Order of testing critical power

Training
1

Hi,

I’d like too test my CP via test : short 5s, medium 3min, long 12min
In what order should I do them ? On seperate days ?

Thank you

2

Three things to consider:

  1. Consistency: always perform the test (as best as you can control the factors) under the same conditions. This means same power meter, same course (for outdoors and also on virtual courses online), as well as a similar freshness, sleep patterns, hydration, fuelling, etc.

  2. Max efforts: It’s a modelled calculation, so you want to perform each test as a max effort, when relatively fresh. The short and medium efforts won’t carry as much fatigue to the next day, whereas the 12m test might. So do the 12m after the other two, perhaps with a rest day in between.

  3. Take notes: of what you do before, during and after each session. You can’t remember everything in detail, and when comparing efforts (including RPE).

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3

Something else to consider: CP testing is always a tradeoff between quality and practicality. Depending on what you want to get from the test you may go more towards quality or more towards practicality.

Totally agree with what Gerald says. Thinks 1 and 2 from Gerald are ideas to improve quality. More consistency will mean more data quality (for example, testing always inside and in the same environmental conditions) but it may be less practical or more boring. And it may not reflect exactly your outside climbing power.

In general:

  • More separation between tests → more quality. You could do the 3 tests in a single session. As long as you leave about 30 min of recovery between tests, research says that the results are good enough. But if you want to ensure quality, leaving 48 hours between tests would be better. And the order would not matter then.
  • More tests → more quality. You have said that you want to use 5s, 3 and 12min. If you added a 6-8 min test in the middle that would improve the model. Of course, that is one more testing day, so you may not want to do that, for practical reasons.

In general, it is important to understand that CP testing is originally a measurement developed in the lab to get at the boundary between the heavy and the severe intensity domain. To get the best possible estimate of CP you do 4-5 tests, with 48h between tests, in lab conditions, with standardized warm-up and nutrition before, etc. Then we start thinking “yeah, but that’s not practical, let’s make it easier”. So we decrease the number of tests, the recovery between tests, we go outside and we have different conditions… All of these things will make testing more practical, but it is important to understand that they will also introduce more error into the model.

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4

In general, as long as the tests are close together, order doesn’t matter. For sure do them on separate days, to be fresh, since each is a max effort.

I like to do the order it this way. This is for running, so the times are maybe a bit different, but same principle; the models are comparable if not the same. I do 2min, 9min and 20min tests.

  • At the start of a season or between training blocks; especially if I for some reason haven’t done testing sufficiently recently (i.e. I have no valid CP/FTP at all), I will do all tests as close together in 1-2 weeks, depending on how I can organize them with enough rest inbetween. Order does not matter - until I have finished all I simply treat the CP/FTP value as invalid.
  • Once I have established a good CP/FTP, I will then try to keep the tests between 30-60 days old. That means: whenever, say, may 9min trial “times out” (i.e., it becomes > 30 days old), I try to schedule a 9min time trial at the closest convenient possibility (for example replacing an upcoming easy with it). I will always be able to do so before it turns 60 days old (if it does, I’ve f*** up and it will go into next week for sure).
  • The 2min and 9min tests, while all-out, are still not a too high load for my taste, and I recover from those easily - they can replace an easy run. Or if I were to run hard intervals soon anyway, I’d do the 2min all-out as first interval and just relax a little on the others. The 20min test is too hard, it is it’s own workout in a week.
  • If I feel like it, I may schedule a dedicated 1-2 week block not too far from a race to refresh all 3 tests, just to have a particularly recent value for that race. But only if I really care about that race.

With this protocol, I always have a valid CP/FTP and the effort to schedule refreshers is minimal.

Keep in mind that testing is training too. Don’t feel like it’s somehow a part of training that is detracting from getting better, far from it.

TLDR: you can get creative with the order, it doesn’t matter much.

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