It's the most-Googled power question in cycling: "what's a good FTP for my age?" And almost every answer you'll find is useless, because it either quotes a Tour de France number that has nothing to do with you, or it dodges the question entirely with "it depends."
It does depend — but not on the thing you think. Here's what actually decides whether your FTP is good, how much your age really costs you, and where you sit honestly.
First: watts are the wrong number to compare
Before we touch age, we have to fix the unit. Comparing raw watts between riders is meaningless. A 300-watt FTP is monstrous on a 60kg climber and modest on a 95kg rouleur.
The number that matters is watts per kilogram — your FTP divided by your bodyweight. It's how every coach and every category system reads a rider, because it predicts real-world performance far better than raw power. So from here on, every benchmark is in W/kg. If you don't know yours, it's your FTP in watts divided by your weight in kilos. A 250-watt rider at 78kg is 3.2 W/kg.
The good news about age
This is what most riders get wrong, and it's the reason so many people quietly write themselves off in their 40s: age decline is roughly half as steep as you've been told.
The scary "10% per decade drop in fitness after 35" figure comes from studies of largely sedentary populations. It's what happens to people who stop moving. For cyclists who keep training with some intensity, the longitudinal masters-athlete research — Pollock's work, Trappe's, Hagberg's — converges on something much gentler: around 5% per decade. Half the rate. Real, but slow.
Run the numbers and it reframes everything. A trained 35-year-old at 3.8 W/kg, training consistently, is still around 3.6 W/kg at 45 and roughly 3.4 at 55. That's not a collapse. That's a slow, manageable drift you can fight with the same tools you'd use at any age.
And here's the part that surprises people most: a well-trained 55-year-old routinely holds a higher FTP than an untrained 35-year-old. Age sets a ceiling; it does not set your current number. Most amateurs are nowhere near their own ceiling.
Age-graded benchmarks: where you actually sit
These are honest W/kg bands for amateur cyclists, adjusted for the modest age tax. They're anchored on Coggan's reference tables and the age-decline data above. Find your decade and your rough level.
Men (FTP ÷ bodyweight in kg):
| Level | 30s | 40s | 50s | 60s | |-------|-----|-----|-----|-----| | Untrained / returning | 2.0-2.5 | 1.9-2.4 | 1.8-2.3 | 1.6-2.1 | | Recreational | 2.5-3.3 | 2.4-3.2 | 2.3-3.0 | 2.1-2.8 | | Good recreational | 3.3-3.9 | 3.2-3.8 | 3.0-3.6 | 2.8-3.3 | | Strong amateur | 3.9-4.5 | 3.8-4.3 | 3.6-4.1 | 3.3-3.8 | | Regional racer | 4.5+ | 4.3+ | 4.1+ | 3.8+ |
Women sit roughly 0.4-0.5 W/kg lower at each band — a physiological difference in haemoglobin mass and lean mass, not training. So a good recreational band for women in their 40s is around 2.7-3.3 W/kg, and strong-amateur starts around 3.3-3.8. The age slope is identical.
Notice how little moves across the decades. A "good recreational" rider gives up about 0.1-0.2 W/kg per decade — a rounding error next to the difference training structure makes. This is exactly the pattern we mapped in more detail in the age-group FTP benchmarks report.
What age actually changes (and it isn't your ceiling)
If raw power holds up so well, why do so many masters riders feel slower? Two real things change, and neither is your FTP ceiling.
Recovery capacity. This is the big one. At 25 you could smash three hard sessions in a week and bounce back. At 50, that same load digs a hole you don't climb out of. You can still hit the same peak power — you just can't repeat it as often. The fix isn't training less hard; it's spacing the hard work further apart and protecting recovery ruthlessly. We wrote up exactly what to check in the masters recovery audit.
Consistency, disguised as decline. This is the sneaky one. Most riders in their 40s and 50s have busier lives, more interruptions, more lost weeks than they did at 30. The fitness lost to a fortnight off, a work crunch, a family stretch — that all adds up and feels exactly like age. It isn't. It's inconsistency wearing age as a mask. Rebuild the consistency and the "age decline" quietly reverses.
How to know if your number is actually good
Forget the chart for a second. The most useful question isn't "is my FTP good for my age?" It's "does my training over the last year justify expecting more?"
If you've been riding a lot but with no structure — mostly moderate-hard group rides, no easy days, no threshold work, no plan — then wherever your FTP sits, you have headroom. That's not an insult; it's really good news. It means the number can move.
If you've trained with real structure for a couple of years — polarised intensity, proper base, targeted threshold blocks, real recovery — and you're at the top of your band, then you're closer to your ceiling and further gains get smaller and harder. That's a different, more advanced problem.
Most people reading this are in the first camp. And the reality I tell every rider who asks about their age and their FTP: the birthday is almost never the limiter. The structure is.
Three mistakes riders make comparing their FTP
Before you do anything with your number, avoid the three traps that make the comparison useless.
Comparing raw watts to someone else's. We've covered this, but it's worth repeating because people slip back into it constantly. "My mate does 290 and I only do 250" tells you nothing until you factor in weight. If he's 90kg and you're 72kg, you're the stronger cyclist on any climb. Always convert to W/kg first.
Trusting a bad test. Half the "my FTP is X" numbers floating around are wrong. A 20-minute test done on a hot day, under-rested, on an uncalibrated trainer, will hand you a figure that's 15-20 watts off in either direction. Before you judge where you sit, make sure the number itself is real — same protocol, same conditions, well-rested, calibrated. Chase the trend across a season, not a single flattering or disappointing test.
Comparing to the wrong population. The internet is full of Zwift racers and ex-pros posting 4.5 W/kg like it's normal. It isn't normal — it's the self-selecting loud end of the sport. Compared to the actual population of people who ride bikes, a 3.2 W/kg recreational rider is fit and capable. Pick your comparison group honestly, or you'll feel slow next to a benchmark that was never representative.
Get past those three and the number in front of you finally means something.
What to do about it
If you want your FTP to move, the recipe doesn't change much with age — the volume of hard work and the recovery around it do.
- Ride mostly easy. Around 80% of your riding should be really low-intensity aerobic work. This builds the engine that lets the hard sessions count.
- Two quality sessions a week, no more. Threshold intervals (2×20 or 3×15 minutes at FTP) and, later in a block, some VO2max work. In your 40s and 50s, two is the number — a third quality day usually just adds fatigue without adaptation.
- Guard recovery. Sleep, protein, easy days that are actually easy. This is where masters riders win or lose. The post-ride recovery window guide for over-40s has the specifics.
- Retest properly. Same protocol, same conditions, well-rested. Chase the trend across a season, not week-to-week noise.
That's the whole game, and it's the framework we build every plan on inside the Not Done Yet community — structured training built around your age, your history and your target, with a coach who'll tell you honestly where your ceiling is and how much road there is between you and it. It's $195 a month at skool.com/roadmancycling.
Your FTP for your age is probably fine. The real question is whether you're anywhere near what it could be. For most riders, the answer is no — and that's the most encouraging thing I can tell you.