September 3, 2025 • 33 mins
OVERVIEW
Cody Stephenson is the Education Program Manager at TrainingPeaks, meaning he teaches coaches how to properly utilize training data to improve performance. He's the perfect sports scientist to discuss the similarities and differences between Functional Threshold Power (FTP) and Critical Power (CP), Functional Reserve Capacity (FRC) and W Prime, and how all these training metrics and methodologies relate to each other. Best of all, he and Coach Adam Pulford are pragmatists, so they explain the strengths and weaknesses of each, without bias or hidden agendas.
TOPICS COVERED
- Is FTP dead?
- What is Functional Reserve Capacity (FRC)?
- Explaining P Max
- Are Critical Power and W Prime better than FTP and FRC?
- How to choose between FTP/FRC vs. CP/W Prime
- Why is "clean data" so important?
ASK A QUESTION FOR A FUTURE PODCAST
Guest Bio – Cody Stephenson
Cody grew up racing mountain bikes in Durango, Colorado where he developed a passion for endurance sports, science, math and technology. He switched to the road and track while racing for Fort Lewis College, where he also managed to get a couple of science degrees. Now he gets to write and talk about his favorite topics every day as Education Program Manager at TrainingPeaks. When he’s not helping coaches learn to leverage technology to reach their goals he’s trying to become as good of a mountain bike racer as he was when he was 13 years old.
Resources:
- Cody Stephenson LinkedIn
- Articles: https://www.trainingpeaks.com/coach-blog/how-to-coach-athletes-who-arent-racing/
- CP W’ vs FTP alone
- Analyzing FTP by Joe Friel
- Power Training with WKO:
- Why Train Submaximally? WKO Case Study - Targeting Specific PDC Improvements
- Learning More about LLM’s and AI
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.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
From the team at CTS.
This is the Time Crunch Cyclistpodcast, our show dedicated to
answering your trainingquestions and providing
actionable advice to help youimprove your performance even if
you're strapped for time.
I'm your host, coach AdamPulford, and I'm one of the over
50 professional coaches whomake up the team at CTS.
In each episode, I draw on ourteam's collective knowledge,
(00:30):
other coaches and experts in thefield to provide you with the
practical ways to get the mostout of your training and
ultimately become the bestcyclist that you can be.
Now on to our show.
Now onto our show.
Is FTP dead?
(00:55):
Will AI take over the endurancecoaching world, and what's the
best system to monitor data forboth your aerobic and anaerobic
performance?
Welcome back, time Crunch fans.
I'm your host, coach AdamPulford.
We'll be unpacking answersaround these questions today,
while talking about trainingdata, which happens to be one of
my favorite subjects.
But I'll admit, I am just alowly coach and not the smartest
when it comes to all of this.
So, lucky for you, I foundsomeone who is.
(01:17):
I think the best summation ofwhat he does can be found on his
LinkedIn page, which says Icheck that complicated things
are accurate.
I figure out how complicatedthings might be useful.
I make sure complicated thingsare easy to understand and I try
to make useful complicatedthings fun.
And that comes from CodyStevenson of Training Peaks.
(01:40):
Cody, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Thanks for having me.
I'm excited to be here ofTraining Peaks.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Cody, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
Yeah, I'm excited for thisconversation.
So let's do a quick intro onyou for people who may not know
you, like I do, and that you'reliving in Boulder and doing the
whole Training Peaks and bikething.
Can you tell our audience alittle bit more about yourself
and how you came to all theknowledge that you have and the
role that you play?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah, so I grew up in Durango, colorado, and you know
, in some cases personal historymight not where you're from is
where you're from, but being inDurango pretty much means you
have to be a bike racer and alsomeans I grew up around Todd
Wells, ned Overend, howard Grotz, sepp Kuss and all of their
(02:24):
siblings, who were also reallyfast, and so it was like born
into a competitive cyclingenvironment and I'm also not the
most naturally talented athlete, and so I was.
But I was also a science andmath nerd from third grade on.
So looking for you know any,any tool or trick or way to kind
of smart my way into whateverathletic deficiency I had, so
(02:49):
always been into training withdata.
I got my first heart ratemonitor as a birthday present
when I was 16 years old, so myparents kind of knew where I was
going to um and leveraged thatto some success.
I uh wanted to be a mountainbike racer, but that was a
little bit more of a requiresnatural talent.
Went to road racing where Icould use kind of like more data
(03:09):
, more tactics, try to smart myway into it.
Um had some fun racingcollegiate road and mountain um
and track.
Got a couple of science degreesat Fort Lewis, then went to
graduate school for exercisephysiology at Colorado state
university and at that point itwas like been around, been using
training school for exercisephysiology at Colorado State
University, and at that pointI'd been using TrainingPeaks for
10 years.
At that point, as a customerknew some exercise science, was
(03:33):
okay at math, loved technology,and so there was kind of one
place I could Strava didn'texist yet.
So the one place I could workin the world was TrainingPeaks
and been there ever since.
Now I'm the head of educationat TrainingPeaks.
Been there ever since.
Now I'm the head of educationat Training Peaks.
So, kind of to my LinkedIn biothat you read earlier, I'm so
you said I was smart.
I'm actually kind of dumb, so Ihave to explain things to
(03:54):
myself in really simple terms,and so that made me an okay
teacher.
So now I teach coaches andother sports scientists about
like the technology and dataside of like the endurance
sports worlds in online coursesand in-person events, which is,
I think, where we met and yeah,so now just you know living out
the, the, the downhill side ofmy racing peak, and you know
(04:19):
talking about all the stuff Iwould have talked about every
day anyway, even if I didn'twork here.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Yeah, you, you and me both, and uh, a proper, a
proper nerd, as anyone uhlistening can, can, uh can hear.
And I think too, cody, I mean,I think, like you know, for I
don't know, um, those you know,good coaches and good educators.
It's usually because we weren'tthe greatest like performers,
you know what I mean.
So we, we had to work hard tounderstand this stuff and I
(04:47):
think that, um, you know, havean educator and a coach and
everybody you know, likeyourself, to explain this, I
think, is really really helpful.
So, um yeah, for our listeners,I think you're in for a treat,
and I'm excited as well, cause Ithink I'm going to learn a lot
with that said, let's jump rightinto the main points and
questions, and that firstquestion I'm going to queue up
(05:07):
to you, cody, is the one that Iled with, which is is FTP dead?
Speaker 2 (05:15):
No, it's been reported.
Its death has been reportedseveral times over the past 10
years.
It seems like I've started tothink about it.
It's not dead, but it justjoined a band years.
It seems like, um, I've startedto think about it.
It's not dead, but it justjoined a band, like it's been a
solo act for the past 20 yearsand now it's like you know it's.
It's taken its place among agroup of things that all work
(05:35):
together, I think to to completea better picture.
So dead, no, but it's not theonly thing in town anymore.
That's a solid answer.
I've never really thought of itlike that or framed it up as
such, which is why it's so great.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Only thing in town anymore.
That's a solid answer.
I've never really thought of itlike that or framed it up as
such, which is why it's so greatthat you're on this podcast.
So remind us like what FTP isand kind of how it should be
used, and we'll think about itand it's kind of like a solitude
context and then we'll expandon what band it joined.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Yeah, so FTP, functional threshold power.
It could also be functionalthreshold pace for runners.
There's lots of functionalthresholds.
