I’ve just been round the merry-go-round with sciatica/disc herniation/surgery/rehab.

Am almost ready to start riding again (gentle commutes) and have been doing some easy spins on the rollers.

I tried a Wattbike at my gym and selected 20 minute warm-up. I managed ten minutes before realising there was no way I should be working that hard 5 weeks after surgery!

The problem was that the warm-up is based on FTP, and the FTP on my Wattbike app is my ‘old’ FTP of 290W. Am thinking I could just plug in 250W (just under 3W/kg) until I feel strong enough to take on a ramp test, but am sure I’ve seen someone on here quoting a percentage rule of thumb for how much you might lose over time?

It shouldn’t be hard to figure out, and I’d be happy to continue using rollers instead of the Wattbikes, just curious.

Ta

depends alot on how you trained before.

if you subscribed to the sufferfest get fit fast in short periods – then it’ll drop off relatively quickly.

If your old school and follow a substantial base and speed work model then you’ll find it drops off less quickly .

If your position id ignore what i was before.

Id do a couple of weeks at Z2 to get the body used to training again before moving into any kind of formal plan. Which would set you up for an FTP test.

What percentage of FTP was the warm-up? I’d be be doing very light recovery type stuff in your situation (50-60%).

Too many variables involved to estimate FTP loss IMO, especially when surgery etc is involved. Maybe base it on heart rate for a little while until you get going again.

What percentage of FTP was the warm-up?

The warm up started at 5 min @ 60% and climbed gradually in 2 minute increments. Was at 90% and noticed some spikes coming up which was when I sacked it in!

Was a silly choice really, and I really wasn’t planning on thinking about FTPs for a while! Think I’ll put in a spurious low FTP on the app and just focus on cadence and form (watching the little figure of 8/sausage diagram is pretty fascinating!).

if you subscribed to the sufferfest get fit fast in short periods – then it’ll drop off relatively quickly.

If your old school and follow a substantial base and speed work model then you’ll find it drops off less quickly

Think I was somewhere in between, had done masses of base and then about 10 weeks slowly building up on the turbo.

Interesting year ahead building back up, have revised expectations for the 2020/21 CX season from ‘back with a bang’ to ‘just getting my tyres muddy again’. Might postpone the running training until next year too…

Was ~272W in Nov 2018, high of ~298W March 2019 after lots of 20-60min turbo sessions over the winter, low of ~233W mid July 2019 after a cycling nightmare ~5 months messed up by extended lurgy and then messing up my left knee tendons (so lots of taking things very steady). Soon back to ~257W and been ~270-275W since October, got the bug for racing/TTing in Zwift instead of doing ERG workouts, so plateaued.

I normally try to improve my 20min efforts by doing VO2 Max intervals, rather than lots of Z2 riding.

I find the short Zwift Ramp Test flatters me with high estimates because when rested and healthy I’d expect to at least complete the 360W interval, if not reach 400W. It’s still a good little ~20min workout (although I’ve not done it for a while now), it would give you a ballpark figure to go with. The free trial is now 25Km per month, do test on hilly course like Wattopia Mountain and you will probably get at least two tests per month from it.

298W March 2019 after lots of 20-60min turbo sessions over the winter, low of ~233W mid July 2019

That’s a useful comparison although I totally take T_R and GHill’s points that it will be completely personal. By your 70W loss over 4 months you could argue that I might have lost ~80W

I normally try to improve my 20min efforts by doing VO2 Max intervals, rather than lots of Z2 riding

Nobody does Z2 for speed though do they? That’s just what I do (did) while I’m recovering between sessions e.g. commuting or Saturday coffee rides

Nobody does Z2 for speed though do they? That’s just what I do (did) while I’m recovering between sessions e.g. commuting or Saturday coffee rides

Curent thoughts (last time i read about it) are that VO2 Max intervals will give you a bigger short term FTP boost, but lots of hours around Z2 will give long term better FTP gains.

Ah OK, my thinking is really that Z2 and intervals are in no way mutually exclusive, I was doing lots of Z2 just as ‘background’ riding, meanwhile on the turbo I was focusing on sweetspot stuff to begin with and gradually introducing shorter, harder intervals as CX season approached.

