HOW TO DO AN FTP TEST

There is no single official FTP test. What matters is that the protocol is repeatable and you use the same one each time. These are the four that riders actually use:

If this is your first test, do the ramp. It is shorter, you cannot really pace it wrong, and it fails you rather than the other way round.

1. Warm up for 20 minutes: 10 minutes easy spinning, 3 x 1 minute at a hard-but-controlled effort with a minute easy between, then 5 minutes easy.
2. Optional but useful: a 5-minute all-out effort, then 10 minutes very easy. This blunts your anaerobic contribution so the 20 minutes is a truer threshold effort.
3. Start the 20 minutes at a power you believe you could hold for 25 minutes. Everyone goes too hard here. Go slightly easier than instinct says.
4. Hold steady for the first 10 minutes. Cadence natural, breathing rhythmic, eyes on average power rather than instantaneous watts.
5. From 10 to 15 minutes, hold on. This is the part that decides the number.
6. In the last 5 minutes, lift if you can. If your final minute is the strongest of the test, you paced it well.
7. Cool down 10 minutes easy, then multiply your 20-minute average power by 0.95 to get your FTP.

Why 95%?

Twenty minutes at maximum includes a slice of anaerobic work you could not hold for an hour. The 5% haircut is an empirically derived correction that lands most riders close to their true hour power. It is not exact for everyone: sprinter types with big anaerobic engines often need a larger deduction, diesel time triallists a smaller one.

1. Warm up 10 minutes easy with two or three short accelerations.
2. Begin at a modest wattage — around 100W for most riders, lower if you are new to cycling.
3. Increase by 20W every minute and hold each step as evenly as you can.
4. Keep going until you cannot hold the target wattage any longer. That failure point is the test result, so do not stop while you can still pedal.
5. Take your best 1-minute average power from the whole test and multiply by 0.75 for FTP.
6. Spin easy for 10 minutes. You will need it.

The ramp works because the last minute you can complete closely tracks your maximum aerobic power, and FTP tends to sit around three quarters of that. It is quick, hard to game and brutally honest.

• Be rested, not fresh off the sofa. Two easy days beforehand, with one short opener effort the day before.
• Fuel it. A normal meal two to three hours before, and 30-60g of carbohydrate in the hour before if you ride first thing.
• Cool the room. A fan is worth real watts indoors. Heat stress will cost you more than any pacing mistake.
• Keep conditions identical. Same trainer, same bike, same calibration, same time of day. Otherwise you are measuring your setup, not your fitness.
• Never test on a bad day. If your heart rate will not come up or your legs feel dead in the warm-up, abandon and try later in the week.

Put the number into your app, rebuild your zones from it, and then leave it alone for four to eight weeks. Chasing a personal best every fortnight is a good way to be permanently tired and never actually train.