Workout Guide

This page will go over some important things to know about FSE power based bike workouts. For those that don’t use power meters, your workouts will be RPE based, (Rate of Perceived Exertion). RPE workouts will be very similar looking, so most of the information below will still apply. However, TSS for RPE workouts is very much an estimate. Click here to learn more about training zones and the RPE scale.

Breakdown of a Workout

Name: Most workouts will be named after a famous cyclist or famous climb. In this case it’s Connie Carpenter-Phinney, former world champion and Olympic gold medalist. Some names will be followed with a number, sometimes in another language depending on the origin of the cyclist. Higher numbers indicate more intervals and/or sets. In this case, this is number Two, a bit harder than One, and easier than Three.

Type: The next characters will indicate the type of workout and the power zones. In this case it’s a Sweet Spot workout and will primarily be in zone 3 and 6. It’s listed as SS because this is where you spend most of the time in the intervals. Note that this is always representing the intervals, not where the most time is spent. Many workouts will spend more time in zone 1 or 2 due to warmup, cool down and rest between intervals. 

Discipline: The little picture indicates this is a bike workout. It could be a strength workout graphic or a mountain bike graphic, or any other endurance sport. It could also be a couch which indicates a rest day. 

Time: Nearly all workouts will show a time. Sometimes they will indicate a distance, but usually we train by time and/or intensity. 

Distance: Very rarely distance in miles will be listed. When it is, it’s usually because I want you to reach a certain mileage, no matter how long it takes. This is good for training for a distance goal like a century.

TSS: This is the workout’s Training Stress Score. This is a combination of the duration and intensity of a workout. This metric is not perfect, but it is a good way to gauge the training stress a workout will have on your body. 45 TSS is a fairly easy endurance ride for an hour. 90 TSS is a very hard interval ride for an hour. TSS doesn’t always tell the whole story however, as you may find certain intervals suit you better than others, while others may feel harder, but represent the same TSS score.

Workout Profile: Most workouts will show the intervals in graphical form, with bar height showing prescribed power in watts and bar width representing length of time. This profile will give you an immediate impression of the character of a workout. In this case, some longer interval blocks with some shorter, but harder intervals at the beginning, end, or both of each block. In between those are rest periods of much lower wattage targets. A grouping of intervals or blocks without a significant rest period are considered sets. This workout has 3 sets since the rest periods between each interval are so short. 

Planned/Completed Columns: The Planned column shows various metrics, but usually they’ll only show Duration, TSS, and IF. IF and TSS indicate the Intensity Factor and overall training stress of the workout. If the ride is recorded with a bike computer or Zwift and they are synced with TrainingPeaks, the Completed column will be filled in automatically. Distance, speed, etc. are all based on the actual course ridden which is why they aren’t listed in the Planned column. (Calories are a big guess without an HR monitor, but TP will try based on power and duration. With an HR monitor, it’s a more educated guess.)

Description: This will explain the type of workout and its purpose. It will also describe the workout intervals if you decide to perform it outside without a bike computer giving you prompts. This Outside description is a simplification you can more easily remember than the built workout with all the quick changes. The many power changes in the built workout are there to keep things interesting, especially when performed on a trainer. The resulting physiological adaptations are essentially the same as the built workout.

Outside Workout: To perform the workout above, you would warm up well for 10-20min, including some short hard efforts. Then you would ride at 95% of your FTP for 3min. At the end of 3min you would surge hard for another 30s. Then rest for 1min, spinning easy, then begin the next one, for a total of 9 intervals. Then cool down by riding easy for another 5-10min.

Post-activity is where we’ll make comments about the completed workout. I use this a lot and you should too. I like to see comments about how the workout went. Was it harder or easier than you thought? Did you go in not feeling great? Did you feel surprisingly strong? Did you have technical or mechanical problems? Or anything unusual that happened. 

Completed Workout: Below is a completed workout. The green indicates it was completed within +/- 20% of planned duration. This athlete rode a fairly flat course in Zwift so their speed and mileage was fairly high. It had decent TSS and IF (Intensity Factor) for a sweet spot workout. 

Types of Workouts and Their Zones

This is the Coggan iLevel 7-zone system we use. There are several other valid zone systems, but we use this one as it’s native to the analytical software we use, WKO5. For more about training zones, click here.

Recovery - Zone 1: <55% FTP

This is a very easy ride, basically just spinning the pedals.

Endurance - Zone 2: 55-75% FTP

This is where you’ll spend most of your time riding, especially for very long rides of 3 hours or more.

Tempo - Zone 3: 75-85% FTP

This is group ride pace. You’re pushing, but it’s sustainable for fairly long periods.

Sweet Spot - Zone 4a: 85-95% FTP

This is an intense pace, just below threshold. Intervals of 10-20min are common. This zone offers the most bang for your buck aerobically. For those training less than 7 hours a week, this is where you’ll gain much of your aerobic adaptation. 

Threshold - Zone 4: 100% FTP

This is your Functional Threshold Power. For non-power training athletes, this is just called your threshold. This is generally considered the intensity you can maintain for 1 hour. We most commonly measure it by doing a 20min max effort test and subtracting 5%. All training zones are based on this number. It can also change frequently, including day to day by a few watts.

VO2 - Zone 5: 105-120% FTP

This is a very intense pace and causes some of the most cardiovascular adaptation. We can only spend a few minutes here at a time. We train here a lot to improve our anaerobic and aerobic capacity. 

FRC - Zone 6: 120-150+% FTP

This is your Functional Reserve Capacity, sometimes called Anaerobic Capacity. This is extremely intense and we can usually only spend less than a minute here at a time. This is often only reached in race situations, so we train it less frequently, or during race season.

Pmax - Zone 7: Maximal

This is your maximum wattage possible. Only all-out sprints lasting less than 20 seconds are spent here.