That’s all behind me now though, back to gently gently Z2 for a while! Will take some solace in filling in some gaps on my heatmap, ride some new roads…

FTP is a poor measure for long-term base fitness. You’ll lose top-end power relatively quickly. What you won’t lose is ENDURANCE Zone 2-3 power. I’d plug in 2-2.5 Watts/kg first and see how that feels. Riding at endurance will raise your FTP. It’s not all HIIT, despite what you might read. Heart rate for watts is the measure you want. For me, fitness is 140 bpm and 3 W/kg. When it’s 150 bpm, I’m ill or unfit.

For reference, I was off the bike for three months after an accident in 2015 and again three months after illness in 2019. My FTP tanked from 4 down to about 3 W/kg (never felt that well to test it!). I was still able to ride a 12 hour TT at 2.7 W/kg with a light training load a couple of months later.

The long-term effects of a lifetime’s training cannot be understated. Any healthcare professional can spot them looking at heart rate and age.

There was something on a podcast recently about strength/muscle loss where the current thought isn’t “Use it or lose it” but that once you’ve used it, getting it back is nowhere near as hard and that there’s a muscle memory with a half-life of the order of fifteen years. That doesn’t mean that doing nothing for fifteen years and you’ll only lose 50% of strength/power but that your potential drops by 50%.

Generally long term, “lifetime” fitness hangs around for a long time, it’s the top end values that drop off quickly. So your Z2 fitness won’t have been affected much but your Z5 fitness will.

Interesting stuff folks, thanks!

TiRed, check your private messages, wanted to pick your brains about Kreitlers!

Whitestone – that explanation does seem to fit the pattern, I feel overall that I’ve been a wee bit unlucky with time off and injuries, but have never felt catastrophically unfit after time off the bike. Just need to develop consistency!

The focus on top end is all CX oriented, and also fits my time constraints better!

Replied.

Mine are the 3″ rollers with no extras. they have just the right resistance for my fixed wheel and geared bikes (150 – 350 Watts), with typical cruising at 200 Watts (3W/kg). The 4.5″ rollers need some additional resistance, the 2.25″ hot dog narrow ones are for people with more skill and (a lot more) power than me! Next time round I’d buy the Kompact orange frame. Don’t bother with the alloy end caps, the base model is quiet enough. The flywheel would be more use than the fan for riding feel, but I’ve not felt the need. I also have a KICKR, but rollers are more fun.

In your position I’d just ride on feel – push what I think I can get away with, increasing when you feel like it. Then in a few months when you’re back into it try another test.

4.4 to 3.7 in 4 months, only very short Z2 stuff in between as I went on a bit of a downer.

Quickly recovered to 4 so maybe that kind of reduction would have been more realistic had I kept myself ticking over a little better.

How much fitness (power) can you lose in 6 months?

All of it in my experience. Just start slowly, pushing hard too soon will **** you up.

I spent about six months of last year with some low grade viral thing that pretty much stopped me riding. When I started again I properly eased back into it, just gentle stuff, a bit of zone 2, nothing over threshold. At the point where I felt a bit more normal I did a quick ramp test and found I’d only lost about 45 watts on FTP, down from around 300 watts to about 255, which surprised me, I was expecting a lot worse.

That’s not the full story though. I’d say my top-end was disproportionately down. And my endurance was also a bit shot, anything over a couple of hours felt really hard. I eased back into it doing a bunch of ‘just riding’ for fun and some regular sweet-spot type intervals then gradually upped duration and intensity trying to be sensible. It’s taken me two to three months to get back to somewhere around 90% of normal.

I suspect how much you lose and in what proportion depends on your riding/training background plus your individual physiology, but I’d be a little cautious to begin with and try not to let your brain write cheques that your body can’t cash. Or something like that. Good luck 🙂

When I broke my hip 2 years ago, I was off the bike for 4 months but when I did get back on the bike I didn’t just do an FTP test or a ramp test to depress myself at the probable loss of fitness. I just gradually built up time on the bike at an aerobic sort of effort, 7 or 8 months after (so about 4 months of being back riding) the incident, I think I felt roughly back where I was and was doing TT’s at a power I would have expected pre-break.

Trying to smash yourself silly to get that FTP back will just be depressing, so build up at a low level until you actually feel you’re where you want to be. Time in the saddle alone will do your body good.