Cycling Training: Stop Training for Last Season's Fitness

Why becoming a better cyclist next year starts with understanding the athlete you are today.

Every fall, cyclists begin thinking about the next season. New goals, new events, and new opportunities to improve. For many, that means looking back at their training, reviewing their FTP, evaluating their biggest rides, and thinking about what they need to do differently. But here is something I have learned after decades of coaching: one of the biggest mistakes cyclists make when planning a new season is building their training around the fitness they had last season rather than the athlete they need to become next season.

It sounds like a small distinction, but it is an important one. We tend to evaluate our training through the lens of what we did. How many hours did we ride? How much training load did we accumulate? Did our FTP improve? Those are useful questions, but they only tell part of the story. To truly improve, we need to understand what kind of cyclist we are today, where our strengths and weaknesses lie, and how those abilities align with the demands of our future goals.

That is where good season planning begins.

First, Understand the Athlete

One of my favorite coaching principles comes from Dr. Andy Coggan, who has long emphasized that effective training requires understanding two things: the abilities of the cyclist and the demands of the event. Most cyclists understand the second part. If you are preparing for a mountainous gran fondo, climbing matters. If you are training for a gravel race, endurance and durability matter. If you are racing criteriums, repeated accelerations, positioning, and racecraft are essential.

But the first part, understanding the abilities of the cyclist, is where things get interesting. Most cyclists define their abilities through a handful of numbers, usually FTP and perhaps a few personal bests. While those numbers matter, they do not provide a complete picture of the athlete.

I like to think of an athlete as a three-dimensional model built around physiology, power performance, and cycling skills. Together, these dimensions help us understand who the athlete is today and, more importantly, what they need to develop to achieve their goals.

Dimension One: Understanding Your Physiology

Physiology is the engine behind your cycling performance. It represents the underlying systems that produce power, sustain effort, and respond to training. When I evaluate an athlete, I want to understand several important characteristics, including Functional Threshold Power (FTP), time to exhaustion (TTE), maximal aerobic power, VO2max, and anaerobic work capacity. When available, laboratory testing and lactate data can provide additional insight.

Why does this matter? Because two cyclists with the same FTP can have very different physiological abilities. Imagine two athletes who both have an FTP of 250 watts. One can sustain power near FTP for 55 minutes, while the other struggles after 30 minutes. On paper, they have the same FTP, but their ability to sustain that power is very different. Their training needs may be different as well.

The same applies to an athlete with excellent aerobic fitness but limited high-end aerobic power compared with someone who has outstanding five-minute power but struggles to sustain longer efforts. Both may need improvement, but not in the same areas. FTP is an important measurement, but it should never become the entire definition of fitness. Understanding physiology helps us identify the characteristics of the engine, not just how much power it produces.

Dimension Two: Understanding Your Power Performance

The second dimension is power performance, or what the athlete can actually deliver on the bike. This is where the power-duration curve becomes such a valuable coaching tool. Rather than focusing on one number, we examine performance across a range of durations, typically including five seconds, one minute, five minutes, 20 minutes, and 40 minutes. Each tells us something different about the athlete's abilities.

The real value comes from examining these performances together. An athlete with excellent five-minute power but relatively weak 20- and 40-minute power may need to develop the ability to sustain a greater percentage of their aerobic capacity. Another athlete might have strong 20-minute power when fresh but experience a significant decline after three hours of riding. That athlete may have a strong engine but lack the durability required for their target event.

This brings us to an important coaching concept: The power you can produce when fresh is not always the power you can produce when it matters. When reviewing a season, I want to understand more than peak power numbers. I want to know how consistently the athlete performed, how repeatable their efforts were, and what happened to their power as fatigue accumulated. These details often reveal training opportunities that a single FTP number would never identify.

Dimension Three: Understanding Your Cycling Skills

This is probably the most overlooked dimension of cycling performance, particularly among athletes who train primarily with power meters and indoor trainers. Cycling is not just a physiological sport. It is also a technical sport, and how effectively we translate power into speed matters.

Think about two riders with identical power profiles competing in a rolling road race. One maintains momentum through corners, uses the group efficiently, and manages power smoothly over changing terrain. The other brakes excessively, accelerates repeatedly, and struggles with positioning. The second rider will likely expend significantly more energy even though both have the same physiological capabilities.

