Cycling Power Zones Calculator

Zone ceilings against FTP

The top of each Coggan zone as FTP rises. Each zone runs from the line below it up to its own line. Enter your FTP above and your threshold lands on the chart.

Your power zones are the seven bands between spinning easy and sprinting flat out, each one a percentage of your FTP and each one training something different. Enter your FTP, or a 20-minute, 8-minute or ramp test result and let the calculator derive it, add your weight for watts per kilo, and pick the zone system your head unit uses. The tables below give the zones for every FTP from 100 to 450 W, what each zone trains, and how the three common systems differ.

The seven Coggan zones

The standard comes from Andrew Coggan and Hunter Allen's Training and Racing with a Power Meter, and it is what Garmin, Wahoo, Zwift and TrainingPeaks load by default. Zone 1 is active recovery under 55 percent of FTP. Zone 2, endurance, is 56 to 75 percent, the all-day pace where most training hours belong. Zone 3, tempo, is 76 to 90 percent: a spirited group ride, a brisk paceline, the effort you can repeat on consecutive days if you do not overdo it. Zone 4, threshold, is 91 to 105 percent, just below to just above time-trial pace, ridden as repeats of 10 to 30 minutes. Zone 5, VO2max, is 106 to 120 percent in intervals of 3 to 8 minutes, and 30 to 40 minutes of it in one session is about the limit. Zone 6, anaerobic capacity, is 121 to 150 percent for efforts of 30 seconds to 3 minutes. Zone 7, neuromuscular, is everything above that: sprints, jumps and standing starts measured in seconds.

For an FTP of 250 W that puts endurance at 140 to 188 W, threshold at 228 to 263 W and VO2max at 265 to 300 W. The zone table below adds Coggan's heart rate guideline and RPE for each level, plus the sessions that live there.

Sweet spot and polarized: the other two systems

TrainerRoad's version keeps Coggan's numbers but splits tempo so that the top of it gets a name: sweet spot, 88 to 94 percent of FTP. It is the band that produces the most threshold adaptation per hour when hours are short, hard enough to matter and easy enough to repeat three times a week. For an FTP of 300 W the sweet spot is 264 to 282 W.

Stephen Seiler's polarized model has three zones and two lines: the first lactate threshold, which lands around 80 percent of FTP for most trained riders, and the second, which is FTP itself. Zone 1 is everything below the first line, Zone 3 everything above FTP, and Zone 2 the band between that the model tells you to mostly avoid. The distribution is roughly 80 percent of time in Zone 1 and 20 percent in Zone 3, and the point is not the exact percentages but the discipline: easy days easy, hard days hard, nothing in the middle by accident. Note that polarized Zone 2 (80 to 99 percent) is not the same thing as Coggan Zone 2 (56 to 75); the names collide, the bands do not.

None of the three is more correct. Coggan describes physiology in the most detail, sweet spot names the most time-efficient band, polarized enforces the distribution. Pick the one your device and plan use and keep the lines where they are.

Finding your FTP

FTP is the highest power you can hold for about an hour, and almost nobody tests it that way. The 20-minute test takes 95 percent of a 20-minute all-out average: 265 W becomes an FTP of 252. The CTS 8-minute test takes 90 percent of the better of two 8-minute efforts. The ramp test, 20 W steps from 100 W until you cannot hold the target, takes 75 percent of the final minute: 340 W in the last minute becomes 255. The three land within a few watts for a typical rider but the multipliers are calibrated to different riders, so a sprinter's ramp test reads high and a diesel's reads low. Choose a test, keep it, and retest every four to eight weeks in a focused block or whenever the zones feel consistently wrong. The FTP calculator runs all three; critical power gives the same threshold from two efforts plus the W-prime above it.

Indoor FTP reads a little lower than outdoor for most riders, from heat and a fixed position. Test where you train, and set separate indoor and outdoor FTPs if the gap is more than a few percent.

Watts per kilo and where you sit

Divide FTP by body weight and you get the number that decides climbs and race categories. Zwift's pace categories draw the lines at 4.0 W/kg for A, 3.2 for B, 2.5 for C and 1.5 for D. An FTP of 250 W at 75 kg is 3.33 W/kg, a mid-B rider; the same watts at 65 kg is 3.85, at the top of B. The calculator prints both W/kg and the category, and the power-to-weight calculator goes further into what the number means on a climb. On a flat road, raw watts win; on anything over about 5 percent, W/kg does.

Power against heart rate

Power is immediate and exact, which makes it the right target for intervals, where heart rate is still climbing when a three-minute effort ends. Heart rate carries the day's context, heat, sleep, caffeine, fatigue, which makes it the right check on long rides. Coggan's threshold-heart-rate guideline per zone is in the table below. When power says Zone 2 and heart rate says Zone 3 for a whole ride, you are tired, hot or under-fueled, and the fix is rest or fluid, not new zones. For power-based heart rate zones in the other direction, use the heart rate zone calculator.

Reading a ride in zones

Average power lies about hard rides. A criterium averages Zone 3 while spending half its time in Zones 5 and 6 and the other half coasting. That is what normalized power and intensity factor exist to fix, and why a session of 30 minutes easy, an hour of tempo and 30 minutes easy is a tempo ride even if the average lands in Zone 2. The normalized power guide covers how NP, IF and TSS turn a ride file into a training load, and the coach in the app reads your Garmin, Wahoo or Apple Health files against the same zones you set here.

The seven Coggan zones: what each one trains

Percent of FTP is the definition. The threshold-heart-rate column is Coggan's own guideline for riders who train by heart rate; it lags and drifts, so treat it as a check, not a target. RPE is the Borg 10-point scale.

Zones 6 and 7 are too short for heart rate to mean anything, which is why Coggan lists none.

Coggan, sweet spot or polarized?

Three ways to cut the same continuum. Coggan is the standard the devices use. TrainerRoad's version carves sweet spot out of upper tempo. Seiler's three-zone model draws its lines at the two lactate thresholds and cares only about staying out of the middle. Pick one, set it on the head unit, and stop moving the lines.

Finding FTP: the three tests

Pick a test and keep it. The multipliers are calibrated to different riders, so switching tests moves your FTP by 5 to 10 W with no change in fitness. Indoor FTP typically reads a little lower than outdoor on the same legs.

Power zones by FTP, 100 to 450 W

Coggan percentages, rounded to the watt. Divide by your weight for W/kg; the calculator does it and places you in the power-to-weight categories.

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