You finish your first FTP test with shaking legs and look at the screen. Or a friend at the café stop drops their number like it’s nothing.
You check one chart and feel pretty good. You check another and feel slow.
That whiplash is normal when you chase the average cyclist FTP. The charts disagree because they aren’t measuring the same people. Here’s where each average comes from, where you really stand in watts for your weight, and how to find your number even without a power meter.
What FTP Actually Measures (and Why Watts Alone Mislead)
Two riders can both claim a 250-watt FTP, yet one floats away on every rise while the other suffers.
FTP, or functional threshold power, is the highest average power you can hold for about an hour, measured in watts.
Watts per kilogram (W/kg), your FTP divided by your body weight, shows what those watts do when the road tilts up. A heavier rider can push more raw watts on the flat yet work harder on every climb, a theme we cover in getting better at long climbs.
Think of a truck: a bigger engine makes more power but also hauls more weight uphill. So a 250-watt FTP means something different at 170 lb (77.1 kg) than at 199 lb (90.3 kg).
Few of us want to ride flat out for an hour, so tests use shortcuts. The classic 20-minute test takes 95 percent of your best 20-minute power. TrainerRoad’s ramp test uses 75 percent of your best one-minute power.
So what counts as average? It depends who you ask.
Why Every FTP Chart Gives You a Different Number
Three different crowds hide under the phrase average cyclist FTP: untrained adults, people who train with power apps, and pros.
The most copied chart started with an expert’s judgment. Exercise physiologist Andrew Coggan, co-author of Training and Racing with a Power Meter, explains in his power profiling method that he didn’t build the chart by sampling riders. He anchored the top and bottom on world champions and untrained people, then cross-checked the middle against available data.
His famous levels were anchored, not sampled, and built on young adults. Coggan notes they don’t account for aging.
App data has the opposite bias. It comes from riders with a smart trainer or power meter who care enough to test, so it skews strong.
The Average Untrained Adult: About 2.2 W/kg
Start at the bottom of the chart, with people who don’t train at all.
Coggan anchored that bottom at what he called average untrained: 2.22 W/kg for men and 1.83 W/kg for women. Lab tests land in almost the same place.
In a Finnish threshold study, previously sedentary or lightly active adults aged 18 to 40 tested at about 2.2 to 2.3 W/kg (men) and 1.8 to 2.0 (women). That’s power at the second lactate threshold, a close proxy for FTP rather than a one-hour field test.
The CDC’s average US adult weights are 199 lb (90.3 kg) for men and 171.8 lb (77.9 kg) for women. At those weights, an untrained man sits near 200 watts and an untrained woman near 143 watts.
So 200 watts sounds respectable, but for an average-weight man it’s the untrained baseline. Heavier riders can post bigger raw watts with lower W/kg. What about people who actually train?
Riders Who Train With Power: Where Most Land by Age
Move from untrained adults to riders who train with power, and the numbers jump.
TrainerRoad’s 2018 user breakdown shows its users’ most common FTP-per-kilogram band by age and sex. These are the peaks of the bell curve, not averages, from a self-selected group.
| Age | Men, most common | Women, most common |
|---|---|---|
| 18 to 30 | 3.25 to 3.5 W/kg | 2.25 to 2.5 W/kg |
| 30 to 40 | 3.0 to 3.25 W/kg | 2.25 to 2.5 W/kg |
| 40 to 50 | 2.75 to 3.0 W/kg | 2.25 to 2.5 W/kg |
| 50 to 60 | 2.75 to 3.0 W/kg | 2.25 to 2.5 W/kg |
| 60 to 80 | 2.25 to 2.5 W/kg | 2.0 to 2.25 W/kg |
Men lost about 0.25 W/kg per decade, with a plateau from 40 to 60 and a larger drop after 60. Women sat about 0.5 W/kg below men in the same age bucket. The aging side of that story lives in how age affects cycling.
Fewer than 1 percent of men over 60 were above 4.0 W/kg, compared with 17.1 percent of men aged 18 to 30.
So is your number good? Time to put it in watts for your weight.
Is Your FTP Good? Watts for Your Weight
Raw watts only become a verdict once weight joins the math.
| W/kg | At 150 lb (68.0 kg) | At 175 lb (79.4 kg) | At 200 lb (90.7 kg) | At 225 lb (102.1 kg) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2.0 | 136 W | 159 W | 181 W | 204 W |
| 2.5 | 170 W | 198 W | 227 W | 255 W |
| 3.0 | 204 W | 238 W | 272 W | 306 W |
| 3.5 | 238 W | 278 W | 318 W | 357 W |
| 4.0 | 272 W | 318 W | 363 W | 408 W |
Coggan’s chart puts men roughly at Fair 2.5 to 3.1 W/kg, Moderate 3.1 to 3.65 and Good 3.65 to 4.2. Women’s bands sit about 0.5 W/kg lower.
A Garmin head unit may show its own labels: men Untrained under 2.23 W/kg, Fair 2.23 to 2.78 and Good 2.79 to 3.92. For women it’s under 1.90, 1.90 to 2.35, and 2.36 to 3.32.
For a rider who doesn’t race, the useful rule is simpler. Compare yourself with the right crowd and your own last test, because age, sex and weight all shift the charts.
Before you trust any label, though, check how you got the number.
Why Your Test Result Might Be Flattering You
That new FTP personal best might be part fitness, part math.
