Zwift FTP Ramp Test - After 8 weeks OFF?

Took the Zwift ramp test to see what effect the last couple of months (of not training hard) has had. It wasn't pretty.
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[@ChrisP978]

It's amazing how quickly you can lose cardio fitness, you start seeing declines in performance after just 2 weeks. I used to take winters off and each spring was like starting over on day 1, brutal. Thankful for indoor trainers helping to slow the bleed. If you have a solid base previously it does seem to come back more quickly provided the time gap isn't massive. For strength I never really saw much loss unless I was away 6 months.

[@miloroland6156]

I guess it is kinda off topic but does anybody know a good place to watch new series online ?

[@bevangarner]

I subscribed to your channel in March when I got my wahoo bike. I think your great!! The straight face humour you do really does make me laugh! Ive been a big wahoo fan for a few years now so also makes your channel relevant. Keep up making the great videos. Definitely deserve more subscribers

[@MarkLewisfitness]

Thanks 🙏

[@brianfisher8449]

Look at the “break” in hardcore training as a total body recovery. I’m 65 and have had a week or a bit more off every now and then. It did not take long to get back. Don’t go hardcore power to start. Do some endurance rides with some hard workouts thrown in,but not long workouts. Couple weeks you’ll be rocking. Like to vlog a lot.

[@frederikfrank-jessen4030]

Great way to incorporate the intro into the video! IMO an improvement. Good luck getting that fitness back as well. Tough battle, but it always pays off. Stay strong!

[@bparker6442]

The clip of you falling off the bike "cant wait to be this good again" !!! FUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNYYYYY

[@kingfuller7]

I got 400 See you on Strava

[@schumzy]

I'm in the exact same situation you're in regards to training. Saw it coming, didn't keep up the habit and today was my first ride in a week, after riding only 4 times the last 3 weeks. Knew where I was headed, but still made the mistake. the upside of being so wise, is I know what it takes to get back on it. So oh well, here we go yet again.

[@MarkLewisfitness]

Until the next time 😂

[@marcbaladi]

Always enjoy your vids man. This one has inspired me to try the ramp test. Don't be too hard on yourself - remember, you are well above average.

[@MarkLewisfitness]

Yep - but right now, a little closer to average than I like!

[@marcbaladi]

@@MarkLewisfitness so on a spinal tap 11 scale, you're about 7. That's decent. Any higher than 9 and you'll be way too far above average.

[@adamchurchill9125]

Hey Mark, as frustrating as it is, you will bounce back. We have all experienced these drops (they can occur for a myriad of reasons), but you know you have done it before, and you will again. It's just hard to accept any backwards trajectory when you are an achiever. It will feel even better when you pass the 320 FTP and it’s coming 👊🏻

[@GunrGunston]

Another great video there Mark. I can sure relate, I've had 8 weeks off recovering past accident (broken neck). I did the ramp test on zwift just before and was at 317watts. I'm only now just getting back on zwift and into some serious structured training. Not sure if in game too do another ramp test, still remember the pain..😵 I'm so enjoying following your journey as it's similar to where I'm at endurance wise. Keep up the great work I especially love the whitty humour. 🤣😂

[@madiantin]

You have my sympathies on the broken neck. My husband broke his two years ago and it was brutal. Hope you are recovering well with no lingering side effects.

[@GunrGunston]

@@madiantin I hope your husband made a full recovery. I was very lucky and only have minor residual affects from the accident although I did sustain several other fractures along with a collapsed lung. Time will tell if I can reach the physical fitness I had before the accident but here's to trying.

[@madiantin]

@@GunrGunston Dang, that sounds like a bad crash! Very painful! Take it easy on the recovery. The Dr. gave the go-ahead for my husband to start riding too early and he crashed again. !! It was too soon and he was unsteady. Luckily no major injuries that time, but it did cause him to take recovery much more carefully. The only permanent damage is the side of one of his fingers is numb. Not bad! Hopefully your residual effects are just as minor. Good luck getting back to physical fitness! It's always fun to see incremental improvements. =)

[@GunrGunston]

@@madiantin that's funny, the top half of my pointer finger on my right is numb. Certainly feels weird writing. Yes it will be another 3 months before I be out on the bike, thank God for zwift and this channel. I think Mark does a fantastic job with content, humour and relating it to the above average lol.

[@MarkLewisfitness]

I'm not sure if it's a positive or not, that my endurance is on a par with somebody recovering from a broken neck 😂 hope you are back on form soon 👍

[@SmilingScuba]

Another great video. I bet that cycling and running fitness comes back pretty fast.

