Cycle Power
Training Zones Calculator
The Functional Threshold Power Test, or FTP, is a test to determine your lactate threshold on the bike measured in Watts and/or Heart Rate. Your threshold is the point at which under intense exercise stress, your body begins producing lactate faster the body can process which results in a plateau and then decline. By testing this threshold and coming out with a value which can reflect an athlete’s endurance performance expectations.
The higher your FTP – The harder and longer you can go for!
We test using the Allen/Coogan 20-minute test (Authors of Training and Racing with a Power Meter. Athletes perform 20 minutes all-out effort after a good warm up and then calculate 95% of the result. This provides a relatively accurate value of what your result would have been of a full hour test (which is generally how testing was done back in the day)!
The 7 Power zones according to Coggan
The Power Zones defined by Andrew Coggan in “Training and racing with a power meter” are seven and represent seven ranges of medium-power values. According to the famous American physiologist, these seven levels correspond to the full range of a cyclist’s physiological responses during a race or a training session. Every level represents a specific training function: Active Recovery, Endurance, Tempo, Threshold, Vo2Max, Anaerobic Capacity and Neuromuscular Power.
Bike Calculator Explained
Calculating your Functional Threshold Power (FTP) will really help you ensure you are getting the most out of your bike training. Calculating your FTP involves conducting a single 20-minute maximum effort on the bike. Record your average power and heart rate for the 20-minute effort and then multiply each of them by 0.95. Then enter those results into the boxes below and hit calculate! Your bike training zones will be displayed, and you can really now start to get focussed!
You can now enter these values into your Tridot Threshold History screen.
Find help for doing this here.
Wearable Zones
It’s a good idea to match up your zones in any other of your wearables; Wahoo, Garmin, Polar; Fitbit, Apple to mirror the same figures.
Virtual Cycling Platforms Zones
Don’t forget of you are using one, such as WahooRGT, Zwift, BEKOOL, Rouvy, FULGAZ, MyWhoosh, Kino Map, Trainer Road etc you need to update your FTP there too!