It's originally come up with byAndy Coggin so again, all of
your listeners probably knowAndy Coggin, but if you don't
read his books, go see, he waskind of one of the first guys
who came up with a lot of thisstuff and it's a translation
(06:24):
from things you do in the lab,because for decades now we've
been able to test lactatethreshold as a benchmark of
aerobic ability and progression.
But labs are complicated, hardto get into regularly, they're
not perfect, and so ftp is a wayto field test your threshold,
(06:45):
your what would be equivalent tolactate threshold, or um, mlss
or maximum lactate steady stateor obla or all the different
kind of sub protocols thatpeople have.
But it's meant to be anapproximation of those that you
can test.
Anybody can test really easilyout on the road on the trainer
(07:06):
any time of year with prettybasic equipment and then you can
use that as a benchmark to oneset your training intensities or
track its progression over timeto see if you're getting better
in a very generic kind ofaerobic sense.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Yeah, yeah, that's it .
That's it as a good summation.
And I think, too, what a lot ofpeople need to realize is is
you know, we do that 20 minutetest and take 95% of that to
estimate an FTP.
That's about where we're atright now, kind of a convoluted
history leading up to that point.
Come out to say why that's goodor why that's not good and
(07:47):
build upon it, which I think isgreat.
But we also need to understandthat a 20 minute, taking 95 of
the highest average power on a20 minute test, gets you pretty
darn close for an amateur,recreational, serious
recreational rider to create thetraining zones and like, get
after it.
Would you agree?
Speaker 2 (08:03):
yeah, absolutely, and he, yeah it's.
And maybe you have or differentcoaches can have different
things.
For a long time I was coaching,like college age, male mountain
bike racers.
So you know, they've got lotsof energy, they've got strong
anaerobic systems.
So I use 93% of 20 minute powerjust because it seemed to work
a little bit better for them.
Like that's the thing is,there's a lot of art and finger
(08:26):
in the wind with those sort ofthings.
So, as long as you'reconsistent, that's what matters.
If it's an imperfect estimationof a laboratory test, well,
that's fine.
Your goal isn't a laboratorytest, your goal is performance,
and so measure it consistentlyand keep the spirit of the test
in mind.
That's the other thing is likeunderstand what it's trying to
tell you.
Help your athletes understandwhat it's trying to tell you so
(08:48):
they don't try to cheat it oreven accidentally cheat it.
Yeah, it's, it's.
It's a tool that is supposed tobe easy to use, not perfect.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yep, yeah, that's it, and we'll come back to the art
of coaching too, because I thinkit just that can't be lost with
all this data Right, and I'vegot some thoughts on data stuff
as we as as we roll along here.
But that art of how you applythe science is really important
with this.
So you know some of thoselistening right now that use
(09:20):
products like WK, oh five, ormaybe you've listened to
previous podcasts where I'vetalked about functional reserve
capacity, FRC.
That's tool and I think maybepart of the band that FTP has
joined.
So let's talk about maybe FRCand let's talk about the band
(09:40):
that is, is being or has beenassembled now in kind of like
this new age revolution of datatraining in science.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah, frc, I think, is you is.
You know they're all important.
I think FRC is probably the orits equivalents there are other
kind of conceptual equivalentsis the other kind of front
runner for being really usefulacross a wide range of
disciplines.
And it kind of hits that thehigher end aerobic getting into
(10:11):
the anaerobic transition zone,which is where so many important
things happen.
This is one of the downsides tousing something like FTP
totally on its own or naively isthat it's a relatively low
intensity metric for the waythat bike races are won.
It's a relatively low intensitymetric for the way that bike
races are won.
You know, road races are wonwith brakes and sprints and
(10:36):
attacks, bridging moves to getinto brakes, and mountain bike
races are typically short, hardkind of VO2 max efforts.
So FRC is a way to quantifythat, like how much juice do you
have in that range?
And like can you make thatbattery a little bit bigger?
Or like are you deficient inthat rain?
How quickly can it recover?
Speaker 1 (10:57):
and so that's, yeah, I'd say that's the other kind of
co-front runner for importantmetrics yeah, that would totally
agree with that, and I do thinkthat you know taking a step up
from the you know recreational,to the serious recreational, or
you know racer, that kind ofstuff is adding in you know
another metric or tool.
In that way, so you have FTP,which is high aerobic, frc,
(11:19):
which is high anaerobic, andhaving a coach or a self coached
athlete kind of playing withthose two or monitoring those
two aspects for performance is agreat way to do it.
Is there any buddy else in theband that you want to mention
right now, before we move on toa different system that plays
off of these two?
Speaker 2 (11:39):
things.
The other one, just to throw itout, is PMAX.
I think it's gotten a lot lessattention because it's really
simple, there's a lot lessnuance to it.
It's basically your ability tosprint.
It's more interchangeable withFRC.
We're talking about this widerange of durations it could be
from 60 seconds out to fiveminutes and how does that
duration intensity balance?
(12:00):
Sprinting is kind of justsprinting.
If your 12-second peak powergets better, you became a better
sprinter.
Pmax and that are prettyinterchangeable, and so it kind
of makes sense too from ascience realm is that we have
three energy systems.
One has two branches, and sonow we have a metric for each
energy system FTP for aerobic,frc for kind of that glycolytic
(12:22):
VO2 max, transitional realm, andthen PMax for like phosphogenic
sprinting, and so now it's like, oh, we've got a much more
complete picture and there mightbe other metrics that start
covering eventually down theline of things that are like, uh
, sub maximal ultra efforts oryour ability to tolerate
variability and things.
But so far this like kind ofenergy systems based those three
(12:45):
ftp or something like it, frcor something like it, and
sprinting power and thatsprinting power.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
I've touched on it in like maybe one or two episodes,
but P-Max correct me if I'mwrong.
The definition of P-Max is thepower generated for one complete
revolution of the crank arm.
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah, it's.
Yeah, it's basically that, andso it's a little on the short
side even for some things likeum.
So using that in combinationwith, like you know, the stuff
coaches already kind of know howto do because, again, sprinting
is probably the simplest partLike, oh, did your P-max go up?
That's good.
Oh, or did you take yourexisting P-max or your existing,
(13:22):
like, sprint power and couldyou go from doing it for five
seconds to doing it for 12 or 15seconds?
That's also improvement.
But that's a pretty easy thingto assess without a new metric.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Yeah, exactly.
And so if you're using thetools like WKO5 that has those
three band members in there andthe PMAX very, very useful for
crit racers, sprinters, roadracers, mountain bike athletes
sometimes, I mean, if you'redoing fondos and gravel races
and just getting to the finishline on a lot of this stuff, p
max isn't necessarily somethingthat I use for performance.
(13:56):
However, it is important to uhlike create the full athlete
because even my 60 plus athleteswho come to me and their FTP is
pretty good.
I'll work on their anaerobicside uh, with both FRC and and
and P max, using uh, you know,sprint workouts and other stuff
to drive that up and I would say, and they get more snappy over
time probably improvesdurability and sometimes you
(14:19):
just got to go hard right andand that can raise the ship.
Meanwhile they see some bignumbers because PMAX is keep in
mind, people.
It's it's not even a one secondsort of power, it's less than
that.
So it's a big number and a lotof people get motivated when
they see a big number increase.
So that's a little bit of how Ithink about it and use it in my
(14:41):
coaching.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah, we see it a lot with like crossing disciplines
too.
I'm a bike racer so I'mrequired by law to make fun of
triathletes.
But you see, triathletes whoyou know, they they have five
watt per kilo thresholds.
They're insane athletes.
