Cycling Power Zones Calculator

Cycling power zones are percentage bands of your FTP. Enter your Functional Threshold Power and this returns all seven Coggan zones in watts — Active Recovery, Endurance, Tempo, Lactate Threshold, VO2max, Anaerobic Capacity, and Neuromuscular Power — plus watts per kilogram when you add your weight.

How the math works

A power zone is a band of watts defined as a percentage of your FTP. Once you know FTP, every boundary is just a multiplication: multiply FTP by each zone's low and high percentage. The seven-level split and its percentages come from Allen & Coggan (Training and Racing with a Power Meter, 2019).

The seven Coggan zones, as percentage bands of FTP:

• Zone 1 — Active Recovery (below 55%): easy spinning, recovery between hard efforts.
• Zone 2 — Endurance (56–75%): all-day aerobic riding, the base of most training.
• Zone 3 — Tempo (76–90%): brisk, sustained sub-threshold work.
• Zone 4 — Lactate Threshold (91–105%): right around FTP; threshold and sweet-spot intervals.
• Zone 5 — VO2max (106–120%): 3–8 minute intervals to lift the aerobic ceiling.
• Zone 6 — Anaerobic Capacity (121–150%): 30-second to 3-minute hard efforts.
• Zone 7 — Neuromuscular Power (maximal): sprints. This one is effort-based and not anchored to FTP — see below.

Worked example

A rider with an FTP of 266 W (from a 20-minute test averaging 280 W: 0.95 × 280 = 266) weighing 165 lb (74.84 kg) gets these zones. Each watt boundary is the percentage times 266, rounded to the nearest watt; each W/kg figure divides by 74.8427 kg.

• Zone 1 Active Recovery: 0–146 W (0.00–1.95 W/kg)
• Zone 2 Endurance: 149–200 W (1.99–2.67 W/kg)
• Zone 3 Tempo: 202–239 W (2.70–3.19 W/kg)
• Zone 4 Lactate Threshold: 242–279 W (3.23–3.73 W/kg) — FTP sits here
• Zone 5 VO2max: 282–319 W (3.77–4.26 W/kg)
• Zone 6 Anaerobic Capacity: 322–399 W (4.30–5.33 W/kg)
• Zone 7 Neuromuscular Power: 402 W and up — no fixed ceiling

FTP itself is the 100% mark: 266 W is 3.55 W/kg at this rider's weight, and it lands inside Zone 4 by definition. Same watts, different rider: 266 W at 190 lb (86.2 kg) is 3.09 W/kg, so the identical zone table describes a rider a full band lower on any climb.

When this calculator is wrong

The zones look precise — 242 to 279 watts, to the nearest watt — but that precision is borrowed from an FTP number that is itself an estimate. A 20-minute FTP test has a small average bias and a wide individual error band: treat it as ±40–60 W of uncertainty, not a precise threshold (Borszcz et al. 2018 measured individual limits of agreement up to −62 to +60 W in 23 trained men). Because every boundary is a fixed multiple of FTP, that band moves the whole table together — if your true FTP is 20 W higher than the test said, every zone edge is low by the same proportion. The error band bites hardest exactly here, when you set zones off one test, rather than when you watch your own retests trend over time at a fixed protocol.

The counter-case: for a steady, diesel-type rider whose 20-minute power is already close to their 60-minute power, the FTP estimate is about right and so are the zones. And if you always test the same way, the factor stays constant — so the trend is honest even when the absolute watts are a few off, which is what matters when you are chasing your own progress rather than comparing against someone else.

• Zone 7 has no FTP-derived ceiling. Neuromuscular Power is maximal sprint power, governed by neuromuscular and anaerobic capacity — not by the aerobic threshold FTP describes. Printing a top number for it (say "150–200% of FTP") is a category error; a good sprinter's peak is many multiples of FTP and has nothing to do with it. This calculator prints Zone 7 as open-ended for that reason.
• Indoor and outdoor FTP differ. Many riders hold a lower FTP on a trainer than on the road, and power meters can read several percent apart. Build your zones from the FTP measured on the setup you actually train on, or the whole table is on a different scale than your workouts.
• Zones are bands, not lines. Physiology does not flip at 279 watts and stay flipped at 280. The boundaries are guides for where an effort mostly sits, not switches — riding at 275 versus 285 W is a difference in emphasis, not a different sport.

What to do with the result

Use the zones to structure a week, not to police every pedal stroke. Most endurance training time is best spent easy — low-intensity Zone 1–2 riding builds the aerobic base, and the polarised-training research (Seiler 2010) argues athletes generally do too little of it and too much middling Zone 3. Put your hard work where it counts: threshold and sweet-spot intervals in Zone 4, VO2max repeats in Zone 5, short anaerobic efforts in Zone 6. Then keep the table honest — FTP drifts with fitness, so re-test every 4–6 weeks and recompute; a stale FTP makes all seven zones wrong at once. Before you trust a fresh FTP for hour-long threshold sets, check it against a real sustained effort: if you cannot hold it for 20–30 steady minutes on a hard day, the test flattered you and every zone above needs nudging down.

Common questions

What are the 7 cycling power zones?

In the Coggan model they are Zone 1 Active Recovery (below 55% of FTP), Zone 2 Endurance (56–75%), Zone 3 Tempo (76–90%), Zone 4 Lactate Threshold (91–105%), Zone 5 VO2max (106–120%), Zone 6 Anaerobic Capacity (121–150%), and Zone 7 Neuromuscular Power (maximal, effort-based). The first six are bands of FTP; the seventh is not.

How do I calculate my power zones?

Multiply your FTP by each zone's percentage range. At an FTP of 266 W, Zone 2 (56–75%) is 0.56 × 266 to 0.75 × 266, which rounds to 149–200 W. Repeat for each zone, or enter your FTP above and read them off directly.

What is sweet spot in power zones?

Sweet spot is the high end of Tempo into the low end of Lactate Threshold — the upper part of Zone 3 running into Zone 4, just below FTP. It is popular because it delivers much of the threshold-training benefit at a slightly lower cost in fatigue, which lets you accumulate more of it per week.

Why doesn't Zone 7 have an upper limit?

Because Neuromuscular Power is not set by FTP. It is maximal, short-sprint power governed by neuromuscular recruitment and anaerobic capacity, so it does not scale as a fixed multiple of your aerobic threshold. A sprinter can produce many multiples of FTP for a few seconds; anchoring a ceiling to FTP would be meaningless, so we leave it open-ended.

Should I train by power zones or heart rate zones?

Power responds instantly and is not swayed by heat, caffeine, or sleep, which makes it the better tool for pacing intervals. Heart rate lags and drifts, but it reflects internal strain and is useful for long steady rides. Many riders watch power for the effort and heart rate for the cost; the two do not line up boundary-for-boundary because they measure different things.

How often should I update my power zones?

Whenever your FTP changes — realistically, re-test every 4–6 weeks during a training block, or after anything big enough to move fitness such as a training camp, a break, or illness. Because every zone is a percentage of FTP, one new FTP number updates the entire table at once.