The WattPlan Podcast · Episode 45 · 9 min
What is a good FTP? Why nobody can tell you, and what to compare instead
Next episodes: What is FTP, and is your test telling the truth? · How do you actually raise your FTP? · Cycling after 50: what actually changes?
Read the transcript
James. This is the WattPlan Podcast and I'm James. I fit WattPlan in around a family, a job and the occasional podium, and I read more sports science than any amateur should. Today's question is the one every rider types into Google the night after a test. What's a good FTP? Is three watts per kilo decent, is four good, and does the answer change if you're a woman or fifty-five? Lyra, our AI research voice, has the papers, and every one is linked in the show notes.
Lyra. The honest answer is that nobody knows what a good amateur FTP is, because nobody has mapped it. There is no peer-reviewed study that puts the FTP of ordinary club riders against level, age or sex. The charts you've seen online with labels from untrained to world class are coaching estimates. So a good FTP is one that's higher than yours was last year, and the fair comparison is with yourself, same test, same time of year.
James. Hang on. Sport scientists must grade riders somehow. Every study I read says the riders were well-trained or whatever.
Lyra. They do grade them, but not by FTP. The paper everyone uses is from De Pauw and colleagues, in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance in 2013. They went through 130 descriptions of cycling study groups and proposed five levels, untrained, recreationally trained, trained, well-trained and professional. The main measure is VO2max per kilo, the most oxygen you can use in a minute. The second is peak power in a lab ramp to exhaustion. [1]
James. Peak power in a ramp. So the number you hit for the last minute before you fall off.
Lyra. Roughly, yes. And that's always well above the power you can hold for an hour, so even if you could get hold of those tables, you couldn't read them as FTP targets. They describe who was in a study. They were never meant to tell a rider how good they are.
James. Right, but surely someone has put riders through a lab and written down what each level actually holds?
Lyra. One group has, and it's the nearest thing we've got. Sitko and colleagues at the University of Zaragoza, in Applied Sciences at the end of 2022, took 46 road cyclists, median age 38, graded them into De Pauw's levels by VO2max, and measured their power at the second lab threshold, the point where breathing starts to climb out of proportion to the work. Recreationally trained riders held about three point one watts per kilo there. Trained riders about three point nine. Well trained about four and a half. Professionals about five. [4]
James. So the whole range from a decent club rider to a pro is under two watts per kilo.
Lyra. About one point eight, from the recreational group to the pros, with the neighbouring groups sitting close together. The other finding I liked is about weight. Body mass, body fat and skinfolds only separated the recreational riders from the professionals. Between trained, well trained and professional the differences weren't significant, just a tendency to be a little lighter and leaner as the level rose.
James. So the pros weren't much lighter than the decent club riders. That's going to upset a lot of people who've been skipping cake.
Lyra. It's one cohort of 46 in Spain, measured once, so it can't say whether losing weight would move anyone up a level. What it does say is that the groups were separated far more by the size of their aerobic engine than by anything on a scale. And the threshold they measured isn't FTP, so your own number will sit near those figures rather than on them.
James. Okay. Does any of this change for women? Because every chart I've ever seen looks like it was built from men.
Lyra. Most of them were. Decroix and colleagues did the women's version of the classification in 2016, from 82 papers, and found women's VO2max and peak power lower than men's at every single level. So a woman reading a men's chart places herself below her real level. [2]
James. And what do the best women actually hold?
Lyra. That we do know, from professionals. A 2022 analysis of 44 professional women, more than 32,000 ride files, found their best hour averaged four point two watts per kilo. Their best ten minutes was five point two. For amateur women there's no published distribution at all, and we're not going to invent one.
James. Fine, but I'm not twenty-five any more. Does the number I should expect fall off a cliff after fifty, or is that an excuse?
Lyra. It falls, and not off a cliff. A 2008 study tested 32 masters cyclists aged 35 to 73. Peak power in a lab test was 434 watts in the 35 to 44 group, 392 in the 45 to 54 group and 324 at 55 and over. So the oldest group held about a quarter less than the youngest. The authors warned against comparing older riders with norms built from young adults. And cycling economy, the oxygen cost of a given power, didn't differ between the age groups at all.
James. So the engine shrinks but the gearbox is fine.
Lyra. That's a fair way to put it. Which is why the sensible comparison for a rider in their fifties is their own number from last season, and riders their own age. Not a chart drawn from 25-year-olds.
James. Let's bring this down to the bike. If you're new to this and you've just done your first test, what do you do with the number?
Lyra. If you're new to this, write it down with the date and the test you used, divide it by your weight in kilos, and then ignore every chart you find. The number's job is to set your training zones and to be beaten in three months. WattPlan sets your zones from it and flags a rise from your rides, so you don't need to keep testing to catch an improvement. It never lowers the number for you, so after time off, retest.