And then they want to like trysomething fun.
So they come into a cyclocrossrace and they're like off the
back and ignoring handlingskills which they may or may not
(15:02):
have, their um, uh, their.
You collect some data and yousee their FRC is just like
relatively low.
And so they're like oh, why Ihave a five watt per kilo
threshold?
And so you can like kind ofguide athletes on weaknesses,
Like, oh, we know this, We'vealways known this intuitively as
coaches and athletes.
Now we have a number that wecan like show somebody and track
(15:23):
over time and say this numberis really low, let's work on
that.
And oh, by the way, even ifyour threshold goes down a
little bit to all athletes youknow, 10 years ago that would
have been catastrophic becausethat's the only number we had
Now you can say like, okay, it'sokay to let go of a little bit
of threshold, because now yourFRC is going up, your PMAX is
going up, Something else isgetting better, and that's what
(15:44):
we cared about right now.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
So, like you don't have to panic so much about the
other number going down, yeah,no, exactly, and not to FRC.
Shame anybody.
But what's fun about that is,you know, some of those, some of
those jokes come to light whenyou've loved the numbers and all
this kind of stuff.
But but I say, on the moreserious side of things, when
I've got somebody who is a roadracer, mountain biker, a cycle
cross racer, that kind of stuffanybody outside of, like
triathlon, um, when FTP is high,with FRC that's fairly high and
(16:16):
there's this combination ofkind of high, high together,
that's a great time to race, andat various points of the season
we want high FTP or high FRChappening for various reasons,
because we're working on that,and then when it, when they come
together, that's usually a signthat we're ready to race.
Yeah, absolutely yeah.
So, cody, I'm going to juststeer the ship in a somewhat
(16:39):
different direction than we'regoing to bring it back home.
But one of the reasons I reachedout to you, um, originally,
like a month or so ago, is my,my feathers got a little ruffled
when I read an article outthere saying that critical power
and W prime is better than FTP,and so I did a letter
(17:01):
discussion at CTS to talk aboutthis.
I reached out to you and in theend I kind of decided and we
agreed, that's like.
Actually that statement is trueBecause if we just look at FTP
as the solo band member rightdoing solo acts relative to what
we'll talk about critical powerand W prime, yeah, because FTP
(17:24):
alone doesn't have the anaerobicmarker.
But if you combine it with FRC,which is that anaerobic marker,
now that's a little different.
It with FRC, which is thatanaerobic marker, now that's a
little different.
So the reason I bring this uphere is because there's a lot of
marketing out there saying thatcritical power and W prime is
better and it's different in theEuropeans and the pros are
using it.
Is that true?
What is critical power?
(17:45):
What is W prime?
Help guide our listeners intounderstanding this more and cut
through the marketing stuff.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Yeah, I'm never going to have a million social media
followers because I won't, Ican't, I'll never die on any of
those hills, yeah, yeah.
So critical power is.
And again, I can make so manyacademics angry and just like
one sentence by saying I don'tthink they're that different.
I don't think critical powerand I should say in a very
(18:12):
general sense, those two thingsdo correspond.
Critical power kind of goeswith FTP, w-prime kind of goes
with FRC, and so conceptuallythey are the same thing.
It's not like a totallydifferent methodology, it's just
how you're getting at them ispretty different.
Um, critical power, criticalpower is pretty old.
Even the concept of thatstarted coming up with.
(18:34):
Um w prime and critical power.
Some of the original ideas arealmost 100 years old.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Um and which is crazy , by the way, because it's about
how old like exercisephysiology is exactly so.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
There were some of the first ideas, like you know.
If you think about some of thefirst ideas, like you know, if
you think about what's the firstthing you would notice in
exercise?
It's that there's arelationship between duration
and intensity.
And if somebody out therehappened to be kind of math
focused, they would say, well,maybe we can just plot this.
And that's what they did.
Right, their tools at the timewere pen and paper.
And so they will say pen andpaper.
(19:09):
And so they'll say, you know,have people go run on a track or
do something as hard as theycould for a certain amount of
time, and you know, plot thatnumber, plot that pair number of
duration and pace at the time.
But you could replace it withpower now and then do it at a
different duration, do it at adifferent duration, and what you
notice is that there's a prettysmooth, pretty consistent
pattern between most people, infact between most terrestrial
mammals actually have reallysimilar relationships with that.
(19:31):
And you can see this patternwhere, above some kind of
magical I guess it gives it awaysome magical threshold there's
a given amount of work that mostindividuals can accomplish over
that once they're goinganaerobic whatever number, that
is, 20 kilojoules, 5 kilojoules,and so if you extend the
(19:54):
duration, then you can't sustainas much intensity, you can't
sustain as much power.
Or if you increase the power,that duration has to come down.
And if you basically plot a fewof those points and follow that
line down, you hit a pointwhere that number over threshold
becomes zero and because ofthat that duration becomes
infinity.
(20:14):
But we know it's not infinity.
It just happens to be where itgoes from being a pretty short
amount of time to a pretty longamount of time until other
fatigue factors start setting inand that's threshold.
So they're getting at it fromabove, mathematically, by saying
like we have this consistentpattern of intensity and
duration, where does it bottomout?
(20:35):
That's critical power.
And then ftp we talked about.
You're more testing it, justlike real world.
W prime is, and we didn't.
We talked about frc and I nevereven defined it.
W prime is that consistentamount of work that somebody can
do over threshold.
It's like a box where one sideis duration and one side is
(20:59):
intensity.
That box always has to be thesame area.
If one side gets way longer,the other side has to get lower.
Duration goes out, intensityhas to go down.
And there's this assumptionbuilt into W prime that across
this whole range where W primeand FRC are relevant, say 60
seconds out to five minutes,that that box always has to be
(21:21):
the same size, that you alwayshave the same size of battery.
It's just like the relationshipbetween power and duration.
Frc is telling you the samething but instead of say
choosing three data points to doit a lot of critical power.
W-prime tests are something likea.
I should have done moreresearch before, but they change
so much and every academic hastheir favorite test protocol for
(21:43):
W-prime.
It's like three minutes, fiveminutes and 12 minutes or
something.
You do those on different daysand plot it out.
Frc does it a little bitdifferently.
It's looking at kind of theentire duration and looking at
the shape of that and thencalculating the area under it to
say like this is the size ofyour battery.
So W prime and FRC are prettysimilar conceptually.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah, and if there's a better definition than this
for FRC, let me know.
But since we didn't define it,functional reserve capacity is
the amount of kilojoules thatyou can do in a continuous
effort before you fatigue andhave to pace down below
threshold.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Threshold is a critical part.
If people are nerds and sitdown and do the math, you'll see
like this is a pretty.
These numbers don't make anysense.
It's because it's like thatamount over threshold so yeah,
you'll hit again.
If it's 20 kilojoules, you cando 20 kilojoules of work in 60
seconds or in eight minutes overthreshold before you fatigue.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Yeah.
So for the listeners that arelike, holy crap, I'm now just
confused because of all theterms and things and whatever, I
think the summary is that thesethey are probably coming at it
from an academic standpoint, butthere it's not that different.
And so in that way, I think themy best advice is to just
understand the systems thatyou're using.
You know, or hire somebody totell you how they work and then
know how to utilize that to kindof develop performance.
(23:31):
So I don't know, cody, do youhave a favorite system?
And I know that you're comingfrom the training peak side of
things, so you can say I'mbiased because of this, or how
would you kind of differentiatebetween the two?
