"How much improvement with a powermeter?"

A training plan athlete emailed me his thanks for a good race at Canada and the discussion turned to "what next," which lead to powermeters and how much improvement can I see with one of these things. Here is my response:

Bill,
That's a good question. This is what I've typically seen with a number of athletes over the years:

• Typical triathlete comes to me, to the program. About my height and weight (165lb, 5'8"). In my experience this athlete, if he's been training pretty much like everyone else in the tri world, will have a Functional Threshold Power on the bike of about 220 watts. Think of this as a bench press of 220 pounds.
• At the end of one season of hard work, we can usually push this number up to around 250w or so. Your friends would say "Bill's a solid rider," meaning you can definitely hold your own in a group ride.
• End of the off-season of the first year and going into the second year, we can push this up to 270-275w. Your friends now definitely pay attention when you go to the front of the group and you can make them hurt for several minutes at a time.
• End of second, into the third you can push it up close or just over 300w. At my height and weight, 300w is the realm of top AG bike splits, you're ripping the legs off of training partners, can really turn the screws to a group of triathletes for a good while, etc.

How do you get from 220 to 250 to 275 to 300w? It's just WORK. There is no easy way. All that a PM does is help you measure, define, and analyze WORK, in all it's forms. Having that little number under your nose, all the time, makes work a little easier (or maybe self-motivating) because it's always there, rewarding you on a good day, reminding you of your bad days.

However, in the end it's just a tool, a hammer. You wield the hammer. How much work you get done with that hammer is a function of motivation, discipline...lots of things that are up to you, not the hammer.

Rich