[@LR6092]

You lose running fitness very fast actually.

[@mot0s896]

Sounds great. I put zwift training a bit back. First super motivated in a to hard program and after 2 weeks of failing or nearly failing the training im back a bit easyer to take the year for fun and get fit to a ton of gravel riding in the summer

[@1carusjohn32]

Mark, biggest gains I have made to my FTP has been over this winter on the back of 3 months aerobic training. Pretty much 2 to 3 90 min sessions per week. I Probably got involved in one short race per week and a monthly effort up the Alpe. as well. You need longer than hour sessions to do it unfortunately. ( Older than, you, 68kgs, ftp 270w ...... you have plenty more in there... you just have to develop it and apart from the time it is easy to do )

[@stevecullum7879]

Ergo mode - a cross between Erg and Ego mode? 😘 ps. enjoying HR mode on my headwind after watching your recent vid 👍👌

[@MarkLewisfitness]

Ha! My rowing background slipping through - ergometer!

[@mivoe99]

I also pretty recently did the McCarthy Special Training on Zwift. And let me say... It's hard as fu**. I completed a training plan like 3 weeks before and was in pretty good shape. I then did a little bit lighter but still consistent training in the weeks following this - but the McCarthy Special also kicked my butt.

[@MarkLewisfitness]

Glad it's not just me! The thing was brutal!

[@almac8524]

Yup, me too. It may be impossible!

[@dskordo]

Heats on Fire eh???? I too am a fan...of Rocky 4. Dragooooooo ;)

[@cyclingboss469]

The good thing about riding is that once you have good fitness it will come back quickly. Give it 2 months and see where you are at after 1 or 2 blocks of training.

[@XX-is7ps]

Exactly this - aerobic/vo2max is quick to build and equally quick to fall away/detrain. It’s why under a periodised training scheme you typically spend a long time building “base” endurance and then only focus on intensive aerobic in a late and short build phase when you’re wanting to reach your peak/completion phase

[@lewiscromey4787]

Interesting how quickly you can lose fitness, but equally how quickly you get back to that position. I now have a period of injury, where I’ll start back on the bike next week, but for the next 5 weeks probably won’t get above Z2. My running will stop for 6 weeks as well so that’s going to suffer. 3 races written off, so just going to take this year as a training year then go for it next year!

[@GregHilton]

FWIW you can't compare the results of your TrainerRoad ramp test to the Zwift one (from what I've read). But as long as you stick with one going forwards for consistency that is key!

[@MarkLewisfitness]

Interestingly, I watched back over my tr test and it looked about right. That time I lasted 90 secs past the 400w marker. So although a different test, it felt comparable (ish)

[@GregHilton]

@@MarkLewisfitness Good to hear! Did they both start at similar wattage?

[@MarkLewisfitness]

@@GregHilton They did, but they went up at different increments on Zwift just went 20 W extra per ramp whereas TR seemed to pull some pretty random numbers from somewhere but they both crossed 400 at roughly the same time

[@dtrjones]

Hi, Mark you probably know already but with approximately a month of high-intensity strength training it will start to induce neurological adaptations aka muscle memory - you look like a strong lad so I would say your muscle memory is pretty well in place and this can last up to 15 years so that's why you can do those deadlifts. Aerobic endurance has a much shorter term - while long-term runners will retain some capacity even after several months off, it's more likely you will begin to lose several months of fitness after only a couple of weeks of inactivity.

[@MarkLewisfitness]

Yep, that’s how it feels. The running especially. Even a week off is a slog to get back into....but a week off lifting leaves me stronger!

[@alpinekiwi]

Here's something I just don't get: I am 94kg, 50 years old in a month's time and I would consider myself to be slightly overweight, but fit and healthy. I did a Zwift Ramp Test yesterday and had the exact same result as you. I made it like 5 seconds into 400w before stopping. My FTP is now 286. However, I managed a half hour cooldown afterwards on the bike (even topping out at 700w in a sprint finish). I don't think I could have finished the minute of 400w in the ramp test, but still having the legs afterward shows me I'm not giving it my all... Then, I see the level of fitness you have - by far above my own - and I suddenly have no idea how I have the same ftp as you.

[@karllawton8398]

Another great video! You ever checked out just Trainerroad training plans for cycling, they have loads to choose from, I've just heard bad things about Zwfit plan, Also when is the next pain cave video! Mines finally done and would love to hear what you think of it!

