How is eFTP calculated? And is it accurate?
thanks, but in your guys experience how accurate have you experienced eFTP to be?
I understand how it is calculated, (usually at 95% of a 20m max effort, but here at any max effort of minimum 3 minutes), and then reducing if and when training load decreases… I was on holiday recently and my load decreased but I maintained some intensity, and when I got home I was a bit sick so my power was slightly down. Then today I did a 5m interval at a good power and my eFTP has now gone back up even higher than it was before…
Overall I do think it is very accurate but am not sure about the decreasing due to load, obviously it would decrease if your load decreased over an extended period of time, maybe the time worked in here is a bit too short and not showing the correct drop
It’s an estimate based on certain criteria, eg. One all out effort above the 180s, or using the Critical Power method. It also changes daily as your body goes through the stresses thrown at it daily.
My mFTP (WKO5) is accurate enough that I don’t need to test FTP as often. I test 3 times in the 16 week base period and then once at the end of the build phases. I’d say the FTP is within 5-8W of the mFTP value.
The key is to ensure you are doing the range of hard efforts throughout the 84-90 day window to keep the model “feel.
The decrease is a little iffy but it didn’t seem right to leave eFTP as it is if you are reducing training load. Shorter max efforts will over-estimate if you are good at short max efforts. In that case use a longer minimum duration (e.g. 10 minutes). As Gerald says you do need to do a max effort every now and then to get a good number.