The 95 percent shortcut tends to read high for recreational riders. In the updated FTP equation study, 120 cyclists rode both a 20-minute and a 60-minute time trial.
The best-fit ratio was 0.96 for pros, 0.95 for well-trained, 0.92 for trained, and 0.88 for recreationally trained riders. Ride 200 watts for 20 minutes and the shortcut gives 190 watts, but the recreational 0.88 ratio puts your hour closer to 176 watts.
That 14-watt gap changes training zones and bragging rights. Individual error can be larger still. A separate study of trained men found the 20-minute estimate, a real hour and a lab threshold could disagree by up to about 60 watts for one rider.
If you ride recreationally, treat a 0.95 result as the top of your range. No power meter at all? You can still get close.
No Power Meter? Use Your Heart Rate Instead
Measuring power takes a power meter or smart trainer. Without one, heart rate is the workaround.
Joe Friel, coach and author of The Cyclist’s Training Bible, describes a 30-minute solo all-out time trial. Your average heart rate over the last 20 minutes estimates your lactate threshold heart rate (LTHR). Ride it alone, not in a group or a race, and start conservatively.
LTHR is the heart-rate equivalent of FTP, the same threshold effort in heart rate instead of watts, and you set heart-rate training zones from it like power riders set zones from FTP.
Friel’s test is a practitioner method that hasn’t been validated as an FTP measure. And in one study, recreational riders who trained by heart rate improved about as much as riders who trained by power.
Speed is a weak proxy, because air resistance climbs fast. Here’s steady speed for about 207 lb (93.9 kg) of rider and bike, upright on the hoods, on a flat road in calm air.
| Power | Steady speed, upright |
|---|---|
| 100 W | 14.6 mph (23.6 km/h) |
| 150 W | 17.3 mph (27.8 km/h) |
| 200 W | 19.3 mph (31.1 km/h) |
| 250 W | 21.1 mph (33.9 km/h) |
| 300 W | 22.6 mph (36.3 km/h) |
Tripling power from 100 to 300 watts adds only about 8 mph. Position, wind, tires and hills move those speeds around, which is why average speed tells you little about FTP.
A lower position can add speed with zero extra watts, one of the laziest ways to get faster. Where do the pros sit, then?
How Pros Compare (It’s a Different Planet)
If app-user numbers bruised your ego, look away now.
Peer-reviewed pro power records for 144 male professionals put median one-hour power at 5.15 W/kg, about 350 watts. The top 10 percent reached 5.76 W/kg.
Those are best-of-season values from training and racing, not lab FTP tests. In a separate study, female pros averaged 4.2 W/kg for their record hour. Among men, three top-five Giro d’Italia finishers posted 20-minute record power of 6.4 to 6.6 W/kg.
Next to the untrained men’s anchor near 2.2 W/kg, a male pro holds more than double the power per kilogram for an hour.
Still, a 250-watt FTP at 199 lb (90.3 kg) sits right in the most common band for TrainerRoad men aged 40 to 60 in 2018. A pro would hold those watts while chatting, then ride away uphill.
For a feel of those watts on the road, see how fast the peloton goes. Your own number is the part you can move.
How Fast Can You Raise Your FTP?
FTP moves once intensity has a plan. These studies measured lactate-threshold power, a close cousin of FTP, and none of them used a field test.
Recreational riders doing about seven threshold-interval sessions over up to five weeks raised threshold power by 17 watts, about 9.8 percent. In the Finnish study from earlier, adults doing about 1.6 hours a week of hard intervals gained 20 watts (about 13 percent) in 10 weeks.
A comparison group in that study rode about 6.8 hours a week easy and gained only about 6 watts. Well-trained male cyclists on polarized training raised threshold power 9 percent in six weeks, against 2 percent on a threshold-heavy plan.
A little structured intensity beats more easy miles for moving FTP.
Do a 20-minute test, a ramp test, or the 30-minute heart-rate test, and write the number down with your weight in pounds. Then retest after four to six weeks of one or two interval sessions a week, a common retest window.
Short on time? See how to get fitter on fewer miles.
FTP Questions Riders Ask About Watts, Pros and Testing
Is 200 watts a good FTP?
At 199 lb (90.3 kg), 200 watts is about 2.2 W/kg, right at Coggan’s untrained anchor for men. At 150 lb (68.0 kg), the same 200 watts is about 2.94 W/kg, which Garmin rates Good. Check the table above before judging.
Is a 250 or 300 watt FTP good?
For a 199 lb (90.3 kg) rider, 250 watts is about 2.77 W/kg and 300 watts is about 3.32 W/kg. Garmin labels those Fair and Good, and Coggan’s approximate bands call them Fair and Moderate. Lighter riders hit the same W/kg with fewer watts.
What is Tadej Pogačar’s FTP?
Tadej Pogačar hasn’t published an FTP, so any figure is an outside estimate, and those estimates vary, with some putting him close to 7 W/kg. For peer-reviewed context, three top-five Giro d’Italia finishers posted 20-minute record power of 6.4 to 6.6 W/kg. Treat any single-rider figure as informed guesswork.
How often should you test your FTP?
TrainerRoad recommends testing every four to six weeks to keep your training zones honest. Retest after a focused training block or after a long break off the bike, too. Use the same test in similar conditions each time so the numbers compare fairly.
Know a riding buddy who keeps quoting watts with no mention of weight? Share this with them👇
