Xert Fitness Test

Support
1

Hi,

I’ve been playing around with the quick fitness test you’ve advised. I’ve used a 5 minute effort at around 115% of TP to get me down to 400+TP MPA, and then I do an out of the saddle effort until I can’t go anymore. I finish up with the sets of sprints you’ve advised. A couple of questions:

  1. Should the “wearing down” of MPA before the first sprint be longer or shorter than mine, and at what effort level?
  2. Does a strength in shorter MMP efforts tend to skew the results of this test RE TP?
  3. What is the purpose of the 4 or 5 sprint efforts at the end?
2
  1. Perfect. The aim of this is to get maximal power efforts near your TP.
  2. Not really. If you don’t go that deep, then your first sprint will be expressing a lower MMP fitness. None of this skews results. They only make things less certain. But if Xert had already established a good fitness signature previously, then even a short MMP effort will help expose all three parameters.
  3. The idea is to get maximal effort points near Peak Power.

In principle, the best way to have Xert get a full picture of your current fitness is generate maximal efforts (points-of-failure) at various intensities. Those near Peak Power, need to be done fresh. Those midway need partial fatigue and those near Threshold Power need to have you deep into fatigue. If you can try and generate 5-10 seconds of power along your MPA line, during the maximal effort, even better.

FWIW, if you only give Xert 20 minute FTP test data, where you just stop at the end of the 20 minutes, it may have as little as one data point to base the 3 fitness signature parameters off of. We have some assum ptive logic when this happens but anyone that only does 20 minute tests or only 8 minute tests and never reaches their limit at any other time, isn’t going to get the best results from Xert. There just isn’t a lot of information in that one data point. Whereas a highly variable effort, where you reach your max at both higher and lower intensities, tells Xert much more about you and this is a much better test protocol. In fact, this will express all three fitness signature parameters and thus Xert can deduce your entire power-duration relationship at that time.