If a listener was like, well,that sounds pretty interesting,
maybe I want to use criticalpower in W prime.
Why would somebody want to usethat versus FTP and FRC?
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yeah, I, like I I do prefer FTP over say, critical
power, um, and for a lot oftimes it's just cause it's more
practical, like critical powerrequires you to do all those
tests and then do the math.
There's tons of onlinecalculators where you plug in
the numbers but a threshold testyou can just do.
(24:14):
Or if you have race data, itjust comes out of race data.
There's been lots of researchon critical power compared to
threshold.
It's not like nobody's botheredtesting them.
The papers I thought that wasthe best so far about it.
It showed that critical powerlet's see if I get that, I
always get it backwards.
I believe it's showed thatcritical power tends to be about
(24:34):
seven watts higher thanthreshold, and so you know, some
people might argue that'spretty important.
But the spread across both ofthem just like swallowed each
other up.
Swallowed each other up,something like 45% of people
their critical power was lowerthan their threshold and the
other 55, it was the opposite.
So it's like they're sooverlapping that just the
(24:56):
wonkiness of biology, day-to-dayvariations, all of that stuff
just gets swallowed up, sooverwhelmed how close they are.
And so I don't think like yeah,I don't think they're magic
bullets.
On the W prime side.
I also prefer FRC, mostlybecause it just happens Like I
use WKO so it just pops out LikeI always have that number and
(25:16):
something just kind of itches methe wrong way about how W prime
and this isn't to like shadeany academics still working on
it is that it doesn't seem tohave progressed a lot from the
first version.
It's all just like whack a moleof oh.
The first model was three, fiveand eight minute power tests
(25:37):
and then somebody wanted to comeup with a better one, so they
came up with a five parametermodel that uses five power tests
.
Somebody else decided that 12minutes works better than, and
so it's just like I, it doesn'tfeel like it's like even winning
that argument isn't going tomove everything forward.
Frc, at very least, just feelsa little bit more 20th century
to me because we're like lookingat a whole model, we're
(25:58):
leveraging computational powerto look at a whole model, do a
little bit more math because wehave the tools to do it and like
come up with something a littlemore sophisticated.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Yeah, and I think in that way I agree with you.
Where I'm actually reallyinterested in in love, the math
and in the research andunderstanding the critical power
and W prime and knowing thatsystem helps you to understand
some of the more complicatedlike research that comes out of
that in a very controlledenvironment.
So I can appreciate and respectthat.
(26:30):
But I think where I'm at inworking with athletes riding
their bikes outside, racing andtrying to get on the podium, I
need something that's turnkey,quick, that I can generate in a
very quick way without having todo a shit ton of math and be
able to then communicate it tothe athlete with a simple
screenshot in a, in a graph,saying hey, look, you improved
(26:53):
or we need to work on thisbecause of that.
And to me, ftp and frc doesthat yeah, exactly, and it's
like ftp and it's.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
It can be unfortunate , but I think it worked out well
this time.
Is that like that's just kindof what the industry is using
now?
So like FTP is built into yourGarmin.
So when you pull up your Garmininstruction manual the first
time you start bike racing, likeFTP will be the thing that's in
there.
Ftp is in training peaks, ftpis in other stuff, so it's kind
of whatever is just the easiestto use.
So you aren't like backingyourself out of what everybody
(27:27):
else is using, what every deviceis using.
You should do that when thereis a big difference.
But that's what I haven't seenis research showing that there
is really enough effectivedifference between the two to to
matter and and to like save youor make it easier, anything
it's, it's more practical andit's just as good yeah, yeah,
that's right, and so you knoweither those two systems.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
you need data to feed it, and more and more athletes
are using more devices wherewe're gathering more data.
So real simple to you.
I mean, why is having cleandata so important, and can you
talk about data hygiene and whatclean data means?
(28:10):
Then we'll wrap this into someof the AI and where this goes to
create these models.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Like you could almost say, frc is a high parameter
model compared to W prime, whichuses three parameters, and now
we're like tracking all thesemetrics modeled FTP, which we
could talk about FRC, pmax,using every PowerPoint.
So it's a little more, like Isaid, kind of modern and
sophisticated, but it also comesat the risk of like, well,
there's a lot more things thatcan go wrong.
So, having a a little more,like I said, kind of modern and
sophisticated, but it also comesat the risk of like, well,
there's a lot more things thatcan go wrong.
So, having a single power spikeif you have a 3000 watt power
(28:54):
spike for five seconds in a Wprime calculator, that doesn't
matter because that five secondpower isn't part of the model
model.
When you're using somethinglike WKO and a PD curve and FRC
so many acronyms is that thatfive-second power that maybe you
(29:15):
never even noticed before nowcan throw off the entire model.
So it's become a part ofcoaching, I think, is you have
to put some responsibility onthe athlete to recognize things
that are happening.
Maybe they clean up their data,maybe they make sure their
power meter is calibrated.
Maybe you coach them onchoosing a better power meter
brand.
They've all gotten a lot better.
That's the thing.
It's becoming, thankfully, lessof an issue than it was 10
(29:37):
years ago.
Power meters are getting better, but it still happens and
you've got different power meterbrands if an athlete is using.
So basically, one drop of thatdata can poison the whole.
Well, if you're using all ofthe data to try and create like
this, more complex, likeholistic picture, yeah, yeah,
that's it.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
So I think, like in that way is is you know when
you're thinking about um, youknow, the next power meter,
purchase the next wearable, thenext whatever?
Because we're measuring a shitton of stuff that we don't even
know if it's going to doanything down the road.
Right, but where this goes islike with either machine
learning or AI, and if we wantAI to give us a training program
(30:21):
, you need good, clean data todo that, and I still see a lot
of junk out there, whether it isa power meter or whether it is,
um, you know, wrist, wristbased heart rate, uh generation
or something like this.
That ain't good.
So you need to be able tounderstand how the system works,
to understand what the outputthat you're getting the other uh
(30:41):
, bad data thing that sometimesget overlooked is missing data.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Like athletes, that it's not practical for every
athlete to have a power meter onevery bike, but it's like you
should probably have a heartrate monitor every time.
You can't just like, oh, I'mgoing for a fun ride, not wear a
heart rate monitor, or I'mgoing to do workouts and not put
them in training peaks becausethey aren't important workouts
like.
So missing data is another one.
There's like, as a coach and anathlete, make sure you like, or
(31:05):
at least like, tracking thebare minimum of everything.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
You don't have like zeros and empties and long
stretches of things totallymissing yeah, yeah, no, that's,
that's it, and I mean there'sjust like so much to say about
data and it can really stress anathlete out.
Uh, I've got some ideas of whatwe talk about down the road
about this.
But, um, to kind of bring itback to the here and now is, if
(31:29):
we, if we decide that we'retaking a a data driven approach
for coaching or training orhaving the training program and
we want AI to generate thetraining program, is that going
to happen?
Is it going to take over thecoaching and endurance space in
your opinion?
And I guess, what do you haveto say in a very short way,
(31:52):
because I'm just kind of queuingeverybody up for a little
teaser for the next episode onthis, Take over the industry.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
No, take somebody's job, maybe take somebody's job,
maybe Ooh boy.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
that's a cliffhanger, Cody, I think.
I think we'll leave it rightthere for the moment, and yeah
and and this is a good one toremind everybody that this is
part one in a part two episode.
So that's it.
That's our show for today.