[@MarkLewisfitness]

Yep, are used it most of last year for Ironman. For proper training, I don't think it can be beaten-it's just not as much fun as Zwift!

[@EmilNiclas]

Thanks for the great videos! I highly recommend checking out Xert, the platform analyzes your power data and gives you threshold values and remaining potential real time - for example in a zwift race or compared to a strava segment to maximize your output. Works online for analysis and on the go as a Garmin IQ or phone app. I think you would like it, even if the concept might require seeing their onboarding videos to grasp :-)

[@danmartin9086]

Don't underestimate the Mccarthy special. One of the only workouts I still can't finish..

[@Rachaelshaw7]

I'm really hoping the next video tells me you crushed it

[@Ontheroadtourism]

I've just started Zwift and I am looking to see where I am in a months time. I have another 12 kg to get to my goal weight and I am hoping Zwift will be an aid to get there.

[@MrApfc]

So where are you now ?

[@thesuperfunkomatic]

It's like falling off a bike. You never forget how to do it. Wait, what?

[@michael1]

It's pretty much exactly the opposite, strength declines faster than endurance fitness. Endurance takes a long time to build - potentially years to reach your peak (which for us is 20 or so years in the past anyway) but the reason you see old men tootling around on bicycles on long rides is because they can keep that fitness long into old age, even as their muscle mass visibly declines and weight visibly increases. I think perhaps what you're seeing is the 'time crunched cyclist' effect. Where you can get big gains by pushing hard on the pedals on a seemingly vanishingly small amount of training and get big gains. This is the Michael Mosely thing where he does a popular TV show that says "You don't have to exercise for hours and hours, when we measure certain fitness values these rose higher vs a control group and a group that just did long rides" and upshot is trying to convince every overweight person in the country that they can get fit with just 5 minutes exercise a day. It's like a doctor telling his patient to park the car further away in the car park as though he's going to get fit walking an extra 50m into work - but it's just the last desperate hope to try to encourage people to do some exercise. But as useful as telling people if they fall off a cliff to try flapping their arms - it's not going to help. But aside from pop TV science talking about HIIT, HIIT is actually a thing that works but most unfit people are going to be better going for a walk every day than doing sprint intervals, and to keep doing it. Similarly for the bike. What Mosely tended to gloss over (because their idea is to make "5 minutes exercise" sound like a doddle) was get that benefit you really need to push really hard for those intervals. They're going to hurt to be beneficial. Well if there's one thing you can do it's push hard to your limits. You have Mosely's habit of doing a performance too, ie. you both waste a ton of effort and energy pulling faces, gripping with your arms, waving the rest of your body around doing a kind of "I'm trying really hard" performance art thing rather than just pushing the pedals. There's probably 50-100 watts wasted effort there. Although Mosely was more comical when he tried to ride an erg bike hard (and no doubt a lot slower) So undoubtedly you will have gained fitness, and maybe existing cardio from running et al means a sustained 20 minute effort works for you (if you look at a lot of the zwifters who use the ramp test ftp they can barely ride a 20 minute interval when they try to compare the ftp tests. Which is why zwift added the ramp test in the first place. So many zwifters can't ride for an hour) But you haven't built an engine. You appear to have to go maximum attack most of the time in a race. If you look at someone like Pogacar when he's training and he'll have some annoying youtuber following him filming - there's a few examples on youtube of that (and other pros) - they're doing 280-300 watts for zone 2, i.e he's riding along up hills chatting to his team mates at the pace when you're just about chewing the handlebars. That's partly genetics, but a lot of that is simply because he's ridden tons of volume at z2. He's ridden slowly until slow becomes fast and efficient. The speed the stuff he does is the icing on top. Your limited cycling and mostly big bean efforts means it's all icing. It's kind of impressive because your power numbers are not small, but it's not going to last because no one can sustain that level of maximum attack all the time - and when your numbers drop you try even harder. You can't do 300 watts but you did once, so you push yourself harder to ride at a fitness level that's in your mind rather than the one you have - and that compounds the problem. To go fast you've got to go slow - not necessarily for the ridiculous amounts of hours that a pro cyclist does and it's unlikely with the same results they get. But certainly for a bulk. It's the same thing when you did a longer event for a video and say "without training for it" - and of course you finish and hurt yourself and you think you've outwitted the commentators saying you'll fail and fall over the line etc - but you are failing, in the sense that the pace you rode at you either have to ride really slowly fretting that you won't finish, or suffer - and if you'd trained you've have just sped along at a z2 pace that's faster than you're doing now for a big effort - and that pushes up your bigger efforts (well except your sprint numbers - despite what zwift appears to show how fast you can sprint is really nothing to do with your ftp - Mark Cavendish doesn't have a massive ftp compared with his teammates whose sprint is 1000w or more less - sprinting is more or less completely separate) The alternative is, as I said, that book called 'time crunched cyclist' that was popular for a while. It ends up following it improves your numbers and you just throw out tough sessions on a turbo, but reach a point where if you keep the training up fatigue and overtraining will shut it down and if you rest, well, it disappears fast. Of course if all you have is limited time per week that's probably the best you can do.

