I thought some of you might be interested in what Xert rankings look like for very heavy beginner cyclists (>140 kg), since it’s probably quite an unusual profile – male, 30–40 years old.
The W/kg values are, unsurprisingly, in the single-digit percentile range. Absolute power values are somewhere around the 20–50% range. But what really stands out is the sprint percentile at 65% – despite never having done any sprint training and having been generally unathletic until recently.
This might make cycling one of the very few sports where a severely overweight total beginner without any athletic history can immediately rank above the 50th percentile in at least one metric (granted, it’s not the most important one for performance, but it is fundamental to the Xert signature). Is this possibly due to muscles that have adapted to carrying excess weight, or something else?
By the way, are these percentiles based solely on Xert users, or do they also draw from other databases?