In alittle less than 3 months, I've improved my FTP from 235 to 275. Is it possible to see improvement in 3 weeks? My "A" race is in 3 weeks, I think with an FTP of 290 to 300 I should be in contention. I'm a Cat 5; hopefully I won't be out the back.:)

i hope i can raise my ftp by 40 watts in 3 months. how much do you weigh?

My FTP is under 250 and I weight 170 so thats not all too high and I am fine in the 4s. you dont need a 300w ftp to hold your own in a cat 5 race. If you are worried about getting dropped you need to be more concerned with recovering from repeated efforts above your threshold.

a 275 ftp isnt going to hold you back unless you are like 250lbs

Please confirm this is a time trial.

Three weeks is a pretty standard training interval for those who tear-down for 3 weeks and recover 1.

I think three weeks is a perfect amount of time to see performance improvements, assuming you're consistent enough to detect an improvement.

If you need a new avenue for increasing FTP and aren't doing any off-the-bike resistance training, for some just adding light to moderate weight training three times a week for three weeks results in the kind of substantial improvements you're looking for.

And yeah, what kind of race is this? If you've honed your aerodynamics very finely, 300 watts on a flat course would be fairly devastating at even some of the 3 and 4 TTs here.

What kind of program are you on that's resulted in these kind of preposterous gains?

40 watts in 3 weeks? Crap, I haven't seen 40 watts in 6 months.

If you need a new avenue for increasing FTP and aren't doing any off-the-bike resistance training, for some just adding light to moderate weight training three times a week for three weeks results in the kind of substantial improvements you're looking for.
Of all the claims I've seen for resistance training, I've never seen anyone claim it improves aerobic condition. What is your source for this and who are the "some" you refer to? Untrained, sedentary individuals will benefit from almost any exercise, but that is not really relevant to the readers here.

Of all the claims I've seen for resistance training, I've never seen anyone claim it improves aerobic condition. What is your source for this and who are the "some" you refer to? Untrained, sedentary individuals will benefit from almost any exercise, but that is not really relevant to the readers here.

i would think plyometrics would be better then weight training.

Resistance training has been shown to increase time to exhaustion at a given effort level.

I'd still rather just ride though :)

i would think plyometrics would be better then weight training.
Maybe, but better than nothing is not the same as good. Lack of specificity dooms any of these alternatives to minimal benefit at best.

i dont think of it as an add on more like an addition to regular training.

Of all the claims I've seen for resistance training, I've never seen anyone claim it improves aerobic condition. What is your source for this and who are the "some" you refer to? Untrained, sedentary individuals will benefit from almost any exercise, but that is not really relevant to the readers here.

Nope. We're talking trained endurance athletes.

Count me among the skeptics. I'm aware of most of the total body of work on the subject. I'm just pointing this out after seeing a reference to this and related work in an article on strength training on one of the power training/coaching sites.

Maximal strength training improves aerobic endurance performance (http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1034/j.1600-0838.2002.01140.x?cookieSet=1&journalCode=sms) The authors here cite the mode of improvement as improved work economy (I'm guessing enabled by the increased muscle strength.)

Maximal strength training improves aerobic endurance performance (http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1034/j.1600-0838.2002.01140.x?cookieSet=1&journalCode=sms) The authors here cite the mode of improvement as improved work economy (I'm guessing enabled by the increased muscle strength.)
I don't think this is relevant to this discussion. Note resistance training in the article was specific to the movement of the sport, and skiing unlike cycling, does not have gears to allow the athlete to control the force of movement.

I should clarify, not 40 watts in 3 weeks. I've improved by 40 watts (235 to 275) in 11 weeks. I want/hope to improve by 10 watts in 3 weeks. I have been training 12 to 15 hours per week with a ton of quality work. Four hard workouts per week. My best workout (I swear by it) is 3 to 4 hours of endurance with 2 x 20min threshold. One 20min effort on the flats and a second 20min effort on a sustained climb. I also mix in a few quick accelerations.

I weigh 160lbs; I guess I see 300 watts (4watts per kg) as my goal. I'm not really sure why. I'm also very new to cycling. I've done alot of running (3 years) but I've only been cycling now 6 months.

Please confirm this is a time trial.

Lactate test

40w sounds like a lot even for 3 months.

your w/kg is more than enough to race cat 5. It sounds like you should focus more on group dynamics in these few weeks leading up to your race. just my opinion.

Just go race.

what he said.

yup. although it's a good place to start, there's a lot more to getting good race results than having a high w/kg ftp.

case in point will be on tv at the tdf today. likely will result in a bunch sprint and win by one of the "sprinters, anyone think the "sprinters" have a higher ftp than a gc contender?

edit: good luck in your race e.g.g.