobic training lays the foundation, how VO₂ max work raises your ceiling, and how to combine both throughout the season for your strongest FTP yet.

HOST

Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.

​​Free Cycling Training Assessment: https://trainright.com/cycling-training-assessment-welcome/

Interested in working with a coach? Schedule a free consult: https://trainright.com/coaching/cycling/

Self-coached athlete? Check out our TrainRight Membership: https://trainright.com/membership/

Find more free resources here: https://trainright.com/blog/

Resources:

• How Quickly Can Cyclists Increase FTP?
• Pushing vs pulling up FTP - Training - TrainerRoad
• Tim Cusick: Periodization, Training Modalities, And Getting Your Training Rhythm Right - CTS
• How To Improve Your Cycling FTP (Functional Threshold Power) - CTS  

Transcript

Why FTP Intervals Aren’t Enough

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Many athletes think that in order to increase your FTP, you just do some FTP intervals. Now, that's not wrong or flawed logic, but it's not completely true either. Just like there's more than one way to skin a potato, there's more than one way to build your FTP. But rather than philosophize about how all the methods could work and go down some rabbit holes of deep physiology, let me give you a very simple framework that anyone can use within any training program. And that literally means everyone. Time-crunched athletes, time-rich, elite, non-elite, junior, and the aging athlete. Because when you have a proper framework and the necessary tools, you can build and customize to any human physiology. And that's just good coaching. My name is Adam Polford, Head Coach of Cycling at CTS. I'm part of an extensive group of professional coaches specializing in cycling, mountain biking, triathlon, and ultrarunning. Our network of coaches is one of the biggest in the world. And if this video resonates with you, I'd check us more out at Trainwrite.com where you can get a better understanding of all that we have to offer, especially one-on-one coaching. Now, let's get back to

The Push Versus Pull Framework

SPEAKER_00 1:15

the framework. There's really two conceptual ways that you can increase your FTP. Number one, push it up. Number two, pull it up. It's that simple. But what does it mean? Let me expand. Push it up means mostly aerobic training. This is zone one all the way up to low zone four. Pull it up means max aerobic with some anaerobic contribution perhaps. So high zone four, through zone five, maybe a splash of zone six in there. Pushing up versus pulling up is really just slaying coach talk for general concepts of how FTP and VO2 max training works. And it's really applicable in this situation because most people just want the workout to boost up their threshold, or the method that increases FTP every time. And that's just not how it works. There's no one workout, and not even the Norwegian method or 8020 or whatever becomes popular next year will be the one way to improve functional threshold power. There are many ways, and the broad concept that I'll teach you today really comes down to spending a lot of time training your aerobic capacity, then target specific time periods to hit the gas at high intensity at the right time to bring out your best FTP. My advice is to start thinking of FTP training in these conceptual ways because it's a more effective approach versus what a lot of people think, which is to increase threshold, I must do FTP intervals. That's only part of the story. But time spent at FTP and is a small slice of distribution pie that successful endurance athletes are doing to maximize their threshold power. So let's unpack all of this while keeping it super simple and to the point.

FTP Is Mostly Aerobic

SPEAKER_00 2:59

The first thing we need to talk about is FTP is mostly aerobic. This may come as a surprise to some because doing 20-minute tests and to estimate your FTP or doing intervals at 100% of your FTP is hard. But the reality is when you're doing these longer TT efforts, there's only about 4-6% of our energy or power output that is actually anaerobic. This means you really need to focus on building aerobic capacity in order to have a big functional threshold power, critical power, lactate threshold, or whatever term you want to use as the concept of threshold. Now high intensity is still important. Just because FTP is mostly aerobic, it doesn't mean that anaerobic work or high intensity isn't important or doesn't play a role. It certainly does, and in more ways than one. Let's get back to push versus pull.

How To Push Up FTP

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Pushing up your FTP, as I said before, refers to a bunch of mostly aerobic work to increase your aerobic capacity, which means building mitochondria, vascularity, prepping the blood, and building the muscles in the right way to handle higher workloads and intensity to come next. Pushing up aerobic intensities can be done as low as zone one and as high as the lower end of zone four. So light endurance work all the way up to about sweet spot or low threshold. That's roughly 50 to 91% of your FTP for a workout or an interval prescription. The athletes I coach are spending the majority of their season pushing up their aerobic capacity, as you can see here in the base and into the build phases of their annual

How To Pull Up FTP

SPEAKER_00 4:37

training plan. The other way is pulling up your FTP. This is using max aerobic power or some anaerobic intensity to bring out your highest FTP in VO2 max at the right time. This type of training will stress the lungs, heart, legs, and muscles to handle the highest workloads possible, using oxygen and muscle glycogen as the primary fuel sources to get the job done. This is where the race-winning performance is built. Pulling up would be using upper zone 4 to zone 5 or 100 to 121% of FTP or slightly higher to intensify the training and pull up the max aerobic ceiling. We're using this in the build and peak phases of the annual training plan and maintaining peak form during the racing phase. This intensity is essential for developing the upper end of FTP and VO2 max, and both will rise together when done properly. Here's the catch though. There's only so much pull you can do at any one time or within the year, meaning blocks of high intensity like this shouldn't be a huge part of your training program in terms of the distribution or time and zone, again, for the whole year. Some of this is because it's just so high intensity that the fatigue isn't worth the cost of doing stuff like this each week as a smart way of training. On top of that, VO2 Max is genetically set. You can train it and improve it, but there's going to be a limit of where the ceiling is at. Finally, if you pull up your FTP with intensity too soon or before maximizing your volume at lower intensities, this boost up of FTP won't last very long. This is because real performance is built on a big base of aerobic fitness in an endurance sport like bike racing. So this gets back to my point a few minutes ago. The best strategy is to spend the majority of the year building the base of your aerobic capacity, pushing up FTP. Then you have a few time periods per year where you pull it up with higher intensity. It's that simple. So as you can see and probably expected from me, there's no one magical way to build FTP. There are many ways. But this simple, broad concept of pushing up or pulling up should help you to organize training in a very

