How to increasse LTP

Hello,
What training should be done to increase LTP? For 3 months my LTP has been decreasing despite aerobic training.

How much high intensity are you mixing in?
What is ramp rate currently set to and what is current hours/week?
Related –
Using LTP to train - Support - Xert Community Forum (xertonline.com)

Typically aerobic / endurance work is the answer, with increasing volume.

First, are you ramping volume ( you can add the low training load line to your chart to show it)?

Then, do you have any breakthroughs recently? If your signature is in the default ‘optimal decay’ and you don’t do any real breakthroughs, your LTP will decline despite volume increases, and that may be what we see in your chart? If so, do a proper breakthrough to see what your LTP really is today, and let us know it goes. And you can then switch to ‘no decay’ if you don’t plan regular all out efforts.

If your signature is accurate / reflecting a very recent breakthrough, it could be a matter of too much high and peak workas @ridgerider2 hinted. You can add the focus line to your chart to see that. Should be very long duration

1 Like

Hi Nathan,

There’s no way to directly influence your LTP in Xert as it’s not a separate component of the Fitness Signature.

If you turn on HIE on the graph you have shown, you’ll see that as threshold power goes up and LTP goes down HIE will be going up at a greater rate than TP. There is a direct mathematical relationship between HIE, TP and LTP. As TP gets higher without an increase in HIE LTP will get closer to TP as a proportion.

If you do a lot of low intensity work and no high intensity, your TP will decay less than HIE and that will pull up your LTP.

Mike

2 Likes

I am in the same boat as my powers just decrees no matter what training I do. How often should I look to do a BT? It’s a little frustrating to do all this training and watching my power decline.

Thank you!

Depends on decay setting, explained here including tips on how to activate it (also retrospectively, from the last BT)

I mostly leave it on no decay and try a BT every month or two. Optimal decay I think requires more frequent BTs. Either way you’ll get a little message on the home page (next to the one saying when your last BT was) saying when your signature is stale and needs a BT. On no decay you can ignore that (for a while), but on optimal I would do one as soon as fresh

1 Like

Like Wes has already mentioned, how the signature changes over time depends on the signature decay settings. FWIW, I find that the No Decay option works well over my winter training months (late November until April here in Southern Ontario). Once I’m back outside more, I switch to the ‘Slow Decay’ setting - I find it’s a little less aggressive than the optimal decay.

1 Like


Moderate2 and optimal decay

Looks like plenty of breakthroughs so explanation would be the focus - it’s very short at 4 to 5 minutes - I’ve rarely been near that low… and now with an endurance focus I’m at around 25 to 30 minutes. That will be why HIE is increasing rather than TP / LTP… you are still getting fitter, just maybe not in the way you want. Looks like you need less intensity / more endurance focus (and switch to no decay if you plan a long endurance only block)

More low intensity/endurance workouts. Seems that you have high/peak strain in most of your rides. Focus on adding in extra rides & keep the intensity super low.

FWIW, here is my 3 month progression (Moderate-2, No Decay - Training Load matched). Notice that I do mostly low-intensity rides & sprinkle in some High/Peak efforts only when I’m fresh (blue stars).


Had a nasty 10 day cold where the blue arrow points on the Strain chart, but overall you’ll see a lot of tall pure red (only low XSS) bars. I try and stick to HIIT about 2x’s per week.

1 Like

I assume all those tall ones with a larger percentage of high/peak strain are outdoors.
Are they group or solo rides?
None appear to be long and easy.

My experience has shown that I can increase LTP slightly faster than FTP. I focused a lot of my riding at LTP or a little above it and it slowly narrowed the gap on the FTP (maintenance, no decay. And maintenance slow decay). See chart below. The recent drop in FTP and LTP was a manual adjustment as I found my hill climb FTP was to high for flat land training and I could not finish workouts so I discounted it. My flat land FTP is about 7% lower than my hill climb FTP…. I can not detect such a difference for LTP between hills and flats.

1 Like

all those tall ones with a larger percentage of high/peak strain are outdoors with groups.