[Closed] Zwift ftp and ftp tests

In theory you should be able to sustain it for an hour but in reality very few people can. You will also get used to suffering more and therefore sustaining it at that level for a long time. You can also do a 20 min FTP test which is normally 95% of your 20 min max power. From above that would put it at around 246W which wouldn't be unreasonable.

Its the basis for setting training zones and doesn't necessarily translate.

In theory yes it should be the power you can hold for an hour. But only if you have trained to ride consistently to ride at that power for an hour. A ramp test is nothing like that.

I get different results on the ramp Vs 20min effort. I'm more experienced at 20minute efforts as it is pretty much a 10m TT.

Power curve might be more useful as an indicator. Tells you where your strengths and weaknesses are.

I've not done a ramp test for months, but when I did them, the FTP estimate they gave me based off 75% of my best 1min is higher than I've ever got using 95% of best 20min effort.
One of my goals is to try and get an FTP estimate of 300+ using 95% of 20mins for the first time, but once upon a time I'd be disappointed if I wasn't attempting the 400W ramp test interval,

For a 20min effort, I usually use the frequent Tempus Fugit TTs, which take longer than 20mins to complete but I try to negative split them and see what the best 20mins was.

95% of my best 20mins has pretty much always been higher than my best 60mins. In last night's STW Series opener my best 20mins was ~285 (so ~271), while my 60mins including ~8mins cooldown was ~252 (my best since start of November, something I've rarely managed to get near since Covid in March 2020).

However, I've rarely done sustained efforts of 40mins+, in Zwift I usually do TTs and short races while outdoors my all-out efforts are usually on cat4 or the very odd cat3 hill that take 5-20mins to climb up.

Usually 95% of 20min figures work for ERG workouts on the turbo, but I really struggle when the Zwift ones include something like several 450+ short busts after a warmup, which is one of many excuses as to why my race ability as a Zwiftpower B rider is far worse than as a TTer. 😆

Its just a benchmark to train against. Dont read too much into it.

From personal experience...

When I'm on form, I can hold zwift's ftp give our take for an hour or so, I wouldn't want to be doing it much longer than that - but it is a heads down steady TT type effort and my "curve" really isn't, I spend the whole hour watching my current and avg wattage making sure I stay in the 95-105% range and trying never to be more than 5w adrift from average. It's barely even type 2 fun.

In a race or normal ride my chances of holding ftp are nil, the surges, the sitting in and so on make averaging ftp nearly impossible. Even if I could ride it at that effort I'd be unlikely to want to as finding a group where that's the average effort to stay in would see me spat out as soon as anyone kicked hard or I needed to regroup. (pretty much this is how my handful of cat a races went where I was only just holding on at my top end where I was bare minimum to make A.)

I have a question on the ramp test - are you literally supposed to keep going to the end of the test, even after the point where you are no longer able to hold the required power?

I did one a week or so ago & it got to the point where I could not generate the power requested & Zwift was saying ^^MORE POWER^^ in that 'encouraging' way it does. I literally couldn't pedal any harder & my power was slowly dropping, as was my cadence because the resistance was so high. I kept it up for another minute or so, but then stopped the test.
At this point I was sucking in air like a Henry, gasping, making deathly grunts & sweating like a pig, so I don't think there wasn't a lot left. But should I have kept going to the end of the test struggling to make the required power as the resistance ramped up?
Or do you just end the test like I did? Please don't say I've done it wrong!! 🙂

i think that literally IS what the ramp test is meant to do!!!

DrP

End the ramp test when you can no longer maintain ~70rpm while remaining seated.

Yeh just keep going until either your legs or your lungs cant do it anymore! Sounds like you squeezed out all you could stumpy. I don't know the exact protocol but it will then calculate your FTP as something like 75% of your best 1 minute power (some ramp tests modify the 75% formula apparently)

The ramp test is meant to be to the death, I think.

I think this varies a lot by person. I have a friend who can hold similar power to me for 20 mins, but he can keep going at the same rate for an hour. Conversely, I can double the power for a minute or so and triple it in a burst, where he can only beat it by about 10% flat out.

I'm not sure there *is* an end to a ramp test. It will eventually just dump you out as you're not able to make the numbers it needs.

I’m more experienced at 20minute efforts as it is pretty much the first 8 miles of a 10m TT.

☹

Have done both ramp and 20m recently, both within a few watts of each other and correlate nicely with WKO

Ramp test is maximal so as others have said just keep going until failure, if you're running it in ERG mode you'll fail long before you're reduced to 70rpm!

I've never ridden an hour at FTP, it's just a 'functional' number to base your zones off, you'll eventually get a feel for whether it's too high (or low)

You can't "pass" a ramp test, at some point you will give up. All tests have their weaknesses and some play to different strengths.

Your FTP is nominally your "hour power" but it actually is the power you can hold from between 40 & 75mins depending on how well trained at it you are. Within Zwift (or any other program) it's just a number to base the training intensity on.

I usually find that most testing protocols give results that need a little tweaking as you proceed in the subsequent training plan, thus for me I don't do well with the ramp test and can usually bump things by 2-3% but that's with knowing what different intensities should feel like. Also most of us have weak points and strong points so minor adjustments (of the order of a couple of percent) can make the difference between struggling or failing on a workout and completing it.

Do the 20 min test to compare?

Remember it's actually 72-77% of your FTP and if you're not used to time trialing type efforts it's probably closer to 72% than 75%, so I'd take the wattage you got to on the ramp test and multiply it by 0.72 to get a number close to your real FTP (if you can handle the psychological suffering a real 60 min test entails).

I got to 475W for 14 seconds which translates to an FTP of around 320W at 86 kg which seems ballpark correct.