Your First FTP Test

"Training is testing and testing is training."

It's been said a million times, and we at PROthirteen wholeheartedly agree. For full-spectrum data analysis, we plan an entire week of testing to ensure a thorough understanding of our PROthirteen athletes.

And, yes, a key benchmark is the threshold "FTP" test.

Coach/author David Lipscomb recently wrote a very nice introduction to FTP testing for Bicycling Magazine that is solid reading.

The subject of cycling threshold is a highly nuanced subject and is worthy of an entire book. For instance, an athlete could test in an air-conditioned room on an indoor-trainer at sea level, only to have their race take place outdoors, on gravel roads, on a hundred-degree day in the Rocky Mountains.

An athlete's FTP for the indoor trainer at sea-level is going to be radically higher than their gravel/heat/elevation FTP in the Rocky Mountains.

For the above reasons, this is why as our athletes approach their "A events," we test in as close to their race-day conditions as possible, to ensure the most accurate test results.

At PROthirteen, we are not building castles in the sky, we are building real-world athletes achieving real-world results.

If you'd like to talk about FTP testing or testing in general, shoot us an email. We would love to talk testing strategies.