Trainer Road: Should I Be In My Aero Position During FTP Tests?

Marc Tanguay

This was an interesting article published by our friends over at Trainer Road.

After thinking about it, it seems to make sense that the FTP tests should be conducted in your race position -- which from Coach Rich & Patrick should definitely be in aero as much as possible, right?

Its definitely NOT what I've been doing on Trainer Road on the KICKR.  I've mostly been sitting up as if riding a road bike.  That could be throwing off my numbers and resulting targets (to the high side).

Thought I would Ask The Pros.  Your thoughts?

Should I Be in My Aero Position During FTP Tests?

October 28, 2015  |  Chad Timmerman

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A common dilemma many cyclists face is whether or not they should do their FTP test in their aero position. When assessing your body’s physiological capabilities, determine the position that allows you to find your true FTP.

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The goal of an FTP assessment is to estimate your functional threshold power as accurately as possible. Your FTP represents the balance point at which your muscles start producing more byproduct than they can effectively process. This results in the type of fatigue commonly described as “popping” or “blowing up.”

Finding this delicate balance requires discipline in a rider’s cadence, pacing pattern and position. When a rider completes their FTP test in a less-than-optimal position, like an unrefined aero position, they risk sacrificing the effectiveness of all their other workouts.

How is this?

In most cases, athletes find it difficult to put out the same amount of power in their aero position as they do in their upright position. As a result, if you do your FTP test in your aero position, your workouts may be too easy when riding in your upright position — and vice versa. If you complete your FTP test in your upright position, your workouts may be too hard in your aero position.

So, back to the big question: how does a rider determine if they should do their FTP test in their aero position or not? It all comes down to whatever position allows you to find your true FTP. The only way to determine your true FTP is if you test in the position that allows you to reach your maximum potential. 

To dive a littler deeper, consider these questions:

What’s the position you’ll use in your competition?

Aero athletes – and we all qualify to some extent – should slowly adapt their ability to produce high levels of power to those positions they’ll use in competition. This can be accomplished through practice, fit manipulations and flexibility training.

Don’t neglect this important trial and error stage. Too many time trialists want to put in a good TT, but will not spend enough time adapting to the rigors of an exceptionally aerodynamic position.

The takeaway here: Learn how your position affects your power output. Then, address anything that works against your efforts to sustain race pace within your fitness capabilities through testing during training.

Over time, what most riders will find is that they can adapt their power to their aero position. But, many times they’ll also learn that their position is too aggressively aerodynamic — no amount of practice is going to yield their highest power output in a posture that’s too severe.

Are you thinking of your intervals as position-independent or position-related?

Conditioning during intervals is either one or the other. Based off the nature of an interval and goals of a workout, athletes should view each interval as either an opportunity to build power output in a specific position or build some aspect of your fitness.

This point further reinforces that your FTP test should be done in whichever position yields your highest sustainable wattage, much the same with VO2max intervals. 

For example, in the case of position-related interval, the goal would be to stress a particular energy system or tax the muscles in a specific way. This is time to discover where the balance between position on the bike and working to your full capability lies. If you’re interested in learning more about this topic, I cover it pretty well in my latest Ask a Cycling Coach podcast episode. Check out the show notes here.

Now that you know which position to be in when you do your FTP test, make sure to nail all the other aspects of your assessment. Take note of these tips to help you perform your best during your next FTP assessment.

Coach Patrick

EN rulez are very simple. Test how you will be training for the targets you have set. So if you need your FTP for race math, then yes, in aero. In the case of the winter, you are raising your FTP to higher than when you started the OS. If you want to be aero you can...if you want to ride up, or road bike, you can. As long as both tests (And your training) in between are on the same plane you are good.

Anecdotally, I find that my outdoor TT Bike (aerobar) FTP is about 10% higher than my indoor Road (sit up) FTP...now that I "know" my gap, I can do the right mental math.

That said, in the words of Coach Rich --- riding my TT bike is when I go to work, and I go to work 12 weeks out from my A race.

scott dinhofer

Patrick, you raise another question, how does everyone account for these differences in their logging of activities to strava, training peaks, who, etc
Do you change it on your device at measurement? Do you change it on the various sites before or after upload?

TH3 FRB

I usually just let it be and don't bother with trying to tinker around with changes.  I know my road bike power is lower than my tri bike and I also know my indoor power is lower on both bikes.  I always test on my tri bike and tend to ride that 95% of the time year-round.  In the winter I test on my trainer because I know I'll be there 95% of the next 3-5 months.  If I happen to get outside I'm likely doing a group ride or something longer and unstructured just to take advantage of the opportunity so my precise FTP isn't all that important.  If it's summer and I have an outside FTP but have to hit the trainer I won't change my FTP in TR, TP, WKO+, etc, but I will dial back my targets for that particular workout because I know I'll struggle to hit my outside FTP on the trainer.