The same principle applies to gravel riding. A cyclist who can descend confidently, choose good lines, and maintain momentum across challenging terrain may gain significant time without producing additional power. Bike handling, cornering, descending, drafting, positioning, and racecraft are all trainable skills that influence performance.

This is why I encourage cyclists to evaluate technical abilities just as seriously as physiological ones. Are you comfortable riding in groups? Can you corner confidently? Do you understand how to use gearing to maintain speed over rolling terrain? Can you manage your power efficiently rather than constantly surging? For some athletes, improvements in these areas may produce a greater performance benefit than another ten watts of FTP.

Now, Understand the Demands of Your Goals

Once we have a good model of the athlete, we can begin evaluating the demands of their goals.

This is where planning becomes much more specific.

Imagine your primary goal next year is a challenging five-hour gravel race featuring rolling terrain, sustained climbs, and a difficult final hour. Success requires a strong aerobic engine, but it also demands durability, effective fueling, terrain management, and technical skills.

Now imagine your athlete model reveals strong FTP and five-minute power but significant declines in performance after three hours, along with weaknesses in descending and cornering. What should you prioritize? Probably not another training block focused primarily on raising FTP. Instead, you may benefit more from developing aerobic durability, improving fueling strategies, and practicing the technical skills required by the event.

This is the key distinction. We are no longer simply trying to make the athlete fitter. We are trying to make the athlete better prepared. That is a very different approach to training.

Train the Athlete, Not Just the Numbers

When cyclists begin planning winter training, there is a natural tendency to repeat what worked previously. If a particular interval block raised FTP last winter, why not repeat it? If higher training volume produced gains, why not add another hour or two?

Sometimes that is exactly the right answer, but sometimes the athlete has changed, and the training priorities need to change with them. An athlete who has spent two winters successfully improving FTP may now have adequate threshold power for their goals, while durability has become the primary limitation. Continuing to focus on FTP may produce additional gains, but those gains might not translate into better event performance.

The goal of training is not simply to improve the numbers we already measure. It is to improve the abilities that matter most to performance. That means identifying our limiters and developing training around them rather than assuming that more volume, more intensity, or a higher FTP automatically equals better results.

Use the Fall to Build Your Athlete Model

Fall is one of the best times to perform this evaluation because we have an entire season of training and performance data to learn from. Before rushing into another structured training plan, I encourage athletes to review three important areas.

First, examine your physiology. How did your FTP, TTE, aerobic power, and other physiological characteristics change? Did you develop a more complete engine, or did you primarily improve one aspect of your fitness?

Second, evaluate your power performance. Compare your power-duration curve with previous seasons. Look beyond peak performances to understand repeatability and durability. Were you stronger during the efforts that mattered most, particularly late in longer rides?

Third, assess your cycling skills. Think about where you performed confidently and where you struggled. Did handling, cornering, descending, or group positioning limit your performance? Were you efficient with your power, or did you waste energy through unnecessary accelerations?

These questions do not need to become an overly complicated scientific exercise. The objective is to build a more complete picture of yourself as an athlete and then compare that picture with the demands of your goals. That comparison is where the real training priorities begin to emerge.

And don't forget the whole athlete. Physiology and performance data help explain what you can do on the bike, but recovery, nutrition, mobility, strength, available training time, and life stress all influence your ability to improve. Sometimes the greatest opportunity for progress comes from better fueling, more consistent training, improved strength, or simply developing habits that allow you to absorb training more effectively.

Build Next Year's Athlete

As you begin thinking about next season, I encourage you to approach the planning process differently. Don't start by asking how much you should train or which intervals you should do. Start by understanding the athlete you are today.

Evaluate your physiology, review your power performance, assess your skills, and think carefully about the demands of your goals. Maybe you need greater aerobic power. Maybe you need better durability or the ability to repeat hard efforts. Maybe your biggest opportunity is becoming a more efficient rider or developing the strength and mobility to support consistent training.

Whatever the answer, let that understanding guide your training decisions.

The best training plan is not the one that produces the biggest numbers. It is the one that develops the abilities you need to achieve your goals.

That is the real opportunity of fall season planning. We have the chance to look beyond what we accomplished this year and make thoughtful decisions about what comes next.

Because the goal is not to recreate last season's fitness. The goal is to build next season's athlete.