Originally Posted by
Doomrider74
Most of the standard FTP tests I've seen, including those on Zwift, require power meters. I know you can do it with heart rate, and I am familiar with them as well, but far too many outside factors affect heart rate for it to be a reliable metric. Plus, heart rate doesn't react fast enough to your effort to be useful for short intervals.
People trained successfully for about 150 years without super structured interval training. Highly structured training is the recent result of power meter availability, they're not the raison d'etre for power meters.
Training is one of the least demanding uses for a power meter. That's why riders can get along well with single-sided power meters -- accuracy and precision really don't matter much when all you're doing is using a power meter as if it were a HRM or stopwatch and speedometer. There are uses for power that do require accuracy and precision but training really isn't one of them.