The Skill That Enables Riders to Win With Less Power: Power Control.

November 19, 2025

Cycling really romanticizes the idea of more, especially when you are needing to improve.

Even though our power-meter-obsessed sport has trained us to worship normalized power, peak numbers, and FTP charts, the truth is simple:

Numbers don’t win races. Speed does.
And speed comes from how you use your power, not how much of it you can produce.

Cycling, like any sport, is still a game. Yes, physiology matters. But tactics, timing, and control matter more.

As a Pro, Riders Who Beat Me Often Did It With Less Power!

I hated getting dropped. You probably do too! Oftentimes, getting beat led to me going off track with my training as well.

I remember, as a pro cyclist, getting dropped on a final climb and immediately thinking: “I need to ride more to gain more power and do more work to have less weight.” But this was ALWAYS a trap that took me off course and eventually led to burnout and injury, rerouting me to less power with more weight.

When I took a closer look as a pro, even comparing my power files to the riders who finished ahead of me, they actually did less power! Chris Horner was one of these riders. Time and time again we would battle, and after the race I would compare our power files. He would beat me AND finish with less power used both on the final climb and for the stage!

As I was the lighter rider, and the losing rider, one would assume I would have less power. But he did. What in the world did he do differently? Power control! He stayed right in his zones while I was using needed energy “bleeding” power all over the place. During the stage he would ride right near the front of the field, staying smooth and not surging. In contrast, I thought I was saving energy riding further back, but instead I had to do huge power spikes every time the peloton stretched out from corners, downhills, or wind!

On the final climb, Chris again gamed me by starting the climb further ahead. He stayed at his threshold in the initial surge at the base of the climb, while I had to go over mine to go around a handful of riders to get to him. Then, when I did reach the front, I used key power pushing the pace and going over my zones while he sat smoothly on my wheel with no spiking and well within his. When he launched his attack, he went right to his target power for the needed duration and held it, while I reacted too sharply, going over my zone, and then had to drop my power way down to recover while he rode away.

As a coach, I’m in this same position with my athletes. When they finish a race where they got dropped, they also feel like it was their lack of power that caused them to get dropped.

Shift Your Focus: From Average Power to Power Execution

I want you to stop grading yourself by your average watts or the biggest number you hit in your interval. The power number target you have is the input, the direction, the communication for your effort. The output you are looking for is putting together the power execution, the level of control you have using that power.

It doesn’t matter if the average watts in the end are less or more than that target. What does matter is the connection you have between the goal input and what control comes naturally out of the body.

One big reason I dislike focusing on averages so much is how riders often will go way over the power target, after going way under, to get the average to the target. This is not truly controlling the power and this is definitely not training the intended target zone.

So what exactly is Power Control?

Power Control is the art of staying in the right zone target despite all the external factors that easily can lead you away from that target. External factors such as climbs, downhills, other riders, and changing terrain can all pull you off your target power.

Techniques such as pedal stroke control, shifting, and looking ahead to anticipate will all help you lock in your power control. The result is creating more speed and momentum while using less energy. A truly game changing result.

There are two core components to power control:

Power Floors
Power Ceilings

Let’s break them down.

Power Floors: The Minimum You Never Drop Below

First let’s revisit the classic mistake most make when focusing on power averages. A rider is told to ride 220 watts for a 20-minute interval. Halfway through, they see they’ve been doing 190. So they crank 250 for the second half to “average out.”

Technically, the average might say 220.

But in reality:

Half the interval was too easy
Half was too hard
Speed was left on the table
Energy was wasted

This is not controlled riding. It’s damage control.

Focusing first on the Power Floor fixes this.
It’s the minimum wattage you stay above during the interval.

When you go below the floor:

You lose momentum
You must burn extra energy to rebuild speed
You ride slower, even if the average looks “good”

Power Ceilings: The maximum power you try to avoid blasting through

While the Power Floor prevents you from dropping too low, the Power Ceiling prevents you from wasting energy by going too high.

Cyclists are all over-achievers and love to “feel good” during an interval and push above the ceiling. It’s kinda that “you set a mark and I’ll beat it” mentality. Super common, but also quite unproductive. The reason for this is not only does it teach the rider to use more energy than the target (a mindset that is hard to shake in racing and group riding), but it also misses training the specific zone. By shooting over the zone by too far you can miss key adaptations that are needed for later building and growth.

In terms of performance, every spike above the ceiling often creates a drop below the floor afterward. This spike-and-crash pattern destroys your:

Momentum
Efficiency
Speed
Energy conservation
Ability to stay in the intended PTZ

Even if the average power is perfect, your body experiences something completely different. Those spikes raise the perceived effort dramatically.

If you are wondering if you are a victim of the Power Ceiling, an easy test is to go back and look at intervals and of race/group ride segments that the RPE (rate of perceived exertion) far exceeded the average power. The reason for this is that the body thinks the intensity for the whole effort was that of the constant spikes, while the physiological adaptation you get is that of where you spent most of your time ( a lower power.) The result often is the rider makes little progress both in competitive scenarios (as they keep doing the same thing and keep getting dropped) while not making any physiological progress as the stimulus is not correct to make the right adaptations.

In the end, the best cyclists keep their floors and ceilings very close and tight by skill, and this is what elite Power Control is all about.

Why Power Control matters so much

Simply put, because speed and progression is the ultimate goal of training. We use power numbers in training and racing as inputs that become ways to communicate an action. The action we are looking for is a specific stimulus for growth, and or an execution performance outcome. We are not using these power numbers as a pass/fail, average-based, confirmation of your fitness.

Power Control turns your watts from strict guidelines into useful, efficient, and compounding speed, skill, and performance fitness. It ensures your power is: