As the title says, is it worth doing FF after a 4 week tempo block.
I had to cut the previous block at the start of week 3 due to being unwell. Missed about 2 weeks training and restarted. Today is my last session of a 4 week tempo block and i am not sure if it’s worth doing a full frontal before starting another round of building blocks to work more on ftp and/or map (weakness).
I finished every workout (my mind is not as strong as my body) but I wouldn’t say it was easy , not destroying either, but it doesn’t “feel” like anything has improved but it could just be accumulated fatigue.
Is 4 weeks of tempo building blocks enough to warrant a retest or is any improvement likely to be minimal and it’s better to just jump into another block (maybe ftp) and test in 4 more weeks?
FYI starting numbers 1054, 439, 263, 220 90kg 36yr old 5’11
I also fairly new to proper cycling.
Hi @bikedom Great question. I think the way to approach this is to do Half Monty instead of FF. We love testing and suffering but I think that for someone in your situation you would get the resolution that you need without having to recover and prep for a good FF. Since you are new to cycling, it is likely that you will adapt rather quickly and will likely see some changes in only ~4 weeks. Going forward, a FF after ~12 weeks is a good frequency. Good luck!
Cheers,
Jeff
I ended up doing FF. forgot how horrible it was but felt even if physically there was little improvement, my mental capacity and ability to dig has improved over the 4 weeks.
I improved across the board,
1054, 439, 263, 220 up to
1119, 446, 275, 225
Gutted the AC wasn’t higher as I was asked for sweets repeatedly during the last 10 secs and didn’t pedal for the last 2 secs.
I’m still an attacker.
The question now is what plan next. I’m going to be starting track in a few months so not sure where to go.
@bikedom Looks like i was too late. You will definitely need a HR monitor. The HM uses the 20 min constrained HR against your power to predict your FTP. But nice work on the FF! Those are great improvements for a 4 week block.