Question : Fitness curve and form : Zwift RampTest lite result

Hi all. I wonder if someone can help me understand something:

Background. I’m 53, male and have been riding for a good few years, self coached and have a modestly good understanding of periodisation/training, HR/Power etc.
Just would like to sound you guys out who have much more experience. Been using intervals.icu since march and it’s very good!!

Since December I’ve been doing ~5-6 hrs a week of z2 HR training to get back into some fitness. Around mid april, I started to do a little more z3/4 work using the power meter after a previous FTP test (coggan) which came up short of 190w.

I added two sessions in a Vo2Max set of intervals (5 x 3min 120%ftp) and threshold ( 3 x 10m Z4/90-105% ftp) which I seemed to be adapting to, mixed in with a Z3 tempo session ( 2 x 15m@ z3 ). the rest of the workouts between intervals are at Z1 recovery. My average riding time has increased by an hour or so 7-8h p/w in the last month which is mostly the extra z1/2 i’ve been riding.

My weekends are mostly z1-3, which I’ve managed to strech out to 2-3+ hrs, some social etc. Working this around a 3 on: 1 off recovery taper week ( less a couple of weeks where i had been unable to do as much /work/life getting in the way ).
Most of the volume ratio is ~75/25 - 80/20, as i planned it as such.

As expected I’ve seen an improvment in fitness [ on the bike ] and designated this week as my taper. I’m tracking wellness using Whoop which is present on each day, usually most of my sessions are green with a good HRV+low rested hr.

Yesterday’s workout was the FTP Lite on Zwift which I had not used before against that nagging feeling to run the usual coggan one (Which hurts like hell :smiley: ) and didnt realise that the test cap’s out at 250w, which initally i wasn’t sure i’d even get to.

Which, it’s fair to say, surprisingly i hit everything to the point where 250w@1m my HR was 193 (max is 200, im a high beater :slight_smile: ] I feel that i could probably have gone another minute at 260w before but i cant say for sure.

Zwift predicts my ftp @187w, which is less than what it was last month despite the extra training - which seemed odd, but on reflection that i came to in my conclusions.

My Questions

  1. In my taper week, as expected I can see my fitness and fatige drop a bit and freshness goes , but today and yesterday the fitness graph hasn’t updated to show yesterdays load [despite refreshing the browser ] and I’m not sure why?

  1. My conclusion from yesterday is one of, or both,
  • i didnt feel that I wasn’t max’d out after 250w and should probably have used the proper coggan test and tried to hold a more steady/optimal power.

  • my recovery wasn’t optimal (whoop HRV/RHR was 36:59 with readiness of 71)
    Good recovery /fresh is usually ~58 hrv, 40 hrv and readiness > 90, although i felt ready to do the test.

I will probably go again tomorrow or saturday if I can using the coggan test.

Here is the session from yesterday from icu:

  1. Somtimes it feels like my body lies to me when what the data shows me vs how i feel/ perceived effort, adversely or conversely.

Have any of you guys had a similar kind of experience with both test.

Addendum: My understanding of what Zwift calculates a predicted FTP from, is 75% of the power completed from the last minute, had I reached 260 it would have produced the following values.

250w/187 ftp
260w/ 195 ftp
270w/ 202 ftp

Whereas coggan’s result is 95% of the 20minute average.

Thanks in advance, have more diagrams/data to share if required…Daniel.

Some general remarks:

  • Don’t compare results from different types of test. Choose which test you will use and always use the same one. It’s not about knowing to the exact watt what your FTP is, it’s about being able to follow up on progress.
  • If it makes you feel better: the Zwift test in Intervals shows that Intervals deducts a 193W FTP (the Ride eFTP), and from you recent training that it is 194W (eFTP). Compared to th Coggan test of 190W and the Zwift result of 187W, I would say that you can be fairly sure that your FTP is correct around 190W. You need to understand that FTP is changing on a daily basis depending on your freshness, stress level and so many other things happening in life. Stressing over a couple of watts isn’t going to help you. If you have been riding for a couple of years in a consistent way, you should not expect spectacular changes in FTP. Doing better structured training will make you improve further on FTP, but it’s a slow process. And there’s much more then FTP to improve performance…
  • It comes over as a bit strange to do multiple test sessions in a Taper week… Are you tapering for a specific event or is the Taper ment to end with a good FTP test?
  • Use HRV and HRrest to monitor recovery but ditch Readiness. Unless you can specifically tell me how Whoop calculates the Readiness number… Most of the apps giving a Readiness number are doing it totally wrong. They mix inputs and outputs to come up with a number that should reflect your readiness to perform but why on earth are they almost all using the load or time from the training on the day before? If you are fatigued, your HRV and HRrest (the outputs) will reflect that, there’s no need to double the penalty by using time/load (the inputs)

I do see a blue dot and a slight fatigue raise for June 11, so I don’t see why you’re saying that the Fitness graph didn’t update?

IMPORTANT: your body never lies to you! The truth is that the math isn’t always able to catch exactly what is going on. When in doubt, always follow your feeling!

Your fitness was at 41. Your load of the ramp test was 38. So that’s basically the same, it won’t ramp up that much for these short activities. You won’t see a big spike for that. Even if you feel very tired after that test.

Check out this great guide for understanding the fitness page and their values (maybe especially this post from @MedTechCD )

Thanks for taking the time to read my post and reply.
Answers in order:

  1. re ftp - noted. that makes a lot of sense.
  2. re fluctuations of ftp. Got that. I had noticed they’re around 5-10w different.
  • i think the post ‘ftp’ state of mind yesterday got me *overthinking * about it. :slight_smile:
  1. Yes, the consistency is better and Ive only started up again with adding more structure and ‘top end’ works so I’ll pursue with that and see what goes. :slight_smile:

  2. Im not going to do another ftp test as-is. I’ll just carry on to my next block.

  3. After looking again, In “Intervals” it actually shows “Readiness” from whoop which is actually “Recovery” in the whoop app.

The explanation of how Whoop calculates this is here
I don’t religiously stick to the readiness score, i just look at the number and just acknowledge it /look at is as a guide. If it’s green, then bonus :slight_smile:

I did two sessions yesterday, one warmup that I do and the ramp test.
image

The accumulated load was 66.
I would have expected “Intervals” to show that load by moving the load line out from the Grey zone back down into the green zone, but it did not.

Looking back at some of my other workouts which have been around the same load score (other than walks) have shown up.

even the ride i did saturday with a similar load.

Maybe im misreading things but I’ll read the post on Fitness just to save spamming everyone about my obsessing over what i think should be displayed.

hi Tom.

Sorry, perhaps i didn’t explain myself properly - ive re-read your reply a couple of times.

From what I believe what you’re saying is that if the current load is less than my current fitness, the curve won’t move… OK.

I was looking at the Form line which appears to have moved into the Grey zone ( as it was in the Optimal range sat/sun/mon) for the last three days.

Am i right to deduce that Intervals believes that i’m still fresh and haven’t produced sufficient training stimulus since the weekend to push it back into the green/optimal zone despite yesterday’s load of 66 ?

Fatigue is a 7 day moving average. If the load from 8 days ago was really high, it is now in the 7 day total replaced by a (much) lower value and that will influence the impact of a seemingly ‘normal’ training load.

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okay. I understand … thanks for replying and others.