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What is FTP?

FTP is the acronym for Functional Threshold Power. In theory this is the max power that you can sustain for an hour’s riding. Once you know this number, it’s then used to set your training zones and help you gauge your riding efforts.

FTP can only be measured using a power meter (or a turbo trainer that reports power), it’s not something that you can use a heart rate monitor for. Because it comes from a power meter reading, the FTP is measured in watts.

There’s a few different ways to calculate your FTP. The classic one involves riding for 20 minutes and multiplying the average power by 0.95. This saves riders having to devote an hour’s time to the test and gives accurate numbers.

More recently the Ramp Test has found favour. With this test, the wattage to sustain gets harder and harder across a set of intervals. Once you can’t sustain the required wattage, you’ve maxed out and it’s time to do some maths. Luckily there are calculators out there to do it for you.

For pros, knowing this number helps them to work out what effort they can sustain on long climbs. The running joke of Team Sky/Ineos looking at their power numbers all the time during the Tour de France comes from knowing their FTP number. It’s also great for time trials where an individual effort needs to be sustained over a set distance.

How am I compared to pro cyclists?

Thanks to the tiered power chart provided by Andrew Coggan, we can see the sorts of numbers required to be at certain levels.

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This chart requires riders to have completed efforts at the listed interval times. The average watts of those efforts are then divided by the rider’s weight to give a w/kg figure.

So for instance, my FTP at the moment is 326 and I weighed 83kg when I set it. My figure for the FT column is therefore 3.92. This puts me in the middle-upper range of the Good tier. As you can see, I’m a long way off being able to turn pro!

For British riders looking at this chart, Cat 5 is an American introductory racing category and can be interpreted as an extension of Cat 4.

This is only one way of reading this chart and whilst people obsess about where their FTP fits on it actually we should look across the board.



Where a rider’s w/kg sits for each interval helps to create a rider power profile. It’s possible for a strong sprinter to have reached Cat 1 without a FTP Cat 1 FTP value on this chart because their 5 second interval value is so high. The same applies to puncheurs who might have a high 1 minute or 5 minutes values but a lower FTP.

My own values on this chart are low 5s, middling 1m, high 5m and a middling-high FTP. This puts me somewhere between the pursuiter and time-triallist rider profiles.

The original post on power profiling on TrainingPeaks can be found here.

What FTPs do pro cyclists have?

I’m going to add a caveat here. Some of these figures have been ‘reverse engineered’ from other data, some come directly from actual data and some count slightly as hearsay.

A lot come directly from what riders have entered into their own Strava accounts. This applies to the weight figure too in most cases. What I can’t guarantee is when the FTP figure was updated or when the weight figure was updated. I can’t even be sure if they were updated at the same time. What I can guarantee is that someone with access to the rider’s Strava account has entered the figures.

I thought about listing the tables by w/kg but decided to list them by outright FTP numbers instead. It’s time to give the rouleurs with high power some credit!

FTPs are often closely guarded secrets for top riders. So just like the salaries listed here, take the numbers with a pinch of salt but this is a decent guide nonetheless.