[@tonylambert4364]

Still sitting at the end of the ramp test! Someone wasn't really trying :) Don't discount the mental fortitude it take to push to the limit on Zwift, be that a ramp test or Alpe du zwift in under an hour, that also takes time to build/re-build.

[@MarkLewisfitness]

Interestingly, the rules for the zwift ramp test specifically state you must stay seated.

[@tonylambert4364]

@@MarkLewisfitness Apparently once you are done you are allowed to fall off your bike though ;)

[@neoneherefrom5836]

♥️ on 🔥

[@bugwan1]

Underestimate The McCarthy Special at your peril. Much harder than it looks!

[@larissaalexander6477]

You need to get racing again in the ZRL .... Tuesday’s race is going to be brutal!! I’m the opposite to you, endurance is ok but I need to incorporate some weights into the week to improve strength off the bike 💪🚴‍♀️

[@MarkLewisfitness]

The ZRL is very cool but it just gets in the way once everything picks up for the summer. This weekend I have a deadlifts challenge with my kid and a 10 K Trail race-by Tuesday I will still be asleep 😴 😂. And this is a quiet weekend. 😂

[@larissaalexander6477]

@@MarkLewisfitness lol I’m knackered just reading that!! Good luck! I’m taking my son out on a road ride this weekend and preying he doesn’t drop me on any hills! 🙈😂

[@larissaalexander6477]

Ps nice one on the fan!! It’s the best!! ... and top tip on setting the heart rate zones (I didn’t know that option was there! 🤣)

[@MarkLewisfitness]

@@larissaalexander6477 It’s a cool feature - you need to fiddle with it based on how your heart responds to riding (and probably adjust seasonally depending on the weather) but it works very naturally.... you almost don’t realise that you are slowly getting more and more air, the more exhausted you get 😂

[@DrSomhairle]

Your power numbers are impressive, aside from the gym work do you do much at the top end on the bike outside of racing sprints? Also how long did it take to regain your bike fitness from this "low" point. I found from a much lower point of around 2 months off it came back fairly quickly.

[@SuperYobo]

How are your new kickr bike handling 800w+ ? Does it creak and fail, or have they fixed that problem?

[@aberdeenal3234]

The FTP ramp test is a complete head fcuk - once you know the ramp is on your FTP anything above just kills you mentally.......besides that 289W is still half decent - I'd be well over the moon with that!

[@madiantin]

10:30 It's not you falling off the bike that's so fun, it's the sound effects. That, "ah....ah" thing. It's just so relatable and so descriptive of the awesome agony of murdering yourself to death on the bike. =D Looking forward to watching the training and improvement. If you wear your medal while deadlifting your kid will be laughing so much it'll be easy to out lift him. =D Excellent sneaky plan. =D

[@MarkLewisfitness]

Sneaky plans are the best. I will beat him with increased strength and mature planning of sneakiness.

[@andreyi5773]

What about race ftp? 230?))

[@timboha8191]

So I’m out on a walk today and just decided to start running (never run a step in my life before) had been feeling great on the bike recently so thought I’d be ok on a run, was not, was terrible. Found your channel just looking for trainer recommendations and can see a lot of similarities, so wondered if the lack of running fitness is just a lack of specific experience, or a lack of overall fitness despite being the best I’ve ever been on the bike?

[@MarkLewisfitness]

Both! Plenty of cyclists that can’t run and vice versa..... the good news is (with a base cardio fitness) you’ll improve fast. Just start REAL slow and easy. Better of doing a “beginner” plan like couch to 5k.... and stepping it up if you feel good, then going off too quick out getting hurt!

[@timboha8191]

@@MarkLewisfitness thanks for the reply, will definitely look into that.

