I’ve seen some mention of this in some other threads, but I’m wondering who here as done one of Kolie Moore’s FTP test protocols, and how it worked for them.
I’m thinking of giving one a try and wanted to gather other’s experiences and how they constructed a workout based on his descriptions. In particular, what would be a ‘gradual’ increase in power for the baseline and progression 1, which is what I would be experimenting with.
had my first scheduled for today, have to postpone it.
Here is the baseline test that I created:
I took the 20-minute Davis workout and added the baseline test protocol to it. The blog posts stresses a long warmup, and it is probably better to do a separate warmup and then have a standalone baseline test. I’m going to contemplate that a bit, and likely go into Workout Creator and hack it up a bit.
Looks like the image is cutting off the end of the workout.
What is the ramp rate for the power increase for the final segment?
Please post once you give this a try.
hey sorry about that… there 3 segments to my take on the Baseline Test workout:
hope that helps!
Thanks - that does help. The ramp rate is right about what I was thinking - 1/2% per minute. Higher and I think I’d blow up too soon, lower and it would take to long to bring the average up to the target FTP. If my math is right with your numbers, completing the test will result in an average of 99.8% of the target FTP. Starting the ramp in the beginning at 93% makes that a nice even 100% 
Do you have extra time after the 15 minutes at the end? I’d hate to have the workout end prematurely
wish I could recall the reasoning behind the 100-108% ramp at end… I’ll give it a think over the next couple of days. And thanks for pointing out the abrupt ending! I’ll definitely fix that in WorkoutCreator before doing the baseline test.
Don’t do it in erg. After the sub threshold effort you should be riding to feel. Try to keep your breathing heavy but not labored. When your legs start to go, give it the ol heave ho and let her rip.
The protocol is setup to let you hit 30+ min PBs, which are useful in WKO. If you’re not doing the extensive sweet spot work I don’t know how much value you’ll find in it.
I thought the point of this test was that you CAN do it in erg - because it combines the 20 minute test with a ramp to failure. In fact, a slow ramp from 92-95, 15 minutes at 100, then another slow ramp up sounds like way too much concentration and brainpower for resistance mode.
I did the Baseline way back in Feb after doing a lot of SS and Thresh work which made the VO2max-centric TR ramp test a disaster for me. I should have gone at least 5min longer (I finished @110% FTP) but that would have bumped my final FTP up by only a couple of points. Interestingly enough, the ramp test and baseline test spit me out at pretty much the exact same FTP. Just with no sharp high-end, the baseline was “easier” to ride. My average cadence for the entire thing was 97.
10:00 warm-up @96-99% FTP
15:00 Steady State @104% FTP
15:00 Intensity Increase @105-115% FTP
It’s not watch making. I just had my 30s and 5 min power up and tried to keep the 30s power a couple watts above the 5.
I’ve done Kolie’s test protocols several times. I think all of them are great for giving you a realistic and workable estimation of FTP. The longer test also provides a nice training stimulus, so it’s kind of a twofer.
I did something similar to progression 3 of Kolie’s protocols last week. 5mins just below target FTP and then target FTP until exhaustion. For so long I’ve been messing around with other tests that flatter my FTP, 8mins test, 20 mins, TR ramp test, MAP test with 2.5min steps etc, and just avoiding doing any FTP stuff longer than half an hour.
It’s so good having a realistic number to work with for subthreshold intervals - everthing always used to feel like a time trial for me. While it has confirmed to me what I suspected, that my muscular endurance is poor, it’s reassuring to know that not long before I did the test I was able to do VO2 max intervals at around 130% of my new FTP, so there’s plenty of room for me to improve!
I prefer these longs tests to any other type of test.
It’s a good workout, you get a great idea of what your FTP+TTE is, and they are way easier to recover from the next day.
For me, the most accurate (or so it feel) ftp value I have been able to get was via Golden cheetah W’bal and CP estimator. (You get your ftp and you anaerobic capacity).