If you liked what you heard,folks, please share it with a
friend or a training partner,because that is the best way to
(32:30):
grow the show and make sure thatyou keep on getting awesome
advice from people like Cody andmyself on LinkedIn, um of which
you can find um those links inour show notes.
(32:51):
You can also tune back intonext week for part two of this
discussion, where Cody and Iwill talk about uh, where uh all
this data and um this industryis headed, and we'll have some
fun along the way with, uh,maybe a few insights on where
training peaks is taking thiswhole thing.
So thanks again for listeningand we'll see you back here next
week.
(33:12):
Thanks for joining us on thetime crunch cyclist podcast.
We hope you enjoyed the show.
If you want even moreactionable training advice, head
over to train rightcombackslash newsletter and
subscribe to our free weeklypublication.
Each week, you'll get in-depthtraining content that goes
beyond what we cover here on thepodcast.
That'll help you take yourtraining to the next level.
(33:33):
That's all for now.
Until next time train hard,train smart, train right.
From the team at CTS.
This is the Time Crunch Cyclistpodcast, our show dedicated to
answering your trainingquestions and providing
actionable advice to help youimprove your performance even if
you're strapped for time.
I'm your host, coach AdamPulford, and I'm one of the over
50 professional coaches whomake up the team at CTS.
In each episode, I draw on ourteam's collective knowledge,
(00:30):
other coaches and experts in thefield to provide you with the
practical ways to get the mostout of your training and
ultimately become the bestcyclist that you can be.
Now on to our show.
Now onto our show.
Is FTP dead?
(00:55):
Will AI take over the endurancecoaching world, and what's the
best system to monitor data forboth your aerobic and anaerobic
performance?
Welcome back, time Crunch fans.
I'm your host, coach AdamPulford.
We'll be unpacking answersaround these questions today,
while talking about trainingdata, which happens to be one of
my favorite subjects.
But I'll admit, I am just alowly coach and not the smartest
when it comes to all of this.
So, lucky for you, I foundsomeone who is.
(01:17):
I think the best summation ofwhat he does can be found on his
LinkedIn page, which says Icheck that complicated things
are accurate.
I figure out how complicatedthings might be useful.
I make sure complicated thingsare easy to understand and I try
to make useful complicatedthings fun.
And that comes from CodyStevenson of Training Peaks.
(01:40):
Cody, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Thanks for having me.
I'm excited to be here ofTraining Peaks.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Cody, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
Yeah, I'm excited for thisconversation.
So let's do a quick intro onyou for people who may not know
you, like I do, and that you'reliving in Boulder and doing the
whole Training Peaks and bikething.
Can you tell our audience alittle bit more about yourself
and how you came to all theknowledge that you have and the
role that you play?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah, so I grew up in Durango, colorado, and you know
, in some cases personal historymight not where you're from is
where you're from, but being inDurango pretty much means you
have to be a bike racer and alsomeans I grew up around Todd
Wells, ned Overend, howard Grotz, sepp Kuss and all of their
(02:24):
siblings, who were also reallyfast, and so it was like born
into a competitive cyclingenvironment and I'm also not the
most naturally talented athlete, and so I was.
But I was also a science andmath nerd from third grade on.
So looking for you know any,any tool or trick or way to kind
of smart my way into whateverathletic deficiency I had, so
(02:49):
always been into training withdata.
I got my first heart ratemonitor as a birthday present
when I was 16 years old, so myparents kind of knew where I was
going to um and leveraged thatto some success.
I uh wanted to be a mountainbike racer, but that was a
little bit more of a requiresnatural talent.
Went to road racing where Icould use kind of like more data
(03:09):
, more tactics, try to smart myway into it.
Um had some fun racingcollegiate road and mountain um
and track.
Got a couple of science degreesat Fort Lewis, then went to
graduate school for exercisephysiology at Colorado state
university and at that point itwas like been around, been using
training school for exercisephysiology at Colorado State
University, and at that pointI'd been using TrainingPeaks for
10 years.
At that point, as a customerknew some exercise science, was
(03:33):
okay at math, loved technology,and so there was kind of one
place I could Strava didn'texist yet.
So the one place I could workin the world was TrainingPeaks
and been there ever since.
Now I'm the head of educationat TrainingPeaks.
Been there ever since.
Now I'm the head of educationat Training Peaks.
So, kind of to my LinkedIn biothat you read earlier, I'm so
you said I was smart.
I'm actually kind of dumb, so Ihave to explain things to
(03:54):
myself in really simple terms,and so that made me an okay
teacher.
So now I teach coaches andother sports scientists about
like the technology and dataside of like the endurance
sports worlds in online coursesand in-person events, which is,
I think, where we met and yeah,so now just you know living out
the, the, the downhill side ofmy racing peak, and you know
(04:19):
talking about all the stuff Iwould have talked about every
day anyway, even if I didn'twork here.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Yeah, you, you and me both, and uh, a proper, a
proper nerd, as anyone uhlistening can, can, uh can hear.
And I think too, cody, I mean,I think, like you know, for I
don't know, um, those you know,good coaches and good educators.
It's usually because we weren'tthe greatest like performers,
you know what I mean.
So we, we had to work hard tounderstand this stuff and I
(04:47):
think that, um, you know, havean educator and a coach and
everybody you know, likeyourself, to explain this, I
think, is really really helpful.
So, um yeah, for our listeners,I think you're in for a treat,
and I'm excited as well, cause Ithink I'm going to learn a lot
with that said, let's jump rightinto the main points and
questions, and that firstquestion I'm going to queue up
(05:07):
to you, cody, is the one that Iled with, which is is FTP dead?
Speaker 2 (05:15):
No, it's been reported.
Its death has been reportedseveral times over the past 10
years.
It seems like I've started tothink about it.
It's not dead, but it justjoined a band years.
It seems like, um, I've startedto think about it.
It's not dead, but it justjoined a band, like it's been a
solo act for the past 20 yearsand now it's like you know it's.
It's taken its place among agroup of things that all work
(05:35):
together, I think to to completea better picture.
So dead, no, but it's not theonly thing in town anymore.
That's a solid answer.
I've never really thought of itlike that or framed it up as
such, which is why it's so great.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Only thing in town anymore.
That's a solid answer.
I've never really thought of itlike that or framed it up as
such, which is why it's so greatthat you're on this podcast.
So remind us like what FTP isand kind of how it should be
used, and we'll think about itand it's kind of like a solitude
context and then we'll expandon what band it joined.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Yeah, so FTP, functional threshold power.
It could also be functionalthreshold pace for runners.
There's lots of functionalthresholds.
It's originally come up with byAndy Coggin so again, all of
your listeners probably knowAndy Coggin, but if you don't
read his books, go see, he waskind of one of the first guys
who came up with a lot of thisstuff and it's a translation
(06:24):
from things you do in the lab,because for decades now we've
been able to test lactatethreshold as a benchmark of
aerobic ability and progression.
But labs are complicated, hardto get into regularly, they're
not perfect, and so ftp is a wayto field test your threshold,
(06:45):
your what would be equivalent tolactate threshold, or um, mlss
or maximum lactate steady stateor obla or all the different
kind of sub protocols thatpeople have.
But it's meant to be anapproximation of those that you
can test.
Anybody can test really easilyout on the road on the trainer
(07:06):
any time of year with prettybasic equipment and then you can
use that as a benchmark to oneset your training intensities or
track its progression over timeto see if you're getting better
in a very generic kind ofaerobic sense.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Yeah, yeah, that's it .
That's it as a good summation.