[@matthewroberts4079]

Hello

[@alanbell1821]

At 200 ftp age 55 12 stone ,,,what would be a good number to get to ,,,I'm zwiffting most days ,,,,is 300 reasonable to go for? Any comments would be appreciated

[@michael1]

I doubt many people over 50 are going to get 4w/kg (and in particular if your ftp has never been higher in the past i.e maybe there's some pro athlete or gifted amateur who had a silly high ftp in his 30s and kept most of it in his 40s and now he's hitting 50) But that's not a realistic measure of how much an untrained 50-something guy is likely to respond to training. So you'd be really lucky to get 300w ftp at 75kg. It's more in the ballpark of 3.5w/kg and probably lower for a lot of people. You have to consider how that 12 stone works too, i.e obviously there are 2 variables you can change to improve w/kg. You can change your mass or the power you can produce. It's doing both in the right way that is key. Assuming your only goal were 'highest power I can get' build up your legs. Often when people can't get the high w/kg they want many of them think they should starve themselves thin to make it higher. Which is perhaps why there are so many skinny cyclists in the UK with an FTP beginning with a 2. What's the point? There's no mountains in the UK. They might well be better having a closer to 300 watts ftp even if the w/kg is lower, and having things like an upper body to attract a mate or wrestle an escaped bear might be more useful IRL than some arbitrary w/kg figure too. I note as soon as Wiggins stopped road cycling he put on weight to do the hour record, and as soon as he'd done the hour record, he did a load of rowing to build an upper body. Suggesting there's not a lot of use for a typical grand tour road cyclists frame outside of grand tour cycling. Just go for it though. See what you get. It'll likely go higher than 200. I might suggest that having other goals might work better - seeing how fast you can do a particular route or climb. Keeping up with groups in zwift races etc. Better than chasing some arbitrary number. Unless you're very disciplined. When I was cycling a ton I did a couple of rides with a much faster guy who would just ride off and I'd be chasing him and hating every minute calling him names, cursing under my breath as I tried to catch back up. I got a big gain in fitness that I probably wouldn't get riding looking at my wattage on garmin. Because it's too easy to think you're pushing yourself when there isn't a guy in front who has ridden off leaving you to chase him - and then when you reach him and think "Phew I'll get a rest now" - he rides off again. It reminded me of being a kid when my big brother would ride off and of course as a little kid I'd do a few pedal strokes and then start crying - that's how it felt, like I was back as a kid. But instead of stopping and crying as a grown up you have to catch them up. Not sure zwift is great for that because you can't catch up a group - but you can sit with a group as long as you can.

[@Tattersail]

How does a lad of your size no longer get 900W, however long? Isn't that power about "fell down on the pedals" at 100kg? ;)

[@MarkLewisfitness]

If only it was that simple🤣

[@amprickett]

The McCarthy Special is terrible - I always fail it.

[@Check-it-out]

😂😂😂 What did you do to your neighbors ? They sold their house !

[@MarkLewisfitness]

There’s only so much Rocky IV soundtrack they could take 😂😂🥊

[@Check-it-out]

@@MarkLewisfitness I would definitely move as well... Are you calling for Adrian in your sleep ?

[@markturton3093]

@@MarkLewisfitness let's be clear there's never enough rocky music Keep those videos coming so entertaining

[@BobBob-uv9fq]

Hi Mark ,,, been on watt bike for 6 months,,,175 ftp ,, ,what’s a realistic figure I can get to is 300 ,doable in a year or so training,,,I’m 55 yrs. ,,,in your experience,,,I know figure s. Can probs be hard to thingy

[@MarkLewisfitness]

It depends on your weight. FTP of 300 for me is 3 W per kilo, but an FTP of 300 for somebody half my weight would be 6 W per kilo. 3.2 W per kilo is the top end of C category on Zwift and getting pretty quick for an average rider. It’s beyond me at the moment. I would say anything over 2.5 W per kilo is pretty good for an average cyclist (not a racer and every weekend)

[@BobBob-uv9fq]

@@MarkLewisfitness ok cheers I’m 11 stone 10 ,,can u work it out for me lol 😂

[@MarkLewisfitness]

@@BobBob-uv9fq so you are 70 kg, so your 175 is already 2.5 W per kilo. If you were to get an FTP of 300 that would give you 4.2 - at which point, you should start looking for sponsorship 😂

[@BobBob-uv9fq]

@@MarkLewisfitness lol appreciate time is my 175 decent then for my weight ? (I’m the guy that gave the funny “Yes I’ve been to uni “ quote lol 😂 my funniest hour

[@TheManuelv86]

Is the date for the vEveresting set yet?