You need an all out short effort (3-5min) and long effort (15-60min)
The good thing is that I can try to follow x watts for a set duration (for example 20min), If I blow up before the end the value is still usable, if I still have something left in the tank by the end and I can continue until I can’t so there isn’t any pacing issue.
The downside is that I need two different day to be really fresh to smash the 2 all out effort (Tho I found out it’s not really necessary to retest the short effort as often if I don’t work my anaerobic system with sort interval (especially in base period for example).
For example, with a 21min power of 280Watts and a 5min power of 340Watts :
I get a FTP of 258 Watts and an anaerobic capacity of 24KJ (Amount of work I can theorically do above FTP)
This can give me theorical power for any duration I want, for example:
My theorical best 1min power is 658Watts (258 + 24000/60)
My theorical best 3min power is 391Watts (258 + 24000/180)
Hi! This past week, I have completed both the TrainerRoad FTP ramp test and the Kolie Moore FTP test protocol (progression #1). I am just starting Sweet Spot Base II training plan after completing 10 weeks of base training (SS Base I + Trad. Base II).
The ramp test was done on Tuesday morning and the K. Moore FTP test was done on Saturday (yesterday) in lieu of a threshold workout. Both tests were done first thing in the morning with similar nutrition, bike setup, cooling and sleep.
The FTP result from the ramp test was 280 watts with a max heart rate of 190 (97% of max). This felt on the low side as I have been completely SS workouts with the intensity bumped up by 5% and the FTP set to 290 which I achieved over the summer.
With the K.Moore FTP test protocol, I chose Progression 1 as I wanted to also test my TTE and I used workout creator to build a 45min test. Here are the results:
The average for the 45 minute test was 302! For the test, I set the intensity to try to hit 300 watts for the test and I was able to complete it! After 15 minutes, it got tough, after 30 minutes, it got really tough and the last 10 minutes required a lot of focus and grit.
As a bonus, WKO5 and Intervals.icu also agrees with the new results. Intervals.icu reported:
Suffice to say, I will keep using this new test (new for me) alongside the TR ramp test.
Thanks for sharing! Another way to look at your results is that for this round of testing, the TR ramp test gives the same result if you use 81% multiplier (instead of the 75%). The math for that is 302 / (280/.75).
If you only did inside workouts on TB-2 and SSB-1, then its not too surprising you need a higher multiplier because of a) all the sub-threshold work over 10 weeks will result in some detraining of top-end, and b) the TR ramp test is a max aerobic power test. After a block of base I’ve had some TR ramp tests where I needed to use 85% multiplier, and other times where I did more intensity (outside rides) and the 75% multiplier was pretty accurate.
Going forward, don’t forget that % FTP used in vo2 workouts is highly individual. For example the SSB-2 vo2 workouts at 120% FTP you may need to adjust down or up. The initial vo2 workouts in SSB-2 (Taylor and Bluebell) are somewhat mild and I find those pretty straightforward and able to complete at 120%, its the jump to Mills and Spencer where I struggle with the later intervals and have to dial down a bit.
Cheers and thanks again! I’m looking to do both tests in the same week in the near future. Will share my results.
Difficult transition to VO2max training is probably a very common issue after an extended base period. Also most likely the reason the TR ramp test gives a lower FTP than the Moore protocol (as @bbarrera states – the ramp FTP is based on max aerobic power, the Moore protocol is not).
Moving into your next training phase, you might try basing your first couple of VO2max workouts on the TR based FTP (280w) just to see how it is (HR, RPE, compliance, etc). It might be too low, 336w vs 360w (=112% 300w/120% 280w FTP; 120% 300w FTP), but only one way to find out.
delete
As per the original article:
Before doing any of the following FTP tests, you must do a long and thorough warm-up.
Thanks for the link to the article. Good stuff! Classic FTP tests and the TR ramp test seem to under report my FTP relative to what I can hold for sweetspot and threshold workouts. This is an interesting protocol, I am interested in trying it out.
