Long climbs have you bumping up against your power ceiling.

Long climbs have you bumping up against your power ceiling.

I prefer to limit the mathematical computations many Instructors typically ask of their classes. For example you'd never hear me say;

"now I want everyone at 85% of their FTP" or... "this next interval is 30 seconds in Zone 5B which is 103 to 106% of your LT/AT heart rate followed by 2 minutes in Zone 3 = 90%-93%"... everybody got that? Then let's GO!!!

I'll admit that part of this is due to my phobia of math. It's also because I recognise that there are a wide diversity of personalities riding in front of me. Sure, I've got a few engineers who could probably spit out the square root of their FTP between pedal strokes if you asked, but it's my impression that the majority of folks in your class would prefer that you leave the math for times when they have a calculator handy 🙂

Just this past Sunday I had two women in my Performance Cycle class cheer when I mentioned that I wouldn't be requiring any percentage figuring that morning.

But we still need to communicate intensities, right? That's where establishing Floors and Ceilings comes in. They're simple concepts everyone will understand - we all know what's below a floor or when we're up against a ceiling!

Master Instructor Dennis Mellon using this same Floors and Ceilings concept in his classes, except a little differently. We discuss how we each use them to (hopefully) communicate effectively, in this ICI/PRO Podcast episode.

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Please let us know your questions.

You can read more about using VT1 Aerobic Threshold and VT2 Anaerobic Threshold to create easy to understand Floors and Ceilings here.

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Originally posted 2015-02-04 11:51:07.

John

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