This year’s fitness goal is to reach a Functional Threshold Power (FTP) of 4 watts per kg. To be a fast cyclist, you need to be strong and my approach is taken from an interview with six times gold medal track sprint cyclist Jason Kenny; get strong, convert that strength into power, and then build the stamina to hold this power for longer. I have a decent level of cardiovascular fitness from my 2000 mile challenge last year and I want to try and reach the goal as quickly and as smartly as possible so getting strong first is the goal.

Phase 1: get strong

Jason Kenny has a one-rep max back squat of 180kg, between 2 and 2.5 times his bodyweight. Chris Hoy had a back squat max of around two times his bodyweight and a deadlift two and a half times his bodyweight. These numbers are for the best sprint track cyclists to have ever lived, focusing on events lasting up to 60 seconds. A two-times bodyweight squat and a two and a half times bodyweight deadlift represent the absolute maximum leg strength level needed to where strength is no longer an issue.

I am interested in my FTP or the power on a bike that I can hold for an hour. A two times bodyweight squat would be nice but is a serious level of strength that takes a long time to build; getting there would probably not represent the best use of my time. Any cycling event over 4 km (the record is just over four minutes) is classified as an endurance event and should require a lower level of absolute strength that the shorter events of the sprinters. I am also aiming for a decent amateur level rather than a world-class one, so what level of absolute strength represents a reasonable target?

Trainer road has strength standards for advanced cyclists they say represent the point at which the effort and extra muscle mass required to get stronger is not worth the benefit delivered:

Deadlift: 5 Reps 150% BW
Back Squat: 5 Reps 125% BW
Bench Press: 5 Reps 90% BW
Barbell Row: 5 Reps 90% BW
Pull/Chin-Ups: 15 Reps
Military Press: 5 Reps 55% BW
Trainer Road

Converting these numbers into a one-rep max for each exercise at my current weight of between 82 and 83 Kilograms, phase one requires a 142.5 kg deadlift and a 120kg back squat.

How I got strong

Before you read how I hit these two numbers I want to warn you that this is not the way I suggest anyone go about it. Heavy, low rep deadlifts and back squats can get you in trouble if you don’t know how to do them and you need to build up to it slowly with significant effort paid to mobility. The risk of injury is higher if you are also pushing your bike or running training. Learn to squat properly, work through the necessary progressions like goblet squats, and reduce your endurance training to avoid injury.

With that out of the way, I took a unique approach for three reasons:

I already have decent form and came to this project with reasonable strength levels from training under Jon Albon’s Coaching.
I have had strength levels higher than the target lifts in previous years (at a higher body weight) when I spent some time focusing on Olympic lifting.
I was using strength programs that I had carried out before and knew I could handle- I also know the difference between pain and injury.

If you want to get better at something you should do it every day. I already had a 142.5 kg deadlift from my half-marathon training so I just had to maintain this and get my squat max up. So I squatted heavy every day, taking advantage of working from home and sitting down all day. On the first day, I reached a max of 90kg before my legs started to shake in shock and defiance, giving me a baseline. I will talk about this programme in detail in another post but the basic layout is as follows:

I squatted every afternoon at some point between 16:00 and 18:00 working up to a heavy single rep.
I trained on the bike in the mornings five days per week with Monday and Friday off.
My bike programme included weights on Tuesday and Friday so I used these two sessions as my ‘heavy’ days with back squats, deadlifts, and heavy kettlebell swings.
On the other days, I worked up to a heavy single on my front squat as these are slightly lighter due to being limited by upper back strength.
Monday was a rest day so I did lighter sets of front squats.

I started this programme on the 29th of December and hit my 120kg max on the 18th of February. The last two weeks of this programme included working up to a 115kg back squat on Tuesdays and Friday and a 100kg Front squat on the other days.

Building consistency and volume on the bike

I needed a bike programme that would focus on power rather than longer efforts in keeping with my strength, power, then endurance strategy. I found a five-month Individual Pursuit (the 4km track event mentioned above) programme on Training Peaks by Phil Kilpatrick, the head coach of my local track in Derby. The first seven weeks of the programme focused on zone three ‘tempo’ rides with lots of 30-second spikes of power. After seven weeks in transitioned to weekly Tuesday night racing, giving me a nice amount of time to hit my strength target.

In hindsight, choosing an advanced programme as an intermediate rider (detraining intermediate rider) might not have been the fastest route to progress but it did not have a power test after the first day so I decided that if I waited till my first race to get a second power test then I could handle it. I only missed three sessions in the seven weeks so I think it was not the worst decision but there were a few Wednesday morning 7 am starts that I felt nervous about getting on the bike after looking at the training session planned and feeling my legs from the heavy squats and interval bike session the day before.

I committed to the five sessions lasting between 6-8 hour per week and built up my consistency and volume after my absence from the bike for the last 6 months. All the sessions were completed on my WattBike Atom using Zwift linked to Training peaks to automatically load that day’s workout. I aimed to wake up at 6 am each day and be on the bike for 7 am ready for the one and a half hour rides but some days these were moved to lunchtime if I slept in or if my legs were a little sore and I needed a few hours to wake them up.

On the whole, the mix of heavy squats and tempo rides worked well. There is something about training twice per day that makes your legs less sore and the squats and peddling seemed to help the other recover. The last time I did the squat everyday programme I remember hating stairs but I was saved this time around. Phase 1 complete, I now have the strength for a 4 W/kg FTP.

