Inevitably it pops up in post testing discussion. The difference between men and women. Specifically the methods and manners used to ‘successfully’ execute the incredibly difficult and challenging FTP test. For the uninitiated amongst you, the functional threshold power (FTP) test is a simple way to capture an accurate base metric necessary to train subsequently at appropriate wattage ranges. Fair warning to the uninitiated again, while the description and utility is simple, there is NOTHING simple about its demanding execution. Here is the test in plain, embellished English:
TWENTY MINUTES ALL OUT.
Not kinda, sorta, maybe hard, but all you got hard. Where 20 minutes seems like 20 hours. Where one feels like heart will explode and lungs will bleed hard. Where one's darkest, bleakest, most deeply hidden fears, weakness and doubts come rushing up like a sea-to-air tomahawk missile. Where one might end up having the effort reveal one as a fraud. When that reality of exposed ego is shattered faster than duck eggs on a saltillo floor. When truth is revealed.
In The PowerBarn, the days that we test have become legendary. For several reasons, but mainly because they inspire so deeply. We all know what it takes to commit, saddle up and face the music. In response to the courageousness of the testee, support in the form of encouragement, bordering on the fanatical, horns honking, cow-bells clanging, shouts deafening, AC-DC blaring, is both spectacle and uniting. There is power in the outward display of bravery. In a word, it is awesome. Once baptized by the fire of the test, one takes the data, wattage, into a period of training that allows the adaptation process to unfold naturally and organically. It never gets easier, you just get stronger.
Or not.
There are as many reasons for joining our club as there are songs to choose from in the mashing up of a set list to accompany our testing and training. Some folks want to get faster to race. Others to rehab from injury, some to keep healthy and fit, and many to enjoy our supportive atmosphere, camaraderie in the torching of calories. The chances are slim that anyone joins specifically to watch my custom training videos, but every once in a while I get a golf-clap for a particularly juicy sequence.
Back to the testosterone vs estrogen comparison. Men do it differently. We like the battle, the war, the challenge, the in the saddle with reins between teeth and a 45 in each hand. We need the fight to keep the macho mucho. It is hard wired. To back down is to die an ignoble cowardly death. We cowboy-up and shiver the loins as validation of manhood and all things muscular and masculine. Here is a place where weakness is not tolerated, where the mantra is ‘harden the fuck up’. We all get to face our fears in a non-lethal battleground of pedal rotations and sweat.
And the girls do it different. There is no shame in it. The journey, the trip, the experience is altogether, well, softer. Where ours is black, their test is pink. We may see blood red but they see ruby and crimson. Hard is still hard, all-out is still all-out, and maximum effort remains the goal for both, but results, while everything to us, are not most important for them. What is important, I think, is the opportunity to visit that place, that focused, condensed, scary, confusing, threatening arena sometimes thought to be the sole domain of the male archetype. I think there is big value there, known only to my heroine counterparts who bravely go, see and do.
I have such respect for all who voluntarily (or otherwise) circle a date on their calendar and agree to test their ability to endure. Certainly this is only one of the many ways to get answers to this one critical question. Male or female the questions is the same:
Under what conditions will you quit?
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