If you’re new to using power training, hearing people talk about watts can sound like a bunch of gibberish. You may be familiar with more standard measurements of fitness, like heart rate or perceived exertion, but measuring your on-bike power is arguably the most objective way to look at your ride to see if you’re improving over time. But what is power, exactly, and what should yours be? 

Simply put, power is the energy that you’re putting out on the bike, expressed in watts. All watts are created equal, but not all riders are: While 200 watts is technically the same for a 100 pound racer and a 180 pound rider, the speeds that they’ll travel at 200 watts vary greatly. That’s why, when you ask ‘what should my power be?’, the answer isn’t simply expressed in X or Y number of watts, it’s expressed as a power-to-weight ratio (PWR). That ratio takes into account your body weight as well as the power that you’re pushing on the bike, so you see that the 100 pound racer in the example is actually much stronger than the 180 pound rider—and will likely beat him in a race.

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We’ve gone over the power-to-weight ratio in great depth before, but here's the short version: To determine your PWR, first divide your body weight in pounds by 2.2 (to convert it to kilograms), then divide that weight into the average power from a 20-minute effort (watts/kilograms). It should be noted that your PWR for 20 minutes won’t be the same as your PWR for a five minute effort or a 30-second one, so don’t expect that number to stay static if you look at a three-hour ride versus a 45-minute time trial. However, that 20-minute power result tends to be the one discussed most frequently, so it’s a good place to start. 

To see where you stack up relative to other riders (and the power target you should aim if you want to improve), Andy Coggan of Training Peaks put out this oft-referenced power table to give riders a general sense of where they stand.

However, before you start panicking about your numbers, pause for a second: Coach Heath Dotson explains that a low power-to-weight number isn’t the be-all, end-all when it comes to setting a power goal for yourself.  

"That power profile chart is a starting point, but a lot of those max values were taken during the dark days of cycling, so to speak,” he explains, meaning that the numbers may be artificially high, thanks to doping. "I don’t know how valid it is anymore, especially at the top level. I’ve seen some power numbers for top pros, and they aren’t as high now, but the pros are still doing well at under five watts per kilogram.”

Of course, riders are naturally limited by what their bodies can achieve, Dotson says. “There’s something like 95 percent of the population will never be able to hit 4 watts per kilogram. Above that, and you’re better than most of the general population. And that number can bring you from Cat 3 to Cat 1, and the pro level is that top one percent of that, and Pro Tour level is one percent of one percent." 

Pro data is hard to find if the athletes don't upload ride logs to Strava, but to give you some perspective: Chris Froome’s power for that crazy attack and escape in Stage 10 of the 2015 Tour de France that prompted Team Sky to release his power data to the public: 5.78w/kg sustained for just about 41 minutes. And to win the silver medal in the 2012 Road World Championships, Rachel Neylan had to put out 8.7w/kg for a full minute, putting her near the top of the Elite Men’s scale. 

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So when you ask, “What should my power be?” it’s not a simple answer.  "I don’t know!” Dotson says. “You can look at that power-to-weight ratio chart and get a general idea, but people look at just that chart, and that ignores a lot. My PWR isn’t great on the chart, because I’m a big guy, but I can put out a lot of power and get low on the bike and I can go pretty fast." 

The problem with power is that people get hung up on that one metric, without actually having a plan for what to do with it. “Too often a power meter gets used as a glorified speedometer,” Dotson says. "People just see it as another number to brag about.” But that power meter is there to track the amount of work you’re doing and how you’re improving. While some people have naturally high power numbers from the start, others have to work their way up slowly—and both of those are fine, as long as you keep progressing. 

If you’re new to power, and all of the numbers coming in from your meter are just confusing, consider consulting a coach. "We can look at the power numbers and tell you what to do to improve them, to see what kind of rider you are,” Dotson says. "That’s the big thing, learning what to do with those numbers and understand what exactly they mean and how they can apply to your riding.”

Like the old cliché: It’s not all about how many watts you have, it’s about how you use them.