Why Your FTP Isn’t Improving (Even Though You’re Training Hard)
By Ric Stern
Every week I hear the same frustration from riders—especially masters cyclists who are training consistently and feel like they’re doing everything “right”:
“I’m working hard… so why isn’t my FTP moving?”
It’s rarely because of age, talent, or genetics. It’s almost always because the training being done—while well-intentioned—isn’t creating the specific physiological stress required to raise threshold. FTP is a stubborn metric. It responds brilliantly to the right combination of stimulus, timing, fuelling and recovery, and it refuses to budge when even one of those pieces is missing.
If your FTP has been stuck for months, let’s look at the reasons why, and more importantly, what to do about it.
You Spend Too Much Time in the “Middle”
This is the most common reason for stagnation. A lot of riders fall unintentionally into what I call the “always kind of hard” trap. Endurance rides start drifting upwards. Zwift rides have you sitting just under threshold far more often than you realise. Sweetspot slowly becomes threshold. Hard days are not hard enough, and easy days aren’t easy at all.
The trouble is that this moderate intensity feels productive, yet it rarely produces the adaptations necessary to move FTP. Mitochondria don’t get enough stimulus to grow. Aerobic enzymes don’t up-regulate in the way they should. VO₂max sits unchanged. And because you’re never truly riding easy, you don’t recover well enough to hit quality intensity when it matters.
FTP never moves because nothing is stressing the system in a way that forces it to.
A pyramidal distribution solves this. The majority of your riding should be genuinely easy. Then a small but consistent dose of MIET (moderately intensive endurance training) or tempo, and an even smaller amount of high-intensity work. When that structure is in place, threshold almost always rises as a side-effect of good training—not from smashing endless “FTP intervals.”
You’re Under-Fuelling, Especially on Long Rides
Under-fuelling is another enormous limiter, especially in riders over 40. Many still ride with the mindset that “less is more” when it comes to food intake, or fear they’ll gain weight if they eat properly during sessions. The opposite is true. If you under-fuel, you never train consistently enough to create long-term aerobic improvements.
Low carbohydrate availability blunts mitochondrial development, reduces the quality of threshold and VO₂max sessions, and leaves you too fatigued to complete the week’s plan properly. Riders who fade dramatically after 1,500–2,000 kJ of work almost always have a fuelling issue before they have a fitness issue.
Get fuelling right—60–90 g of carbohydrates per hour for endurance rides and structured sessions—and your training quality improves immediately. FTP usually follows within a few weeks.
Your VO₂max Hasn't Improved, So Your FTP Can’t Either
FTP sits as a proportion of VO₂max. If your aerobic ceiling is low or unchanged, threshold sits exactly where it is and refuses to budge. Many masters riders go months, sometimes years, without doing a real VO₂max session—either because group rides feel “hard enough” or because VO₂max intervals are uncomfortable and easy to avoid.
However, the adaptations that push VO₂max upwards are still very trainable after 40. You simply need controlled exposure to the right intensity: typically three to five minutes at 106–112% of FTP, repeated several times with adequate recovery. The goal is to elevate oxygen uptake and keep it high long enough for the body to adapt. When VO₂max improves, FTP has room to rise beneath it.
You’re Strength Training — But On the Wrong Days
Strength training is crucial for riders over 40. It protects muscle mass, improves force production, and makes the legs more resilient. But strength work must be placed correctly within the week. Many riders unknowingly sabotage their FTP training by lifting on one day and attempting threshold or VO₂max work the next.
Even a moderately heavy strength session disrupts neuromuscular coordination, affects recruitment patterns, and leaves the legs too fatigued to produce quality cycling power. The solution is simple: place your strength work after your hard cycling session, later in the same day. This protects the quality of the bike session, compresses overall stress, and frees up the following day for true recovery.
When strength is programmed correctly, it supports FTP progression rather than competing with it.
Your Testing Method Doesn’t Match Your Physiology
A number of riders become discouraged because their FTP “won’t improve,” but the issue is actually the testing method. Different riders respond differently to different tests:
Diesel riders tend to underperform on 20-minute tests.
Highly anaerobic riders may see their MAP-based FTP estimate come out artificially high.
Auto-detection algorithms often mistake fatigue, incomplete intervals, or random power spikes as changes in threshold.
Testing too frequently introduces noise rather than clarity.
A reliable approach is to test MAP every 8–12 weeks and use your personal ratio to estimate FTP. Then let your training data—MIET sessions, long tempo climbs, sustained efforts—confirm whether that estimate feels right.
When your testing matches your physiology, improvements become visible.
You’re Not Recovering Enough to Make Adaptations
After 40, recovery becomes a performance skill in its own right. You may still be capable of high-intensity work, but you are not capable of recovering from it as fast as you did at 25. If you repeatedly train hard while still carrying fatigue, you suppress the very adaptations you’re trying to achieve.
The early signs of under-recovery are subtle: a slightly elevated heart rate on easy rides, unusually high RPE at familiar power, difficulty completing MIET intervals, or VO₂max intervals that fall apart after two repetitions. If those signs are ignored, your training flatlines.
Masters riders thrive on a rhythm that respects recovery: hard days separated by genuinely easy days, at least one full rest day per week, and deload weeks every three to four weeks. When recovery improves, FTP responds.
You’re Focusing on the Number Instead of the Process
FTP is an outcome. It improves when you improve the systems that sit beneath it:
aerobic efficiency
VO₂max
durability
fuelling strategy
strength and neuromuscular capacity
consistency across months, not days
Chasing the number directly rarely works. Build the foundations and the number rises naturally.
And one more important point: sometimes maintaining FTP is the win. If you’ve been training for years and you’re holding threshold power into your 40s, 50s or 60s, that is exceptional performance. Decline is not inevitable. It can be slowed dramatically, and in many cases, reversed.
How to Get Your FTP Moving Again
The simplest formula is often the most effective:
Increase true Zone 2 volume.
Add one high-quality VO₂max session each week.
Use MIET sessions to build aerobic durability.
Fuel properly, every session.
Strength train after hard cycling, not before.
Recover like a masters rider, not a 20-year-old.
Do those consistently and your FTP will move. It always does.
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