And I think, too, what a lot ofpeople need to realize is is
you know, we do that 20 minutetest and take 95% of that to
estimate an FTP.
That's about where we're atright now, kind of a convoluted
history leading up to that point.
Come out to say why that's goodor why that's not good and
(07:47):
build upon it, which I think isgreat.
But we also need to understandthat a 20 minute, taking 95 of
the highest average power on a20 minute test, gets you pretty
darn close for an amateur,recreational, serious
recreational rider to create thetraining zones and like, get
after it.
Would you agree?
Speaker 2 (08:03):
yeah, absolutely, and he, yeah it's.
And maybe you have or differentcoaches can have different
things.
For a long time I was coaching,like college age, male mountain
bike racers.
So you know, they've got lotsof energy, they've got strong
anaerobic systems.
So I use 93% of 20 minute powerjust because it seemed to work
a little bit better for them.
Like that's the thing is,there's a lot of art and finger
(08:26):
in the wind with those sort ofthings.
So, as long as you'reconsistent, that's what matters.
If it's an imperfect estimationof a laboratory test, well,
that's fine.
Your goal isn't a laboratorytest, your goal is performance,
and so measure it consistentlyand keep the spirit of the test
in mind.
That's the other thing is likeunderstand what it's trying to
tell you.
Help your athletes understandwhat it's trying to tell you so
(08:48):
they don't try to cheat it oreven accidentally cheat it.
Yeah, it's, it's.
It's a tool that is supposed tobe easy to use, not perfect.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yep, yeah, that's it, and we'll come back to the art
of coaching too, because I thinkit just that can't be lost with
all this data Right, and I'vegot some thoughts on data stuff
as we as as we roll along here.
But that art of how you applythe science is really important
with this.
So you know some of thoselistening right now that use
(09:20):
products like WK, oh five, ormaybe you've listened to
previous podcasts where I'vetalked about functional reserve
capacity, FRC.
That's tool and I think maybepart of the band that FTP has
joined.
So let's talk about maybe FRCand let's talk about the band
(09:40):
that is, is being or has beenassembled now in kind of like
this new age revolution of datatraining in science.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah, frc, I think, is you is.
You know they're all important.
I think FRC is probably the orits equivalents there are other
kind of conceptual equivalentsis the other kind of front
runner for being really usefulacross a wide range of
disciplines.
And it kind of hits that thehigher end aerobic getting into
(10:11):
the anaerobic transition zone,which is where so many important
things happen.
This is one of the downsides tousing something like FTP
totally on its own or naively isthat it's a relatively low
intensity metric for the waythat bike races are won.
It's a relatively low intensitymetric for the way that bike
races are won.
You know, road races are wonwith brakes and sprints and
(10:36):
attacks, bridging moves to getinto brakes, and mountain bike
races are typically short, hardkind of VO2 max efforts.
So FRC is a way to quantifythat, like how much juice do you
have in that range?
And like can you make thatbattery a little bit bigger?
Or like are you deficient inthat rain?
How quickly can it recover?
Speaker 1 (10:57):
and so that's, yeah, I'd say that's the other kind of
co-front runner for importantmetrics yeah, that would totally
agree with that, and I do thinkthat you know taking a step up
from the you know recreational,to the serious recreational, or
you know racer, that kind ofstuff is adding in you know
another metric or tool.
In that way, so you have FTP,which is high aerobic, frc,
(11:19):
which is high anaerobic, andhaving a coach or a self coached
athlete kind of playing withthose two or monitoring those
two aspects for performance is agreat way to do it.
Is there any buddy else in theband that you want to mention
right now, before we move on toa different system that plays
off of these two?
Speaker 2 (11:39):
things.
The other one, just to throw itout, is PMAX.
I think it's gotten a lot lessattention because it's really
simple, there's a lot lessnuance to it.
It's basically your ability tosprint.
It's more interchangeable withFRC.
We're talking about this widerange of durations it could be
from 60 seconds out to fiveminutes and how does that
duration intensity balance?
(12:00):
Sprinting is kind of justsprinting.
If your 12-second peak powergets better, you became a better
sprinter.
Pmax and that are prettyinterchangeable, and so it kind
of makes sense too from ascience realm is that we have
three energy systems.
One has two branches, and sonow we have a metric for each
energy system FTP for aerobic,frc for kind of that glycolytic
(12:22):
VO2 max, transitional realm, andthen PMax for like phosphogenic
sprinting, and so now it's like, oh, we've got a much more
complete picture and there mightbe other metrics that start
covering eventually down theline of things that are like, uh
, sub maximal ultra efforts oryour ability to tolerate
variability and things.
But so far this like kind ofenergy systems based those three
(12:45):
ftp or something like it, frcor something like it, and
sprinting power and thatsprinting power.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
I've touched on it in like maybe one or two episodes,
but P-Max correct me if I'mwrong.
The definition of P-Max is thepower generated for one complete
revolution of the crank arm.
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah, it's.
Yeah, it's basically that, andso it's a little on the short
side even for some things likeum.
So using that in combinationwith, like you know, the stuff
coaches already kind of know howto do because, again, sprinting
is probably the simplest partLike, oh, did your P-max go up?
That's good.
Oh, or did you take yourexisting P-max or your existing,
(13:22):
like, sprint power and couldyou go from doing it for five
seconds to doing it for 12 or 15seconds?
That's also improvement.
But that's a pretty easy thingto assess without a new metric.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Yeah, exactly.
And so if you're using thetools like WKO5 that has those
three band members in there andthe PMAX very, very useful for
crit racers, sprinters, roadracers, mountain bike athletes
sometimes, I mean, if you'redoing fondos and gravel races
and just getting to the finishline on a lot of this stuff, p
max isn't necessarily somethingthat I use for performance.
(13:56):
However, it is important to uhlike create the full athlete
because even my 60 plus athleteswho come to me and their FTP is
pretty good.
I'll work on their anaerobicside uh, with both FRC and and
and P max, using uh, you know,sprint workouts and other stuff
to drive that up and I would say, and they get more snappy over
time probably improvesdurability and sometimes you
(14:19):
just got to go hard right andand that can raise the ship.
Meanwhile they see some bignumbers because PMAX is keep in
mind, people.
It's it's not even a one secondsort of power, it's less than
that.
So it's a big number and a lotof people get motivated when
they see a big number increase.
So that's a little bit of how Ithink about it and use it in my
(14:41):
coaching.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah, we see it a lot with like crossing disciplines
too.
I'm a bike racer so I'mrequired by law to make fun of
triathletes.
But you see, triathletes whoyou know, they they have five
watt per kilo thresholds.
They're insane athletes.
And then they want to like trysomething fun.
So they come into a cyclocrossrace and they're like off the
back and ignoring handlingskills which they may or may not
(15:02):
have, their um, uh, their.
You collect some data and yousee their FRC is just like
relatively low.
And so they're like oh, why Ihave a five watt per kilo
threshold?
And so you can like kind ofguide athletes on weaknesses,
Like, oh, we know this, We'vealways known this intuitively as
coaches and athletes.
Now we have a number that wecan like show somebody and track
(15:23):
over time and say this numberis really low, let's work on
that.
And oh, by the way, even ifyour threshold goes down a
little bit to all athletes youknow, 10 years ago that would
have been catastrophic becausethat's the only number we had
Now you can say like, okay, it'sokay to let go of a little bit
of threshold, because now yourFRC is going up, your PMAX is
going up, Something else isgetting better, and that's what
(15:44):
we cared about right now.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
So, like you don't have to panic so much about the
other number going down, yeah,no, exactly, and not to FRC.