Extensive Versus Intensive Intervals

SPEAKER_00 6:59

effective way to help maximize your FTP. Now let's look at how best to structure workouts for aerobic and high aerobic interval training. This is called extensive versus intensive training concepts. I've gone over these concepts in the past videos and podcasts, but I'll revisit them now because I think it's the best way to think about how to design your intervals to influence your FTP or whatever your goals are in your training program. So, first, extensive intervals refers to longer, usually lower power durations. Intensive refers to shorter, higher power durations. And that could go for any zone of any intensity. For example, you could do extensive threshold intervals like 2x20 at 88 to 95% of FTP with 5 to 8 minute recovery between, or intensive threshold intervals like 4x8 minutes at 100 to 106% of FTP with 4 minute recovery between. Additionally, you could do extensive VO2 max intervals like a 5x5 at 107 to 117% of FTP, or intensive VO2 max intervals like 8x2 minutes at 115 to 125% of FTP. The key concept here is the longer you go, you generally need to lower the percentage of FTP to the lower end of the zone for extensive interval training. Conversely, for intensive interval training, you need to increase the intensity or the percentage of FTP, but shorten the interval duration. These concepts come from older German and Eastern European concepts from about like 80 to 100 years ago, but they're still very relevant today. The modern version of this is what I'm talking about, using data and models to show it better and more clearly.

Using The Power Duration Curve

SPEAKER_00 8:46

In the case of FTP and max aerobic power, we can look at the power duration curve here on WK05. That's the reg sigmoidal line that you see on the graph here, with power on the y-axis and duration on the x-axis. The yellow curve that you see kind of in the background is me max power for this rider or their highest average power from one second all the way out to their longest ride, whatever data that we have for them over the past 365 days. The yellow is what they did do, and the red is a model of their power, giving us more insights to how they make their power and what they possibly could do. When we're pushing up their aerobic capacity, we're riding in that zone one to two to build endurance. That's usually as short as an hour and as long as however we can or want to go. Identified here on the right side of the chart where the longer durations are in lower powers. When we do aerobic intervals, say zone three tempo, we might be doing 15 to 30 minutes or even up to 60-minute interval lengths, or perhaps just aiming for a goal of time and zone for the day or week. This builds capacity for later. Longer, extensive threshold intervals may be done as short as 12 minutes and go all the way out to 60 minutes if you're training properly. Shorter or intensive threshold work may be as short as six-minute intervals and go as long as 10-minute intervals. As you lengthen the interval out, recall that you need to pace down a bit to hold on to that power. The shorter threshold work at higher than 100% of FTP starts to push up the intensity of that aerobic ceiling. VO2 max intervals definitely push things up, and I personally only use as short as 90-second interval durations and go out to about five to six minutes. So these durations all influence FTP positively, either by pushing up or pulling up, and they can be as short as 90 seconds of intensive VO2 max work or as extensive as zone two rides for five hours. And as boring as broad as this sounds, you need to know the truth of what influences your FTP. And it's not just one workout or one zone. It's all of them. You just need to know how to weave it all together and build it progressively throughout a season to do it right. A self-coached athlete is their own architect of their program, and I'm trying to help you frame this out better in the months and years ahead.

Anaerobic Work And FRC Caveat

SPEAKER_00 11:16

Oh, and you may be wondering, well, what about efforts that are shorter than 90 seconds? That's the really intensive stuff over here on the power duration curve. And yeah, that's super important too. That's the deep anaerobic or functional reserve capacity work that I talk about in other videos. But it can actually bring down your FTP if you do too much of it or not enough relative to the aerobic training that we've been talking about here. But that's all the podcast. Just know you shouldn't avoid it if you want to have the best engine possible. However, too much of it can technically bring your FTP down. If you want to learn more about that, drop it in the comments. Maybe say, give me some FRC talk or something like that, and I'll work

Plan The Season And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_00 12:00

on it. But here's a few summary points before I wrap this thing up. If you want your highest FTP possible, you need to both push and pull it up. And that actually takes several months of aerobic riding, progressively overloading with volume and intensity with some sub-threshold interval training. Then when you're actually six to eight weeks out from a key race, hit a three to four-week block of VO2 work, freshen up with a two-week taper, and you'll be rolling pretty good. To get the right dosage of interval intensity, use the extensive versus intensive concepts for the right prescriptions. And all of this should help to shape up how you put the plan into action. Now, don't get too fancy with it. It's hard work, good recovery, proper fueling, and let your body adapt over time. That means good training habits, good sleep habits, good fueling habits, and patience. And so in closing, I really can't emphasize enough that there is no magic workout to increase your FTP, and I'll double down on that every single time. Now that can make it even more confusing for some, especially if you don't have the time, desire, and skill to write your own training program. So if that's you and some of this resonated here today, but you still have questions, reach out to us at trainwrite.com. Between our one on one coaching, consults, and camps, we can help increase your FTP and build beyond that. That's it for today. Hope you liked it. I'll see you back here soon for the next one.