Before you start training with power, you’ll need to set your training zones.

Firstly – remember that power is individual, and how fast a person is will be based upon their power to weight ratio – this is the power they produce, divided by their weight. The higher the power to weight ration, the stronger the rider – though other factors such as aerodynamics comes into it too. Basically – don’t compare your power data to that of your peers.

Task number one is to determine your ‘FTP’, or Functional Threshold Power. This is the power that you can hold for one hour. You can do this by:

• Riding a 25 mile time trail, or riding flat out for one hour – unless this is a race, you’ll find it hard to perform at your absolute max. If you can do this, your FTP is the average power over an hour.
• Riding a one hour criterium race, and using the ‘Normalised power’ figure as your FTP – this takes away the effect of freewheeling, smoothing out the results
• Completing a 20-minute threshold test. Warm up for 10 minutes, go as hard as you can for five minutes, ride 5 minutes steady, then put all your effort into one 20 minute steady effort. Record your average power for the 20 minutes, multiply it by 0.95, and that’s your FTP.

Your FTP is 100% of Threshold, and the other zones are based around it:

With these zones, you can train the areas that are most important to success in your chosen cycling goals. For example, to be a good time trialist, your Lactate Threshold needs to be strong, so you’d practice intervals at this level, and just above. A road racer who wants to contest the sprint will be all about improving their Anaerobic Capacity.

Flick over to the next page for suggested sessions…