Shame anybody.
But what's fun about that is,you know, some of those, some of
those jokes come to light whenyou've loved the numbers and all
this kind of stuff.
But but I say, on the moreserious side of things, when
I've got somebody who is a roadracer, mountain biker, a cycle
cross racer, that kind of stuffanybody outside of, like
triathlon, um, when FTP is high,with FRC that's fairly high and
(16:16):
there's this combination ofkind of high, high together,
that's a great time to race, andat various points of the season
we want high FTP or high FRChappening for various reasons,
because we're working on that,and then when it, when they come
together, that's usually a signthat we're ready to race.
Yeah, absolutely yeah.
So, cody, I'm going to juststeer the ship in a somewhat
(16:39):
different direction than we'regoing to bring it back home.
But one of the reasons I reachedout to you, um, originally,
like a month or so ago, is my,my feathers got a little ruffled
when I read an article outthere saying that critical power
and W prime is better than FTP,and so I did a letter
(17:01):
discussion at CTS to talk aboutthis.
I reached out to you and in theend I kind of decided and we
agreed, that's like.
Actually that statement is trueBecause if we just look at FTP
as the solo band member rightdoing solo acts relative to what
we'll talk about critical powerand W prime, yeah, because FTP
(17:24):
alone doesn't have the anaerobicmarker.
But if you combine it with FRC,which is that anaerobic marker,
now that's a little different.
It with FRC, which is thatanaerobic marker, now that's a
little different.
So the reason I bring this uphere is because there's a lot of
marketing out there saying thatcritical power and W prime is
better and it's different in theEuropeans and the pros are
using it.
Is that true?
What is critical power?
(17:45):
What is W prime?
Help guide our listeners intounderstanding this more and cut
through the marketing stuff.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Yeah, I'm never going to have a million social media
followers because I won't, Ican't, I'll never die on any of
those hills, yeah, yeah.
So critical power is.
And again, I can make so manyacademics angry and just like
one sentence by saying I don'tthink they're that different.
I don't think critical powerand I should say in a very
(18:12):
general sense, those two thingsdo correspond.
Critical power kind of goeswith FTP, w-prime kind of goes
with FRC, and so conceptuallythey are the same thing.
It's not like a totallydifferent methodology, it's just
how you're getting at them ispretty different.
Um, critical power, criticalpower is pretty old.
Even the concept of thatstarted coming up with.
(18:34):
Um w prime and critical power.
Some of the original ideas arealmost 100 years old.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Um and which is crazy , by the way, because it's about
how old like exercisephysiology is exactly so.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
There were some of the first ideas, like you know.
If you think about some of thefirst ideas, like you know, if
you think about what's the firstthing you would notice in
exercise?
It's that there's arelationship between duration
and intensity.
And if somebody out therehappened to be kind of math
focused, they would say, well,maybe we can just plot this.
And that's what they did.
Right, their tools at the timewere pen and paper.
And so they will say pen andpaper.
(19:09):
And so they'll say, you know,have people go run on a track or
do something as hard as theycould for a certain amount of
time, and you know, plot thatnumber, plot that pair number of
duration and pace at the time.
But you could replace it withpower now and then do it at a
different duration, do it at adifferent duration, and what you
notice is that there's a prettysmooth, pretty consistent
pattern between most people, infact between most terrestrial
mammals actually have reallysimilar relationships with that.
(19:31):
And you can see this patternwhere, above some kind of
magical I guess it gives it awaysome magical threshold there's
a given amount of work that mostindividuals can accomplish over
that once they're goinganaerobic whatever number, that
is, 20 kilojoules, 5 kilojoules,and so if you extend the
(19:54):
duration, then you can't sustainas much intensity, you can't
sustain as much power.
Or if you increase the power,that duration has to come down.
And if you basically plot a fewof those points and follow that
line down, you hit a pointwhere that number over threshold
becomes zero and because ofthat that duration becomes
infinity.
(20:14):
But we know it's not infinity.
It just happens to be where itgoes from being a pretty short
amount of time to a pretty longamount of time until other
fatigue factors start setting inand that's threshold.
So they're getting at it fromabove, mathematically, by saying
like we have this consistentpattern of intensity and
duration, where does it bottomout?
(20:35):
That's critical power.
And then ftp we talked about.
You're more testing it, justlike real world.
W prime is, and we didn't.
We talked about frc and I nevereven defined it.
W prime is that consistentamount of work that somebody can
do over threshold.
It's like a box where one sideis duration and one side is
(20:59):
intensity.
That box always has to be thesame area.
If one side gets way longer,the other side has to get lower.
Duration goes out, intensityhas to go down.
And there's this assumptionbuilt into W prime that across
this whole range where W primeand FRC are relevant, say 60
seconds out to five minutes,that that box always has to be
(21:21):
the same size, that you alwayshave the same size of battery.
It's just like the relationshipbetween power and duration.
Frc is telling you the samething but instead of say
choosing three data points to doit a lot of critical power.
W-prime tests are something likea.
I should have done moreresearch before, but they change
so much and every academic hastheir favorite test protocol for
(21:43):
W-prime.
It's like three minutes, fiveminutes and 12 minutes or
something.
You do those on different daysand plot it out.
Frc does it a little bitdifferently.
It's looking at kind of theentire duration and looking at
the shape of that and thencalculating the area under it to
say like this is the size ofyour battery.
So W prime and FRC are prettysimilar conceptually.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah, and if there's a better definition than this
for FRC, let me know.
But since we didn't define it,functional reserve capacity is
the amount of kilojoules thatyou can do in a continuous
effort before you fatigue andhave to pace down below
threshold.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Threshold is a critical part.
If people are nerds and sitdown and do the math, you'll see
like this is a pretty.
These numbers don't make anysense.
It's because it's like thatamount over threshold so yeah,
you'll hit again.
If it's 20 kilojoules, you cando 20 kilojoules of work in 60
seconds or in eight minutes overthreshold before you fatigue.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Yeah.
So for the listeners that arelike, holy crap, I'm now just
confused because of all theterms and things and whatever, I
think the summary is that thesethey are probably coming at it
from an academic standpoint, butthere it's not that different.
And so in that way, I think themy best advice is to just
understand the systems thatyou're using.
You know, or hire somebody totell you how they work and then
know how to utilize that to kindof develop performance.
(23:31):
So I don't know, cody, do youhave a favorite system?
And I know that you're comingfrom the training peak side of
things, so you can say I'mbiased because of this, or how
would you kind of differentiatebetween the two?
If a listener was like, well,that sounds pretty interesting,
maybe I want to use criticalpower in W prime.
Why would somebody want to usethat versus FTP and FRC?
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yeah, I, like I I do prefer FTP over say, critical
power, um, and for a lot oftimes it's just cause it's more
practical, like critical powerrequires you to do all those
tests and then do the math.
There's tons of onlinecalculators where you plug in
the numbers but a threshold testyou can just do.
(24:14):
Or if you have race data, itjust comes out of race data.
There's been lots of researchon critical power compared to
threshold.
It's not like nobody's botheredtesting them.
The papers I thought that wasthe best so far about it.
It showed that critical powerlet's see if I get that, I
always get it backwards.
I believe it's showed thatcritical power tends to be about
(24:34):
seven watts higher thanthreshold, and so you know, some
people might argue that'spretty important.
But the spread across both ofthem just like swallowed each
other up.
