Custom Training zones for power/watt without FTP but % of MMP 5m

Hello,

First of all, what an amazing work! Congratulations! I didn’t see another tool like yours!
Your work is very helpfull but It could be perfect if we can choose training zones without % of FTP but with % of MMP 5m like Fred Grappe propose it. Coggan proposes zones about % of FTP and Grappe about % of MMP 5m. In France, many coaches use zones about % of MMP 5m so is it possible to have the choice in the future?
Thanks a lot for your response.
Chris

Thanks. I would love to do that at some point but I made a call early on to go with a 7 zone model based on FTP for power and its a lot of work to support others now. What do the “Fred Grappe” zones look like? I might be able to provide those as an option on the form and convert them to % of FTP for the rest of the system based on the athletes current best 5m power.

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I think Grappe’s approach is similar to what Xert has implemented, i.e. not really ‘zones’ per se as in the traditional sense, but performance based on MPA (max power available).

Although I am not qualified to assess this, I think that the fact that if you perform one hour at TP (which is not really, or not necessarily, similar to FTP), MPA will not have declined one Watt, is probably scientifically true, but I doubt I would be able to put out a max effort at MPA at that stage…

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This is worth looking into, It’s like having TRIMP HR or % of Max HR tracking. The choice would be good. Certain athletes have different Physiology so FTP modelling zones serve them less well the MMP 5min as an example.

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Thanks for your quick response!
Zones from Fred Grappe (Head of performance FDJ Groupama professional team) system are :
I1 (Recovery) : 0-50% MPA (100% of MMP 5min)
I2 (Endurance) : 50%-60% MPA
I3 (Tempo): 60%-75% MPA
I4 (Threshold) : 75%-85% MPA
I5 (MPA) : 85%-100% MPA
I6 (Lactic anaerobic) : 100%-180% MPA
I7 (Alactic anaerobic or neuromuscular) : 180%+ MPA

For me and many coachs in France, this system is more efficient and precise to calibrate work than Coggan’s for competitors who wants to increase MMP<20min. Coggan is more used for Time trialist and to work on MMP > 20min. For me, the zones from Coggan’s model are not very realistic for MMP<20 min. For example, at 151% of FTP, power is not neuromuscular but anaerobic because you can sustain it more than 15sec.
I think you cannot take a % of FTP to calculate zones because in the grappe’s model FTP can change in a range of approximately 70% MPA to 90% MPA depending on type of athlete’s training. Also, Threshold zone should be adaptable depending physiology capacity of the athlete in a range of 10% (75%-85% or 70%-80%, etc…).
I hope i answer your question and sorry for my bad english :wink:
Chris

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And isn’t it better to use MMP? (Mean Maximal Power)?

Recovery is your MMP for more than 3h
Endurance is your MMP for 2-3h
Tempo is your MPP for 1-2 hours
Threshold is your MMP for 20m-1h
Vo2Max is your MMP for 5-8m

WKO5 + probably worked similarly, but it determines the duration better.

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It’s almost the same but athletes don’t have their MMP for each duration. For example, many children of 12 y/o don’t have MMP for more than 2 hours because their rides are smaller… And many adults can’t have a MMP for more than an hour because they don’t practice 1h time trial, that’s why CP20 are used to determine approximately FTP by calculating CP20 x 0.93.

You probably don’t need intervals longer than 20m. And endurance and recovery are probably better done on HR.
But that’s just my opinion :slight_smile:

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It’s always interesting to have another point of view :wink:

Yes you do. At least if you regularly climb over 10 km mountains and/or do over 40 km time trials.

You can pace either effort using 20 minute (estimated) figures, but that won’t get you the best possible result.

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Similar to Guy Thibault’s work, right ?

it’s one of the applications that can be made with grappe model but I’m not sure duration of exercises are realistic with %MAP proposes… 100%MAP during 7’ seems impossible…

On the graph, 7 minutes intervals are at 85% MPA.

Exact! On the graphic, 7 minutes intervals are at 85% MAP but in the board it tells that maximum limit duration possible at 100% MAP is 7 minutes but in fact it’s 5 minutes :wink:

If I remember correctly… Péronnet and Thibault used maximal speed of 7 min as a surrogate of Maximal Aerobic Speed… Other references use 4 to 6 min. David Bishop group has just published a good review on methods to determine exercise intensity.

@Alex_VanLaningham My coach also prescribes intervals based on % of MMP. But once those workouts are sent to the trainerday app, they get converted to % of FTP.

Can this be added into the trainerday app?

TIA

Marek, let me try to understand this better and I will see what can be done. So when you say MMP 5m that is your best 5 minute power? I am used to MMP being mean max power but in this case it seems to be Maximum Minute power (kind of the same thing) but I am seeing reference to a 3 minute test. So 5m max power is essentially your VO2max power… This is very similar to your highest minute power in a ramp test. Let’s assume I understand that part correctly, or correct me if I am wrong.

So you have a workout in intervals and lets say it was 5 X 1 minute intervals at 300 watts in Intervals.icu and your FTP is set to 250. If your FTP is also set to 250 in our app, then this 5 X 1’ interval would still be 300 watts. So nothing changes. The problem becomes when your FTP changes your watts will be slightly wrong in both intervals and TrainerDay.

If you are doing higher intensity work it makes sense your coach is prescribing in MMP, really I could see the argument that it might be better than FTP in general depending on the types of workouts you do, and even when you do a ramp test it’s actually more of an MMP test then an FTP test. People that never do long efforts could do fine in a ramp test but terrible on an 2X20’ FTP test.

So the bottom line is, if your workouts are in intervals.icu and workout is based on FTP, even if we modified our app to work with MMP I don’t think it would help. David’s platform is obviously designed for Coaches to work with Athletes and ours is not, as well as obviously many, many, many other benefits intervals.icu brings so I don’t see how I could help solve this problem without David also doing the same thing. So that’s the bottom line and a very long way of saying it is I don’t understand how I could fix this :slight_smile: Please help me :slight_smile:

I believe that creating zones of submaximal values can generate an error when we go down to lower intensity zones, a person with a glycolytic profile those zones can be biased.
IMHO I think it works better to set zones through different physiological “milestones”, like First threshold, second threshold, MAP…, creating zones for each physiological value would really work with the unique physiology of the athlete.

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I will try my best to explain with my limited knowledge of the inner workings of the workout creator of intervals.icu.

For example, my coach will write this interval: -1m @ 104% mmp 30s (539w) 80-90rpm
trainerday app will read this as 104% of FTP which is 322w. FTP setting on intervals and trainerday is set the same.

Another example is: 60m @ z2. intervals.icu will set the range automatically between 51 and 75% of FTP. If this workout gets pushed to trainerday, this interval will not be understood. The app also does not understand targets set in watts. Only percentage of FTP.

What I am getting at is if it would be possible to have your app read workout instructions the same way intervals.icu reads them?

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Hi @_Marek_Zmazur

I’m late to the topic, cos I literally only found out about building workouts using MMP.

This is now supported via BreakAway: Indoor Training for iOS. The app will use the FTP number directly via intervals.icu sync (so, if you have say 100w set as FTP in app, it will ignore it)

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