James. And if you train with power already and you've got a few seasons of numbers?
Lyra. If you train with power, compare this autumn's FTP with last autumn's, same test, same bike, same point in the season. That's the one comparison with no confounders in it. And if you really want a level, the measure the classifications actually use is VO2max from a lab test, and nothing you can read off a ride replaces that. WattPlan does show a VO2max estimate worked out from your best short efforts, but it's an equation estimate and a trend to watch, not a number to look up in the article's table.
James. And if you race? Because racers do want to know where they sit.
Lyra. If you race, think in watts per kilo for climbs and raw watts for the flat, and judge yourself against results, not labels. In WattPlan the watts-per-kilo milestones tell you what the number buys you on a climb, how many minutes a given figure saves up a long steady gradient, rather than giving you a rank. That's deliberate. The climb time is a fact. The rank would be a guess.
James. I like that. So what can't the research tell us yet?
Lyra. Quite a lot. Nobody has published the FTP distribution of amateur riders, by level, age or sex. The Zaragoza numbers come from 46 riders measured at a lab threshold rather than a 20-minute test. The women's data comes from 44 professionals at the very top. The age data is 32 men tested once, so it shows the gap between age groups, not how any one rider declines. Until someone does the big amateur study, every watts-per-kilo table you see is an estimate.
James. So this week. Divide my FTP by my weight, write the date next to it, dig out last year's number, and stop looking at charts.
Lyra. And pace your next climb from the watts per kilo rather than from a label. The number that matters most isn't where you sit on someone's table. It's whether yours is higher than it was.
Lyra. The full article and every study we mentioned are on the WattPlan blog, linked in the show notes. And if you've enjoyed this, follow the WattPlan Podcast wherever you're listening, so you don't miss the next one.
James. And if you want a plan built around the time you've actually got, get WattPlan on the App Store or Google Play. Thanks for listening.
Voices produced with ElevenLabs. James's voice is a clone of his own, Lyra is an AI voice, and James reviews every episode.
A good FTP is a rising one, because no peer-reviewed study has published the FTP of amateur cyclists by level, age or sex. Sport science grades riders by VO2max and lab peak power. In a December 2022 study of 46 graded road cyclists, power at the second lab threshold ran from 3.1 W/kg in recreational riders to 5.0 in professionals.
Is there an official FTP chart by level?
No. The charts of FTP in W/kg that circulate online, with labels from untrained to world class, are coaching estimates. None of them comes from a published measurement of amateur riders, and the three classification papers sport scientists use to describe riders don't use FTP at all.
Kevin De Pauw and colleagues reviewed 130 descriptions of cycling study groups in 2013 and proposed five performance levels, untrained, recreationally trained, trained, well-trained and professional. The main measure is VO2max per kilo, the most oxygen you can use in a minute, and the second is peak power in a lab test to exhaustion, which most often starts at 100 W and rises 25 W a stage. Lieselot Decroix and colleagues built the matching five levels for women in 2016 from 82 papers, and found women's VO2max and peak power lower than men's at every level. In 2022 Alannah McKay and colleagues proposed a six-tier framework, from sedentary to world class, graded on training volume and competition results rather than on any physiological number.
Peak power from a ramp to exhaustion is always higher than the power you can hold for an hour, so even the lab tables can't be read as FTP targets. Our guide to what FTP is covers the test itself and how long riders at each level can hold the number.
What W/kg do riders at each level actually hold?
The nearest thing to an answer comes from Sebastian Sitko and colleagues at the University of Zaragoza, who published a study of 46 road cyclists, median age 38, on 23 December 2022. The riders were graded into De Pauw's levels by VO2max, then measured for power at the respiratory compensation point, the second lab threshold, where breathing starts to rise out of proportion to the work. The medians were 3.12 W/kg for recreationally trained riders, 3.92 for trained, 4.50 for well trained and 4.95 for professionals.
| Level, graded by VO2max | Riders | VO2max, ml/kg/min, median | Power at the second lab threshold, W/kg, median and middle half |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recreationally trained | 14 | 50 | 3.12 (3.00 to 3.54) |
| Trained | 11 | 59 | 3.92 (3.80 to 4.07) |
| Well trained | 10 | 66 | 4.50 (4.28 to 4.65) |
| Professional | 11 | 72 | 4.95 (4.76 to 5.24) |
Two things stand out. The whole span from a club rider who trains a few times a week to a professional is about 1.8 W/kg at threshold, and the middle halves of neighbouring groups sit close together with gaps of about 0.1 to 0.3 W/kg between them. The same study found that body mass, body fat and skinfolds separated only the recreational riders from the professionals, with no significant difference between the trained, well trained and professional groups, though the authors note a tendency to lower body mass and body fat as level rises. It is a snapshot of 46 riders, not a study of riders changing level, so it says nothing about whether losing weight would move you up the table.