Swallowed each other up,something like 45% of people
their critical power was lowerthan their threshold and the
other 55, it was the opposite.
So it's like they're sooverlapping that just the
(24:56):
wonkiness of biology, day-to-dayvariations, all of that stuff
just gets swallowed up, sooverwhelmed how close they are.
And so I don't think like yeah,I don't think they're magic
bullets.
On the W prime side.
I also prefer FRC, mostlybecause it just happens Like I
use WKO so it just pops out LikeI always have that number and
(25:16):
something just kind of itches methe wrong way about how W prime
and this isn't to like shadeany academics still working on
it is that it doesn't seem tohave progressed a lot from the
first version.
It's all just like whack a moleof oh.
The first model was three, fiveand eight minute power tests
(25:37):
and then somebody wanted to comeup with a better one, so they
came up with a five parametermodel that uses five power tests
.
Somebody else decided that 12minutes works better than, and
so it's just like I, it doesn'tfeel like it's like even winning
that argument isn't going tomove everything forward.
Frc, at very least, just feelsa little bit more 20th century
to me because we're like lookingat a whole model, we're
(25:58):
leveraging computational powerto look at a whole model, do a
little bit more math because wehave the tools to do it and like
come up with something a littlemore sophisticated.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Yeah, and I think in that way I agree with you.
Where I'm actually reallyinterested in in love, the math
and in the research andunderstanding the critical power
and W prime and knowing thatsystem helps you to understand
some of the more complicatedlike research that comes out of
that in a very controlledenvironment.
So I can appreciate and respectthat.
(26:30):
But I think where I'm at inworking with athletes riding
their bikes outside, racing andtrying to get on the podium, I
need something that's turnkey,quick, that I can generate in a
very quick way without having todo a shit ton of math and be
able to then communicate it tothe athlete with a simple
screenshot in a, in a graph,saying hey, look, you improved
(26:53):
or we need to work on thisbecause of that.
And to me, ftp and frc doesthat yeah, exactly, and it's
like ftp and it's.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
It can be unfortunate , but I think it worked out well
this time.
Is that like that's just kindof what the industry is using
now?
So like FTP is built into yourGarmin.
So when you pull up your Garmininstruction manual the first
time you start bike racing, likeFTP will be the thing that's in
there.
Ftp is in training peaks, ftpis in other stuff, so it's kind
of whatever is just the easiestto use.
So you aren't like backingyourself out of what everybody
(27:27):
else is using, what every deviceis using.
You should do that when thereis a big difference.
But that's what I haven't seenis research showing that there
is really enough effectivedifference between the two to to
matter and and to like save youor make it easier, anything
it's, it's more practical andit's just as good yeah, yeah,
that's right, and so you knoweither those two systems.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
you need data to feed it, and more and more athletes
are using more devices wherewe're gathering more data.
So real simple to you.
I mean, why is having cleandata so important, and can you
talk about data hygiene and whatclean data means?
(28:10):
Then we'll wrap this into someof the AI and where this goes to
create these models.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Like you could almost say, frc is a high parameter
model compared to W prime, whichuses three parameters, and now
we're like tracking all thesemetrics modeled FTP, which we
could talk about FRC, pmax,using every PowerPoint.
So it's a little more, like Isaid, kind of modern and
sophisticated, but it also comesat the risk of like, well,
there's a lot more things thatcan go wrong.
So, having a a little more,like I said, kind of modern and
sophisticated, but it also comesat the risk of like, well,
there's a lot more things thatcan go wrong.
So, having a single power spikeif you have a 3000 watt power
(28:54):
spike for five seconds in a Wprime calculator, that doesn't
matter because that five secondpower isn't part of the model
model.
When you're using somethinglike WKO and a PD curve and FRC
so many acronyms is that thatfive-second power that maybe you
(29:15):
never even noticed before nowcan throw off the entire model.
So it's become a part ofcoaching, I think, is you have
to put some responsibility onthe athlete to recognize things
that are happening.
Maybe they clean up their data,maybe they make sure their
power meter is calibrated.
Maybe you coach them onchoosing a better power meter
brand.
They've all gotten a lot better.
That's the thing.
It's becoming, thankfully, lessof an issue than it was 10
(29:37):
years ago.
Power meters are getting better, but it still happens and
you've got different power meterbrands if an athlete is using.
So basically, one drop of thatdata can poison the whole.
Well, if you're using all ofthe data to try and create like
this, more complex, likeholistic picture, yeah, yeah,
that's it.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
So I think, like in that way is is you know when
you're thinking about um, youknow, the next power meter,
purchase the next wearable, thenext whatever?
Because we're measuring a shitton of stuff that we don't even
know if it's going to doanything down the road.
Right, but where this goes islike with either machine
learning or AI, and if we wantAI to give us a training program
(30:21):
, you need good, clean data todo that, and I still see a lot
of junk out there, whether it isa power meter or whether it is,
um, you know, wrist, wristbased heart rate, uh generation
or something like this.
That ain't good.
So you need to be able tounderstand how the system works,
to understand what the outputthat you're getting the other uh
(30:41):
, bad data thing that sometimesget overlooked is missing data.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Like athletes, that it's not practical for every
athlete to have a power meter onevery bike, but it's like you
should probably have a heartrate monitor every time.
You can't just like, oh, I'mgoing for a fun ride, not wear a
heart rate monitor, or I'mgoing to do workouts and not put
them in training peaks becausethey aren't important workouts
like.
So missing data is another one.
There's like, as a coach and anathlete, make sure you like, or
(31:05):
at least like, tracking thebare minimum of everything.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
You don't have like zeros and empties and long
stretches of things totallymissing yeah, yeah, no, that's,
that's it, and I mean there'sjust like so much to say about
data and it can really stress anathlete out.
Uh, I've got some ideas of whatwe talk about down the road
about this.
But, um, to kind of bring itback to the here and now is, if
(31:29):
we, if we decide that we'retaking a a data driven approach
for coaching or training orhaving the training program and
we want AI to generate thetraining program, is that going
to happen?
Is it going to take over thecoaching and endurance space in
your opinion?
And I guess, what do you haveto say in a very short way,
(31:52):
because I'm just kind of queuingeverybody up for a little
teaser for the next episode onthis, Take over the industry.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
No, take somebody's job, maybe take somebody's job,
maybe Ooh boy.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
that's a cliffhanger, Cody, I think.
I think we'll leave it rightthere for the moment, and yeah
and and this is a good one toremind everybody that this is
part one in a part two episode.
So that's it.
That's our show for today.
If you liked what you heard,folks, please share it with a
friend or a training partner,because that is the best way to
(32:30):
grow the show and make sure thatyou keep on getting awesome
advice from people like Cody andmyself on LinkedIn, um of which
you can find um those links inour show notes.
(32:51):
You can also tune back intonext week for part two of this
discussion, where Cody and Iwill talk about uh, where uh all
this data and um this industryis headed, and we'll have some
fun along the way with, uh,maybe a few insights on where
training peaks is taking thiswhole thing.
So thanks again for listeningand we'll see you back here next
week.
(33:12):
Thanks for joining us on thetime crunch cyclist podcast.
We hope you enjoyed the show.
If you want even moreactionable training advice, head
over to train rightcombackslash newsletter and
subscribe to our free weeklypublication.
Each week, you'll get in-depthtraining content that goes
beyond what we cover here on thepodcast.
That'll help you take yourtraining to the next level.
(33:33):
That's all for now.
Until next time train hard,train smart, train right.
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