What are the 7 cycling power zones?
The Coggan/Allen zones slice effort into seven bands, each a percentage of your FTP, each training something different — from easy-spinning recovery to flat-out sprints. The table above turns the percentages into your actual watts. Two things make zones useful rather than decorative: the boundaries move with your FTP (test, don't guess — the FTP calculator), and the zone you avoid most is usually the one you need. For most riders that's the unglamorous pair at the ends: real Zone 2 volume and honest Zone 4 intervals.
Power zones chart by FTP
The same seven bands at three common FTPs, so you can see how the walls move — every boundary is a fixed fraction of threshold:
| Zone | % of FTP | FTP 200 W | FTP 250 W | FTP 300 W |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Z1 · Active Recovery | ≤55% | 0–110 W | 0–138 W | 0–165 W |
| Z2 · Endurance | 56–75% | 111–150 W | 139–188 W | 166–225 W |
| Z3 · Tempo | 76–90% | 151–180 W | 189–225 W | 226–270 W |
| Z4 · Threshold | 91–105% | 181–210 W | 226–263 W | 271–315 W |
| Z5 · VO2max | 106–120% | 211–240 W | 264–300 W | 316–360 W |
| Z6 · Anaerobic Capacity | 121–150% | 241–300 W | 301–375 W | 361–450 W |
| Z7 · Neuromuscular | >150% | 301+ W | 376+ W | 451+ W |
Coggan/Allen percentages, computed by the same engine as the calculator; the boundaries are contiguous, so a watt belongs to exactly one zone. Your own FTP's column is the printable above.
At an FTP of 245 W, Zone 2 tops out at 184 W — a pace where conversation flows and the ego complains. That's the point. The adaptations that raise FTP (mitochondria, capillaries, fat metabolism) accumulate with hours at this intensity, and going harder on easy days mostly steals quality from the hard ones. The pros ride slower than you think, more than you think.
How long should efforts in each zone last?
Duration is the zone system's second axis: the same watts mean different things over 30 seconds and 30 minutes. The typical-effort column above is the practical guide — Zone 5 lives in 3–8-minute intervals because that's how long maximal aerobic power can be repeated; Zone 4 lives in 8–30-minute blocks because threshold is trainable in sustained doses; Zone 2 is measured in hours. If you can hold a "Zone 5 interval" for 15 minutes, it wasn't Zone 5 — your FTP is set too low.
How many hours a week should you spend in each zone?
The distribution that keeps showing up in the endurance-training literature is lopsided: roughly four-fifths of training time easy, a small slice at threshold, and a smaller one flat out. Applied to three weekly budgets:
| Zone band | 5 h/week | 8 h/week | 12 h/week |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zones 1–2 (easy, endurance) | 4.0 h | 6.4 h | 9.6 h |
| Zones 3–4 (tempo, sweet spot, threshold) | 0.8 h | 1.2 h | 1.8 h |
| Zones 5+ (VO2max and above) | 0.3 h | 0.4 h | 0.6 h |
An 80 / 15 / 5 split by time — a rounded version of the polarized and pyramidal distributions that Seiler and others documented in elite endurance athletes. A guide to the shape, not a prescription.
The number that surprises most riders is the first row: on a five-hour week, four of those hours should be genuinely easy, and the hard work fits in a single interval session. The common failure is the opposite shape — every ride at a tempo that's too hard to recover from and too easy to adapt to — which the zones make visible: if most of your time lands in Zone 3, the plan isn't polarized, it's stuck in the middle.
Which zone is a group ride, a century or a climb?
For the 245 W rider in the tables: a steady century or a long solo endurance ride lives in Zone 2 (136–184 W), with the rest stops doing the rest. A fast group ride is Zone 3 on average (185–221 W) with Zone 5 spikes every time the pace lifts, which is why it feels harder than the average suggests. A 20-to-40-minute climb ridden well is Zone 4 (222–257 W) — the climb time calculator shows what that pace is worth in minutes — and a five-minute hill sprint is Zone 5 (258–294 W). Knowing which zone a ride is stops you from riding every one of them at Zone 3.
Do 3-zone or 5-zone models change anything?
No — they're coarser cuts of the same continuum. The three-zone "polarized" model puts a line at the first lactate threshold (about the top of Coggan's Zone 2) and another at the second (the top of Zone 4); everything below the first is easy, everything above the second is hard. Five-zone systems, common in heart-rate training, fold Coggan's Zones 6 and 7 into one and split the middle differently. Use whichever your platform speaks, but test and set the anchor the same way every time: the zones are only as good as the FTP they hang from.
Where does sweet spot fit?
Sweet spot isn't an official zone — it's the band from 88–94% of FTP, straddling the top of Zone 3 and the bottom of Zone 4 (216–230 W at an FTP of 245). It earns its name by buying most of threshold training's benefit at a noticeably lower fatigue cost, which makes it the workhorse intensity for time-crunched riders and trainer season. It's a complement to real threshold work, not a replacement for it.
Raise your FTP from 245 to 265 W and Zone 2 endurance stretches from 136–184 to 147–199 W, while threshold intervals climb from 222–257 to 240–278 W — computed by the calculator above. Training to stale zones after a fitness change is the most common way structured training quietly stops working: retest every 6–8 weeks in season, and after any long break.
Power zones vs heart rate zones
Power responds instantly; heart rate lags, drifts with heat and caffeine, and caps out differently day to day. If you have a power meter or smart trainer, train by watts and let heart rate be the second opinion — unusually high HR for a familiar power is your early-warning system for fatigue, illness or heat. No power meter? The heart rate zones calculator builds the matching five zones from your threshold heart rate — Coggan's HR levels line up with these power levels one to one, and with an FTP entered it prints both on one sheet.
How to actually use the printed sheet
The point of taping zones to the wall is removing decisions mid-workout. Before the session, pick the zone and duration; during it, the only job is holding the band. Interval targets sit in the middle of a zone, not the top — 222–257 W threshold work at an FTP of 245 means riding near 240 W, with the top of the band as a ceiling for good days, not a target for every day.