Wednesday Wisdom: Gareth Winter – Building back power-to-weight ratio

A band showing brand colours of CicloZone, an indoor cycling app
The best thing about starting at the bottom is that you can only get better.
Between 2017 and 2020, my ‘power-to-weight ratio’ dropped from 5.07 watts-per-kilo to 3.89w/k. My cycling mindset was off balance (have a read of my previous entry for the full story). Darren Lee (cycling coach and founder of CicloZone) gave me a wake-up call and re-coached me to train with power and data.
The best thing about numbers is that they do not lie. Our brains,  however, are great at lying and justifying poor decisions. I sat on my turbo trainer (I use a Wahoo Kickr Core) and got to work with a clear sense of purpose – slowly build my 20 min FTP back up to 5w/k+. I had a long way to go.
But with a fresh mindset and lots of muscle memory in the legs, progression came easy and fast. My numbers edged up week-on-week. I planned three hard training session into my week, with active recovery rides in between.
I did lots of strength training to rebuild my core and overall athleticism.
January 16th 2020 – 239 watts, 61.4kg (2.89 w/k)
July 9th 2020 – 305 watts, 61.8kg (4.94 w/k)
The feeling of progressoin was keeping me motivated. I fell in love with indoor training and coach-led classes, which are great at motivating you when you need a little extra fire in your belly.
Then I reached the dreaded ‘plateau’ – the point where progress becomes minimal, not maximal. I had reached 4.94 w/k – dangerously close to my target of 5 w/pk.
The plateau is more of a mental wall than a phsyical one. It’s natural for progress to slow but, rather than accepting your ‘ceiling’, you have to look for more improvement areas.
I will share how I broke through the plateau in my next blog entry.
Gareth

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