Phase 2: Convert this strength to power

Phase two is all about the bike. Tuesday evenings are now for Zwift racing and squatting is limited to twice per week, Tuesdays and Fridays. As I am aiming for power, and with the velodrome closed, I guess the next best thing is Crit racing. Check back on Tuesday evening for an update. For squats, I am going to use Chris Hoys suggested workout of using a weight you can lift ten times (90kg) and doing eight reps, adding 5% (95kg) to the bar and doing six rep, then adding another 5% (100kg) and doing 4 reps. I will stick to two sets of five reps with the deadlift and I have just got a 40kg kettlebell to continue with Andy Bolton’s swing ladder.

Let me know on Twitter if you are working towards increasing your FTP and what you find works.

My challenge to become a better endurance athlete by running 2000 miles in a year is now complete. I want to take what I have learned and apply it to road cycling. I am not a beginner on a bike and based on my two Ironman 70.3 performances, I am more suited to cycling than I am running, but running has taken over this year, and I have never been a great cyclist. My choice of an arbitrary annual distance as a performance goal was to produce consistency in my training; I want to take this consistency and use it to achieve an outcome goal and get fast.

So, I have an incomplete problem: I want to get fast on the bike. But what is fast, and how can I measure it to create a plan to get there?

In planning and policy, a wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. It refers to an idea or problem that cannot be fixed, where there is no single solution to the problem; and “wicked” denotes resistance to resolution, rather than evil. Another definition is “a problem whose social complexity means that it has no determinable stopping point”. Moreover, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems.
Wikipedia

An effective way of addressing an incomplete problem is to use the principles of Problem-Based Learning (PBL). PBL is a team-based teaching practice, so I will create a team using friends who ride bikes or have useful knowledge for collaborative research. Inspired by the Change through challenge course, I will time-bound this project to a common university module’s size of 200 hours (20 credits) and give myself five months. Problem-Based Learning begins with trigger material, such as a case study or journal article and has four steps:

Step 1: Define the problem
Step 2: Draw up the plan
Step 3: Implement the plan
Step 4: Evaluate the plan

Trigger material

The following is an article by Dr Andrew Coggan, the co-author and scientist behind the book Training and Racing with a Power Meter. The post defines fast based on a scientific approach to an average joe’s natural potential.

If the average Joe works their ass off how far can they get?: 3.9 W/kg
The average healthy but sedentary, college-aged male has a VO2max of approximately 45 mL/min/kg. However, I have seen it argued based on studies of, e.g., aboriginal tribes (and there are population data from Europe as well as military inductees here in the US to support the conclusion) that the “default” VO2max of the average human male is closer to 50 mL/min/kg, and the only way to get below this is to assume a couch-potato lifestyle, gain excess weight, etc. (and/or grow old, of course). So, I’ll go with that latter number.
With short-term training, VO2max increases by 15-25% on average, with another perhaps 5-10% possible (on average, anyway) with more prolonged and/or intense training. That gives a total increase of 20-35%, so I’ll go with 30% just for argument’s sake.
So, if VO2max is, on average, 50 mL/min/kg and increases by, on average, 30%, that means that the average Joe ought to be able to raise their VO2max to about 65 mL/min/kg with training. Indeed, there are many, many, many, MANY amateur endurance athletes with VO2max values of around that number (not to mention the fact that athletes in team sports with an endurance component – e.g., soccer – often have a VO2max of around 60 mL/min/kg, something that is also true in other sports that you don’t normally consider to be of an endurance nature, e.g., downhill skiing or motocross – i.e., motorcycle – racing).
The question then becomes, how high might functional threshold power fall as a percentage of VO2max (again, on average), and what does this translate to in terms of a power output? The answer to the former is about 80% (LT, on average, being about 75% of VO2max in trained cyclists), which means that in terms of O2 consumption, a functional threshold power corresponding to a VO2 of 65 mL/min/kg * 0.80 = 52 mL/min/kg could be considered average. If you then assume an average cycling economy of 0.075 W/min/kg per mL/min/kg, this equates to… 3.9 W/kg.
Dr Andrew Coggan

Defining terms

V02Max or maximum oxygen uptake is the oxygen uptake attained during maximal exercise intensity that could not be increased despite further increases in exercise workload, thereby defining the limits of the cardiorespiratory system
Hill and Lupton (1923)

Functional Threshold Power (FTP) represents your ability to sustain the highest possible power output over 45 to 60 minutes, depending on whether you’re a trained athlete or not. As a result 95% of the 20 minute average power is used to determine FTP.
Wattbike

The cycling economy (CE, W·LO2 –1·min–1) was defined as the ratio of the power output to the oxygen consumption (LO2·min–1)
Faria et al. (2005)

Simply put, your watts per kilo (w/kg) is your power to weight ratio. Watts per Kilo is your max power output, in watts, divided by your weight in kilos. For example, someone with a weight or mass of 80kg with a sustainable power output of 280 watts will have a power to weight ratio of 3.5 watts per kilo (3.5W/kg).
Wattbike

Based on the trigger material, to achieve ‘fast’ as considered possible by an average person, I need to maximise my V02Max, maximise the percentage of my V02Max I can hold for 40-60 minutes, maximise the percentage of that power I can translate to moving a bike forward, all while minimise my bodyweight.

The Challenge

Over the next five months, I will spend 200 hours getting to a cycling Functional Threshold Power (FTP) of 4 W/kg.

This is an ambitious goal, and even with my endurance and cycling background, it is likely to be a far stretch within the timeframe I have set myself. But the idea is to create a mark that requires more than just following a training plan but a lifestyle shift and total commitment. Plus, if it were easy, it would not be fun. If you have ideas on achieving this challenge or want to join in, get in touch on Twitter.

Tag: FTP

Project 4 W/kg: Strength Phase Complete