I’m fairly new to indoor riding and structured training and have spent most of the past decade powerlifting.
I recently done a ramp test which put my FTP at 182. However when applied to my rides this number seemed way to high as I was unable to finish workouts. I read on forums that people who have primarily concentrated on anaerobic exercise can often “fudge” a ramp test as you are essentially powering through the workout using anaerobic powerand moving the work away from your aerobic system.
Having experimented with some zone 2 rides, I estimated that my FTP was 135 as at this intensity my heart rate was in the upper zone 2 and occasionally in the lower zone 3 zone. This seemed to correlate with vo2 and sprint workouts I completed , which spiked my heart rate appropriately but were still doing doable.
However, I just started a new structured programme this week and I’m a bit disheartened by the fact that my heart rate was consistently between between 160-167 for most of the sweet spot rides, which according to my Garmin watch was very much a threshold workout.
Are heart rates meant to correspond to certain power zones as my sweet spot HR seems way too high but seems to fit into other workout zones like endurance well?
Is it worth considering traditional base programme to help build my crappy aerobic system?
Not sure where I’m going wrong here…any advice would be much appreciated
Heart rate has its own zone system(s). Actually, there are a number of zone systems for heart rate and for ftp. If you’re using different devices, each with their own system, you may need to verify they are using the same zones or sync them (automatically or manually).
The heart rate zones won’t usually line up exactly with the power (ftp based) zones, so most people use one or the other (most probably use power while keeping an eye on HR as a check in case something feels off), and lots use HR for zone 1 & 2 (recovery and endurance) work, and power for zones 3+ due (in part) to the heart’s slower reaction time.
Looks like Trainer Road uses the Coggan zones, except they’ve added the Sweet Spot zone (88%-94% of ftp). Cycling Power Zones Explained (trainingpeaks.com)
Your statement about thinking your ftp may be 135 because it aligns with top of zone 2 doesn’t make sense to me, unless you’re using a 3-zone heart rate model, which would definitely not jive with the Coggan power zones 2 and 3. See my link above (and this one links to TR’s support on their power zones: Understanding Power Zones – TrainerRoad
TP if you use it can detect a change in your HR threshold (based off 20 min efforts. It’ll never suggest a lower HR threshold, only a higher one), so does Garmin I believe.
I keep an eye on my hr and zones throughout the year. They may not overlap perfectly, but if I’m doing a z2 ride and my heart rate is hovering around high tempo or threshold, something isn’t adding up.
I edited my response above to add to the bottom of it with some more info.
That 165 seems probably a little high, that may not be your actual max heart rate…unclear how that number was derived. Basing HR zones off a Lactate Threshold HR test is usually better. One of my riding buddies was starting to pay attention to his HR on his Garmin, and from what I could the zones were calculated from max heart rate, and didn’t seem right for him. For comparison, my max HR is 174 and my Lactate Threshold HR is 157 bpm, and the top of my sweet spot in at 150.
All that being said, you’re fairly new to this and you’re way off in the weeds with this HR zone stuff. Since you’re on the TR system, I’d recommend you focus on your power and whether you can complete the workouts prescribed, and answering the survey questions appropriately, and the AI should get you where you need to be pretty quickly. You could do a different TR ftp test, too, after recovering some from the last one.
165 HR against a max of 184 would be a touch under 90%. I wouldn’t say that is out of the ordinary to see in a sweetspot workout that includes power levels towards the top of TR’s sweetspot range - particularly in newcomers to such things.
In this thread Recent Flo podcast with Steve Neal developing aerobic endurance with rides that hold power at 85% FTP with a HR cap of 83% (so in your case <153) are discussed. It is, imo, worth a read.
Very detailed response thank you. Your comment around me being in the weeds if hr zone stuff has probably hit the nail on the head, I think I just need to get pedaling and let the AI do it’s
Just putting time on the bike at this point will build aerobic fitness. Traditional base would probably be good to do for a while. Building a big aerobic engine takes years, and consistency is much more important than hitting a specific zone perfectly, especially in the beginning.
Well, I started with only HR 8 or 9 years ago, and it took a while to get figured out by itself. But I had a really good handle on what my HR does when I started using power a couple years ago. So, when I ran into irregularities or questionable results with power, I at least have HR to fall back to. You seem like you’re getting stuck pinballing back and forth from HR to power to HR to… so fall back to K.I.S.S. for a little bit.
I’d get settled into some consistent training, and if you want good HR zones, do the Joe Friel 30 minute LTHR test to find out what your threshold HR is, and then calc your Coggan HR zones from that. You’ll probably get a close enough idea of your LTHR once you’ve done some work at FTP, too.
There’s a guide that Chad made, to help you understand how to answer the post-workout questions, depending on how they felt. They’re a little less instinctive than TR seems willing to admit. Hopefully somebody will post it up.
Just to check, what was the maximum HR you achieved in your ramp test, and are you setting your HR zones off that? Or are you using 220-age?
The ramp test should not achieve your actual max HR, but it should be close and you could use it as a preliminary estimate if you need your actual HR zones.
To be honest with you I don’t know as I didn’t look at my max HR on the ramp test.
I’m 39 and my Garmin watch is telling me that my max HR for cycling is 184 ,and 181 for running (I don’t run). Not sure why the difference between the disciplines but I’ve been going with 184…
As other athletes mentioned, HR can vary depending on many factors – stress, sleep quality, hydration, nutrition, caffeine intake… All of that can impact your HR.
Power is a more “steady” metric that we prefer to use for training. It doesn’t vary as HR does – you can either push the pedals at a given power or not.
How did you calculate your HR zones, out of curiosity? For cycling, it’s generally “best” to find your Threshold HR by seeing where your HR settles during a long Threshold workout/test. If you used a formula (such as 220-age) to get your HR values, they may not be accurate. That may also be a contributing factor as to why you’re not seeing your HR zones line up with your power zones.
That said, seeing your HR creep into your Threshold zone during a Sweet Spot workout isn’t abnormal. Sweet Spot is very close to your Threshold power, so it would make sense to see your HR work its way up into that zone. As you train more and your body adapts to the training you’ve done, you’ll probably start to see your HR stabilize at lower values for a given power.
Since you’re new to structured training, I don’t think you should dig too deep into this HR data as it may not be super helpful just yet. As you continue to ride and train, you’ll start to get a better idea of where your HR settles for each power zone. For now, though, I think you’re at a good starting point coming off of the Ramp Test, so I’d say focus on power and getting through this first block of training. Adaptive Training will ensure you get dialed in as you work through your plan.
Hope this helps clear things up – feel free to let me know if you have any additional questions!
That all being said, you absolutely should work on that aerobic base based on the ramp test result and your hypothesis there. A traditional base training plan may not the be the one, but a more polarized approach might help with that. You should eventually feel like sweet spot is manageable for long intervals. The last 1x60 @ 90% interval I did, I averaged 163 bpm and finished the interval at 169bpm, which is right around my LTHR and my max hr is somewhere around 183bpm.
Also, look at the sweetspot you are doing. Sweetspot touches Threshold when moving from 94% to 95%. That being said, being “off” on your FTP calculation by 1% could put you in threshold rather than sweetspot. That’s why I like to focus more around 90% than 94%.