Mathieu van der Poel

Men’s pro peloton

Rider FTP (w) Weight (kg) W/KG Year Ben Wolfe 490 86 5.70 2018 Magnus Backstedt 486 95 5.12 2012 Mathieu van der Poel 485 75 6.46 2020 Will Clarke 471 81 5.81 2014 Connor Dunne 470 88 5.34 2017 Tobias Ludvigsson 445 75 5.93 2020 Daniel Oss 445 78 5.71 2019 Bradley Wiggins 440 83 5.30 2015 Tom Dumoulin 431 69 6.25 2015 Ben Swift 430 70 6.14 2020 Tejay van Garderen 425 72 5.90 2018 Michal Kwiatkowski 420 68 6.18 2020 Gabriel Cullaigh 420 79 5.31 2020 Ryan Mullen 420 82 5.12 2020 Dimitri Claeys 417 77 5.42 2020 Matteo Dal-Cin 412 77 5.35 2020 Jens Voigt 412 78 5.28 2014 Robert Gesink 410 70 5.86 2015 Bruno Armirail 407 70 5.81 2020 Lukasz Wisniowski 406 78 5.21 2020 Mikael Cherel 400 65 6.15 2020 Oliver Naesen 400 73 5.48 2020 Connor Swift 400 77 5.19 2020 Tim Declercq 400 78 5.13 2020 Stijn Steels 400 78 5.13 2020 Alex Dowsett 400 79 5.06 2020 Alessandro De Marchi 399 66 6.05 2020 Ben King 396 69 5.74 2020 Dorian Godon 396 73 5.42 2020 Reinardt Janse van Rensburg 396 77 5.14 2020 Dylan Sunderland 395 65 6.08 2020 Ben O’Connor 395 66 5.98 2020 Damien Touze 395 68 5.81 2020 Heinrich Haussler 391 72 5.43 2020 Lennard Hofstede 390 70 5.57 2020 Scott Thwaites 390 70 5.57 2020 Adam de Vos 390 70 5.57 2020 Michael Valgren 390 72 5.42 2020 Nils Politt 390 80 4.88 2020 Angel Madrazo 389 61 6.38 2020 Nicholas Roche 389 71 5.48 2020 Frederik Backaert 389 77 5.05 2020 Guillaume Boivin 388 80 4.85 2020 Mark Donovan 385 66 5.83 2020 Egan Bernal 383 59 6.50 2020 Jasha Sutterlin 382 79 4.84 2020 Sacha Modolo 380 67 5.67 2020 Grega Bole 380 68 5.59 2020 Travis McCabe 380 70 5.43 2020 Willie Smit 379 72 5.26 2020 Sebastan Reichenbach 378 64 5.91 2020 Lluis Mas 376 71 5.30 2020 Chris Hamilton 375 64 5.86 2020 Mike Teunissen 375 72 5.21 2020 Dion Smith 372 67 5.55 2020 Tom van Asbroeck 371 72 5.15 2020 Nils Eekhof 370 72 5.14 2020 Jacob Tipper 365 78 4.68 2020 Timothy Dupont 363 71 5.11 2020 Tosh van der Sande 361 64 5.64 2020 Simon Geschke 360 63 5.71 2020 Juan Antonio Flecha 360 72 5.00 2013 Geoffrey Soupe 360 72 5.00 2020 Lucas Eriksson 359 64 5.61 2020 Sam Welsford 357 80 4.46 2020 Mads Wurtz Schmidt 352 69 5.10 2020 George Bennett 350 58 6.03 2020 Boris Vallee 349 80 4.36 2020 Kevin Deltombe 346 67 5.16 2020 Emils Liepins 345 68 5.07 2020 Koen de Kort 337 71 4.75 2020 Logan Owen 336 67 5.02 2020 Romain Hardy 332 62 5.36 2020 Mathieu Burgaudeau 330 61 5.41 2020 Lachlan Morton 330 63 5.24 2020 Jetse Bol 320 70 4.57 2020 Kenny De Ketele 318 71 4.48 2020 Clement Venturini 302 60 5.03 2020 Neilson Powless 295 66 4.47 2020

Elizabeth Banks

Women’s pro peloton

Rider FTP (w) Weight (kg) W/KG Year Evelyn Stevens 305 55 5.55 2016 Lizzy Banks 291 62 4.69 2019 Ella Harris 290 57 5.09 2019 Leah Dixon 283 67 4.22 2020 Liane Lippert 278 56 4.96 2019 Lucinda Brand 276 58 4.76 2019 Megan Chard 276 68 4.06 2020 Peta Mullens 270 58 4.66 2020 Lisa Norden 270 61 4.43 2019 Sheyla Gutierrez 270 62 4.36 2019 Lindsay Goldman 270 64 4.22 2019 Elise Chabbey 268 52 5.15 2019 Emilia Fahlin 260 63 4.13 2020 Juliette Labous 260 54 4.82 2019 Chloe Dygert-Owen 260 66 3.94 2019 Belen Lopez 242 54 4.48 2020 Heidi Franz 240 52 4.62 2020 Emma Chilton 240 54 4.44 2020 Bryony van Velzen 240 57 4.21 2020 Pia Smith 237 60 3.95 2020 Puck Moonen 229 56 4.09 2020 Sara Penton 224 55 4.07 2019 Anna Henderson 223 58 3.85 2019 Marie-Soleil Blais 220 53 4.15 2019 Adrienn Szabo 208 50 4.16 2020 Mieke Docx 206 49 4.20 2020 Coryn Rivera 204 47 4.38 2019 Jessica Allen 203 55 3.69 2020 Dalia Muccoli 189 52 3.64 2019