FTP is a useful number. It is not, however, the whole story of your fitness. Treating it like it is might be the thing quietly making training less enjoyable than it should be.

Strength training has a reputation problem in endurance cycling. It's either feared as a shortcut to unwanted mass or quietly skipped because there are only so many hours in the week. Both reasons are understandable. Neither holds up particularly well under scrutiny.

Every cyclist has experienced the gap between how training feels in October and how it feels in February. The athletes who improve most reliably across years aren't the ones who close that gap with willpower. They're the ones who stopped relying on motivation in the first place.

Specificity is one of the most important principles in endurance training. It's also one of the most misapplied. Training that mirrors your event too closely, too early, doesn't sharpen fitness. It limits it.