Treat the table as a reference from one Spanish cohort of 46, not a norm. The threshold measured is not FTP, and a lab ramp is not a 20-minute test, so your own FTP per kilo will sit somewhere near these figures rather than on them.
What is a good FTP for a woman?
The women's data is thinner, which is itself the finding. Decroix's review found that at every performance level women's relative VO2max and peak power sit below men's, so a chart built from men's data places a woman below her level.
The best published benchmark for women comes from professionals. Manuel Mateo-March and colleagues analysed 32,028 power files from 44 professional women over one to six years, published on 15 February 2022. Their best 60-minute power averaged 4.2 W/kg, give or take 0.4, their best 10 minutes 5.2, their best minute 8.4 and their best 5 seconds 15.3. Time trialists held the highest figures from 10 to 60 minutes. The 11 professional men in Sitko's study sat at 4.95 W/kg at the second lab threshold, a different measure but one that sits near the hour's power, so the gap between the sexes at the top of the sport is of the order of half a watt per kilo for an hour's effort.
For amateur women there is no published FTP or threshold distribution at all, and we won't invent one.
How much does FTP fall with age?
Jeremiah Peiffer and colleagues tested 32 male masters cyclists aged 35 to 73 in 2008. Peak power in a lab test to exhaustion was 434 W at 35 to 44, 392 W at 45 to 54 and 324 W at 55 and over, with VO2max of 60.7, 54.2 and 45.9 ml/kg/min. The oldest group held about a quarter less peak power than the youngest, and the authors warned against comparing masters riders with norms built from young adults. Cycling economy, the oxygen cost of a given power, did not differ between the age groups. Our training after 50 guide covers how fast VO2max falls per decade and which sessions to keep.
No study gives FTP by age, so the practical rule is to compare your number with your own from the same point last season, and with riders your own age, rather than with a table drawn from 25-year-olds.
How does WattPlan treat W/kg?
The FTP calculator works out your watts per kilo from your FTP and weight. In the app, the Power-to-Weight quest in Breakthroughs marks seven milestones from 2.0 to 5.0 W/kg, and each one says what the number means on a climb rather than where it ranks you. At 3 W/kg a 75 kg rider climbs 5 km at a steady 8% in about 26 minutes, and at 4 W/kg in about 20. Metrics shows an estimated VO2max from your best 5-minute power and weight. It is an equation estimate of the measure the classifications are built on, a trend to watch rather than a lab value, so it won't place you in a level. And WattPlan reads your best 20 minutes from your recent rides and offers a new FTP only when it is at least 3% above your current one, so a rise is flagged between tests. It never lowers your FTP, so if yours has fallen after time off, a retest is what brings the number down.
Our view at WattPlan is that W/kg is for comparing you with your past self and for pacing climbs, and that any chart which puts a label on your FTP is guessing.
What to do with your number
- Divide your FTP by your weight in kilos, or let the FTP calculator do it, and note the date and the test you used.
- Compare it with your own figure from the same point last season, not with a chart.
- If you want a level, the measure the classifications use is VO2max from a lab test, and nothing you can read from a ride replaces that. The estimate in Metrics from your best 5-minute power is a trend to watch, not a value to look up in the table above.
- Pace climbs from W/kg. The time a given figure buys you on an 8% climb changes far more than any label does.
- Retest at the end of each block, or after time off, and let your best 20 minutes from rides flag a rise in between.
What the research can't tell you
Nobody has published the FTP distribution of amateur cyclists, by level, age or sex, and until someone does, every W/kg table you see is somebody's estimate. The Zaragoza cohort was 46 riders in one country, measured at a lab threshold rather than FTP, and the professional women's data comes from 44 riders at the very top of the sport. The age data rests on 32 men tested once, so it shows the gap between age groups, not how any one rider declines. And the classifications themselves are built for research, to describe who was studied, not to tell a rider how good they are.
Sources
- Guidelines to Classify Subject Groups in Sport-Science Research, International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance
- Guidelines to Classify Female Subject Groups in Sport-Science Research, International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance
- Defining Training and Performance Caliber: A Participant Classification Framework, International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance
- Anthropometric Characteristics of Road Cyclists of Different Performance Levels, Applied Sciences
- The Record Power Profile in Professional Female Cyclists: Normative Values Obtained From a Large Database, International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance
- Physiological characteristics of masters-level cyclists, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research