We need to talk about your FTP.
If the number has not shifted in six months, I know how frustrating that feels. You are putting in the hours, nailing your sessions, and the test comes around and it is the same number staring back at you. I have been there. Most of us have.
The uncomfortable truth is that a stalled FTP is rarely about effort. It is almost always about what you are doing with that effort. The biggest killer I see in the riders I work with is training monotony. Same sessions, same zones, same routes, week after week. Your body is brilliant at adapting, and once it has adapted to a stimulus, that stimulus stops working.
The second culprit is the grey zone. If eighty percent of your rides sit between zone three and low zone four, you are too hard to recover but too easy to force adaptation. That middle ground feels productive in the moment but it is a dead end over time.
Then there are the off-the-bike factors that nobody wants to hear about. Sleep under seven hours, chronic calorie restriction, work stress through the roof — these put a hard ceiling on your physiology that no interval session can punch through.
Here is what I would do if I were stuck right now. First, audit your last eight weeks of training. Count the truly easy days versus the truly hard days. If the split is not close to eighty-twenty, that is your starting point. Second, make sure you are eating enough around key sessions. Third, look at your periodisation — if you do not have distinct build and recovery blocks, you are just grinding.
The fix is rarely more training. It is usually smarter training.
Join the free Roadman community: https://www.skool.com/roadmancycling