[@MarkLewisfitness]

I’m tempted to do it in the early summer when I can set the bike and screen up in the garden and do the whole thing outside ???

[@TheManuelv86]

@@MarkLewisfitness sounds like a solid plan. I would recommend something with shadows otherwise you will introduce more challenges than you already have... Make sure you let your audience know beforehand ;) (and maybe think about doing a basecamp before). Trust me- it will hurt (a lot)

[@MarkLewisfitness]

@@TheManuelv86 I’ll have children to move sun shades around 😂🌞

[@TheManuelv86]

@@MarkLewisfitness haha - you are ready to go :D

[@rod77559]

Why dont you ever do the real 20 min ftp test?

[@michael1]

There's no such thing. The idea of ftp as a metric is a way to compare elite cyclists. It's conjected to be the maximum wattage you can hold for about a maximum effort for an hour or so. That's the "real ftp test' - but because that was hard people invented the 20 minute test. The 20 minute thing (with a bunch of other bits and bobs that are designed to warm up and then tire your vo2 max so it doesn't skew the result - is because riding for an hour maximum attack sucked so they do 20 minutes and multiply it by 0,95 or whatever. And then that was too hard so others would do a couple of blocks of 8 minutes and multiply by a different number....but that's too hard so they invented a ramp test where you're not doing more than 1 minute effort and you multiply that by another number - and really the rest of the ramp test is tiring you so that final minute isn't biased by your strength - note Mark in this video can't output 400w, something he can do easily from rest....and undoubtedly a lot of people think this ramp test is too hard and they want to know what their ftp is without doing any test. So there's really nothing about the 20 minute that makes it more 'real' than the others - they were all designed to measure how fast you can do something that most people don't want to do (ride a bike for an hour maximum attack) - quite why you need to measure something you'll never do is the question - although people will say "It's because I want to know what wattage to train at" or something.

[@Shopbobby]

Did you use headwind and air mover or just run the “wahoo system”

[@MarkLewisfitness]

Just wahoo. But it was pretty short and sweet

[@Shopbobby]

@@MarkLewisfitness I WANT a headwind but think a second air mover on table beside I can control will do better (but have a feeling heart may win over head unless I can convince my head to let me have a fenix 6)

[@christianrode2549]

Gets worse with age...

[@JoeJoe-lq6bd]

400 watts after the build up is hard for most people. The idea that higher wattages should be easier for heavier riders is overblown, and based on inaccurate data people see on Zwift. There are a ton of guys who upped their "official" weights so they could continue on in a category lower than they should be in, then people saw that heavier riders have higher wattages according to that. There is some minor correlation but unless all your weight is in your legs or you're comparing a child to an adult, it doesn't have a huge impact on FTP.

[@DublinDapper]

Higher wattage is easier for men than women largely due to weight...pretty simple

[@JoeJoe-lq6bd]

@@DublinDapper Weight isn't the factor. Weight correlates because men have more muscle mass and men just have more cardiovascular capacity. But it isn't the weight alone that makes men stronger. Add 10 kg to your gut and it's not gonna add to your wattage.

[@МихаилМинков-л9и]

sexy dad 😝😝😝😝

[@LukeTimmis1]

The McCarthy special is awful @ any ftp to be fair

[@TheFistFuckingHolyGuacamole]

Hahaha, McCarthySpecial is my nemesis. Never completed it. And I observed similar impacts on endurance/strength. It takes not much to hold or regain strength in terms of lifting. but peak endurance is hard to maintain and usually drops within a few days

[@MarkLewisfitness]

I keep hearing that McCarthy session is supposed to be that grim and makes me feel better!

[@awexmafyews]

From what little I remember from my sport science degree you aren’t too far off the truth. Studies show that aerobic fitness degrees faster than strength training. After 11 weeks of no training runners lose around 20-25% of their VO2 max. Whereas similar studies showed 7 weeks of detraining had a negligible affect on maximal short term power output. So you’ll lose endurance quicker than strength of totally detraining. That was from a quick google which found this article: www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/how-much-down-time-is-too-much-the-concept-of-detr/ As with most things in sport science no one is really sure why this is the case from what I’ve read. The major caveat to all the above is that it is often for a complete cessation of activity. If you are training to some extent or maintaining activity then you’ll lose fitness slower than if you weren’t at all and it’s easy to maintain levels even with minimal exercise.