After riding with power for a little over 6 months now, I have noticed a strange power curve in my training and I was wondering if anyone could have any tips or ideas about what is going on here.
Age:18
Weight: 70kg
5s: 1415w (20.24 w/kg)
1m: 546w (7.8 w/kg)
5 min: 414w (5.92 w/kg)
FTP: 355 (5.07 w/kg)
This gives me a strange dip right on my 1-minute power compared to the rest of my power curve. I have been training for just around a year so I am very new to this. Does anyone have any tips or tricks to maybe fix this?
Thanks!
I’m not trying to be a smartass but if you’re concerned about your 1min power, you could just focus on training it?
I would say have a review of your training sessions/workouts and see if any of them are actually emphasising 1min power. For me I know that I don’t really train my max 1min power so I just accept my power curve isn’t as strong there.
Unless you need it for specific events/races, I don’t think you should be too concerned
1 Like
You could trial a program like WK05 and look at your PD curve, or graph your best power curve data and fit a curve through your peaks. That will likely give you a target for your 1 minute power if you wanted to specifically test for it. Doing that you’ll find you’ll be over in some places and under in others.
For the WK05 package, they recommend doing a Sprint, 1 minute, 5 minute, and a 20-25 minute test to develop your power curve as an initial setup. Your training zones are based on that which is much better way of looking at things, imo.
As @paul_rides said, it is only relevant if you have specifically undertaken 1 minute efforts. Have a look at the rides where you achieved your peak 1 minute power and check that those efforts are not actually longer or shorter than 1 minute. For example, I have a steep climb near my house that takes me between 1:30 and 2:00 minutes to complete. Most of my peak 1 minute power times come on this climb, even though I maintain the effort for longer than this. If you want to test your 1 minute power, it would be best to undertake a proper repeatable protocol for doing so. An example is here: Test protocol | Power Speed Profile
I’m not sure what you mean by a strange dip, could you post a screenshot of your power curve?
1 Like
How are you measuring your power?
If your power is accurate, you might get yourself a pro contract at your age if you go well from here
2 Likes
I’m not sure that’s exactly strange, it goes down as you would expect from 5sec and continues down as the duration increases. If you feel it goes down to sharply at 1minute you could specifically train for 1 minute; but looking at your longer power/time you look to be a diesel power house 
and it’ll be harder to maintain it if you focus on 1 minute and to be honest I would prefer to go harder for longer like you 
I mean with an FTP of 355 I think ud know what to do…
1 Like
I would happily settle for that strange power curve 
3 Likes
What are you using to measure your power?
If you use the power curve from the Personal Records in TR and you do your workouts in erg mode I think it is down to the workouts you have done so far. My curve in PR has the same dip at 1 minute. However not the same numbers as yours 
Ive been using both a wahoo kickr for the main tests and then I have a pair of garmin vector pedals. I’d love a pro contract if that was in reach!
I am stil very new to cycling and trying to grasp the whole training with power thing, I wish I could say I did
Garmin Vector pedal on outdoor workouts and then the wahoo kickr power meter
1 Like
Yeah I guess I haven’t truly been targeting 1 min power and I probably should throw down an actual full blown effort
That makes sense. I definitely haven’t been training that part of my curve whatsoever
Bingo!
1 Like
You need to get racing, and getting experience with those with knowledge of developing young riders. Power numbers are important, but race skills are critical to making it.
2 Likes
Working on it! Hopefully will be able to get into racing this summer. Just need the vaccine rollout to get to me first!
1 Like