STARTING POINT
Where the rider was before coaching
Damien describes himself as an average sportive rider who had plateaued. The kind of cyclist who shows up consistently, has the kit, has done the events, and watches the FTP graph in TrainingPeaks refuse to move for two years running.
His FTP sat at 205 watts. He wasn't lazy. He wasn't undertrained. He was doing what most plateaued cyclists do — riding hard, riding often, and getting nowhere.
INTERVENTION
What changed
We rebuilt the structure of his training week before we touched the volume. The most common reason a sportive rider plateaus is intensity distribution — too much grey-zone, not enough polarised contrast between easy and hard.
The plan was custom. Not a template. We built it around Damien's life, his data, and the specific gap between where his FTP was and where his physiology said it could be. Weekly review. Monthly periodisation. The same polarised principles Professor Stephen Seiler has been publishing for two decades.
WEEKLY STRUCTURE
What the training week actually looked like
We don't publish Damien's exact week — that's his private plan in TrainingPeaks. But the framework was the standard polarised five-pillar system: most volume at conversational easy intensity, two structured high-intensity sessions a week with full recovery between them, periodised so the load increased into the season's target events and dropped before each one.
The bigger change was what came out of the week. The medium-hard tempo rides that felt productive but produced nothing. The unstructured group rides that turned into mid-tempo grinds. Removing those was as important as adding the right intervals.
NUTRITION & STRENGTH
The pillars under the bike
Damien's testimonial doesn't go into specifics on nutrition or strength — but every Roadman coached athlete gets the five-pillar treatment, not just a training plan. Nutrition guidance focused on fuelling the work, not chasing weight loss as the headline outcome. Strength work programmed in alongside the bike to build durable power, not to wreck the legs.
When the engine's getting bigger and the body composition's holding, the power-to-weight ratio moves in the right direction without anyone having to white-knuckle a calorie deficit.
OUTCOME
The result, in the rider's own words
FTP moved from 205 watts to 295 watts. That's a 90-watt gain on a rider who'd plateaued for years. In Damien's words: "I've gotten much more out of Roadman than I ever imagined."
The bigger outcome — and the one that doesn't show up in TrainingPeaks — is that the plateau is gone and the system is repeatable. Damien knows what produced the change. He can keep doing it.
THE NUMBERS
Before / after
From the athlete's testimonial and TrainingPeaks file. Where a number isn't published, we don't list one.
FTP
205 w295 w
+90 watts over the coached programme
CAVEATS
What this case study does not claim.
- We don't publish the exact timeframe. A 90-watt FTP move is unusual — most plateaued amateurs see 20–60 watts when the structure changes. Damien had headroom that not every rider will have.
- Untrained riders pick up watts faster than trained ones. Damien wasn't untrained — but his ceiling was higher than his old training had revealed.
- FTP is one number. It is the single best summary of aerobic capacity, but it isn't the whole picture. We track durability, repeatability, and event performance alongside it.
- Custom plans require honest data and honest reporting. The athletes who get gains like Damien's report what actually happened, not what they wished had happened.
COACH COMMENTARY
Anthony on this case
Damien is the case I think about when someone tells me they've stopped getting faster. Same training every week, same numbers, same frustration. The gap was structure, not effort.
The hardest part of breaking a plateau is convincing a consistent athlete to do less of one thing — the medium-hard riding that feels productive — and more of two other things: easy volume and properly hard intervals. The middle is the trap.
When the structure is right, the gains aren't a mystery. They're physiology doing what physiology does when you finally give it the right inputs.
— Anthony Walsh, Roadman Cycling head coach.