a) All-Rounder
Profile (a) may represent an ‘all-rounder’ who is similarly strong across all tested durations. This profile might be suited to someone looking to race well as a GC contender in a stage race, or do well in disciplines spanning both longer and shorter durations (e.g. time trials, and sportives). This profile is also well suited to athletes competing in punchy endurance disciplines like cross-country MTB.
This profile might also reflect an athlete who is naturally strong anaerobically, but who has spent a lot of time working on their aerobic fitness. This athlete might be working towards achieving a profile closer to that shown in (b), but due to their genetic makeup, profile (a) might be a more realistic goal.
b) Endurance Time Triallist
Profile (b) is a profile that may be best-suited to an endurance cyclist competing in longer, more steady-state events such as time trials, gran fondos or sportives (depending on the course profile). Here, the 5-min and FTP powers appear notably stronger than the 1 minute and 5 second powers. This likely indicates that VO2max is strong, and that the lactate threshold is relatively high (i.e. a high ‘fractional utilisation’).
c) Track Sprinter/Hill-Climb Specialist
Profile (c) is often best suited to a track sprinter or a hill climb specialist competing over durations of several minutes. For cyclists competing in these types of disciplines, it’s important that both anaerobic capacity and VO2max are high. This is reflected in this instance by the apparently high 1 and 5 minute powers.
Having a good neuromuscular power (i.e. ability to activate the Type IIx muscle fibres) is also often important in these disciplines, as reflected by the high 5 second power.
The high anaerobic capacity in these athletes often comes at the expense of a lower FTP. However, that’s not a problem, given threshold power is of relatively minor importance in these types of discipline.
d) Typical New Cyclist
Finally, profile (d) may be typical of someone that’s new to cycling, or someone who has been following a high-intensity, indoor training program, which often prioritise high-intensity work at the expense of low-intensity volume.
Here, the anaerobic system appears to be well-developed (high 1 minute power) relative to the aerobic system (5 minute power and FTP). However, all abilities are lower than in profile (c).
Neuromuscular power can be varied in these types of athletes, depending on whether any sprint training has been completed in the recent past.
Using power profiling to guide training
There are several ways you can use your power profile data to inform the types of training you do…
1. Perform a gap analysis
A first option is to perform a ‘gap analysis’ to identify the differences between your current physiological profile and your desired profile. You can then focus on training that will help you reduce those gaps.
For example, someone with profile (d), but who wants to do well in sportives, will want to move their profile closer to (b), and thus should focus on developing their aerobic fitness, including sessions that will work on improving VO2max, reducing lactate production, and improving lactate clearance. This should see an upwards shift in 5 minute power and FTP.
Someone with profile (a) could move their profile closer to (c) by incorporating more anaerobic and sprint training, with efforts spanning 5-seconds to 2-minutes. They may also benefit from reducing any training that tends to reduce glycolysis and promote fat oxidation – particularly fasted training.
We have a free workout guide to help you target specific fitness attributes available here.
2. Assess Fractional Utilisation
Another useful thing to consider, if you’re looking to develop your aerobic fitness, is where your FTP sits relative to your 5-minute power. This can give you an approximate idea of your so-called ‘fractional utilisation’ (i.e. where your lactate threshold sits relative to your VO2max).
If your FTP is stronger than your 5-minute power, in a relative sense (e.g. 5-min power rated ‘good’ and FTP rated ‘excellent’), then you probably have a high fractional utilisation, and your VO2max is likely limiting any further improvements in your lactate threshold. This might suggest that training should prioritise developing your VO2max, in order to ‘make space’ for further improvements in your lactate threshold.
On the other side, if your FTP is quite low relative to your 5-minute power (and particularly if your 1-minute power is also quite high) this may suggest your fractional utilisation is quite low. In other words, your FTP sits at a low percentage of your VO2max, and you probably have quite a lot of headroom to develop your FTP without needing to necessarily increase your VO2max. In order to become stronger in endurance disciplines, you’ll likely benefit from focussing on training to reduce the contribution from the anaerobic energy system, and increase your ability to use fats for fuel. This could include:
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long, low-intensity fasted rides,
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low-cadence intervals at a middle-intensity (i.e. between ~75-90% FTP or a 5-6/10 effort) completed in a fasted state, and
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intervals slightly above threshold power, which seem to work at improving lactate shuttling, among other things.
To understand more about fractional utilisation, check out our article here.
3. Iterate Intensity Targets
Finally, one other way that power profiling can help when prescribing training is in understanding whether you might need to iterate your intensity targets for your training sessions.
When training with power, you’ll generally have a range of powers to work within, expressed relative to FTP (e.g. ride between 103-108% FTP for 6-minutes). These are usually based on population averages, or in other words the power a ‘typical’ cyclist can hold for a given duration.
However, depending on your unique physiology, these powers can sometimes be a little too high or low.
For example, someone who has a very strong FTP relative to their abilities over shorter durations (e.g. an endurance time trialist) may find they need to reduce their power targets for sessions above FTP. A typical VO2max session might usually comprise 6x 4-min efforts between 108-115% FTP. However, someone with an endurance time trialist profile may need to reduce their power targets down to perhaps 103-105% FTP to account for their high FTP relative to VO2max and anaerobic capacity.
Similarly, this cyclist may also want to consider doing their long endurance rides closer to the top end of Zone 2 (i.e. perhaps between 65-80% FTP), because they are likely to have well developed endurance and a good ability to use fats for fuel, even at higher percentages of FTP.
Someone with the opposite profile (e.g. similar to the track sprinter/hill climb specialist) may want to consider doing the inverse. So they may want to slightly increase the power targets for sessions above FTP, and reduce the power target for sessions below FTP. For example, the 6x 4-min session might be pitched around 110-120% FTP to account for the athlete’s strong anaerobic capacity, whereas endurance rides may be pitched at around 50-60% FTP to account for the athlete’s lower ability to use fats for fuel.
Power Profiling: A Case Study
It can be helpful to illustrate the benefits of power profiling with a real-world case study. Here we present power profile data from an elite-level female road cyclist, during the 3-months leading into one of her A-priority competitions.
We’ve shown both her power-duration curve (aka ‘cycling power curve’), and power profile chart using the original Coggan approach, so you can see what the data looked like in both instances.