That said, once you can nail sweet spot intervals, you need to go harder so you don’t stagnate or plateau. You still need to do some threshold work in order to know what that red line feeling feels like, but on a physiological level, you can get so much growth from sweet spot training. Riding JUST UNDER 100%, at Sweet Spot, will push out your ability to really pin it when you have to. I’ll say it twice: Sweet Spot should NOT replace threshold riding! You can most likely get more actual work done at this intensity than doing back to back 100% FTP sessions, but this is NOT a replacement for riding at 100-105%! You can stack a few of these intervals back to back and get phenomenal adaptations, but again, you really need to graduate past this in order to have optimal race fitness. You can also use this because you can focus on repeatability of sweet spot efforts. But this is not a replacement for long endurance rides, over unders, or FTP work at 105% FTP. This is a great workout that you can do during the race season if you need to rack up some kilojoules and you are short on time. It not only boosts aerobic capabilities, but if you get used to a 60 or 80 minute interval, when you go back to a 2 x 20, it seems so short! Trick your mind! Everything is relative. I use this midweek and also perform one long interval on the weekends. Sweet Spot, or high tempo / low threshold, is a great way to get aerobically fit during the base period. When Should I Do Sweet Spot? Sweet Spot Training For Base Miles / Preseason
If tempo is no man’s land by some people’s claim, I’d really call Sweet Spot no man’s land DURING RACE SEASON. I lean on this during the preseason, but I don’t use Sweet Spot a lot DURING the season. While there are big aerobic gains to be made, racing is not a fitness competition. 2 hours of sweet spot is very hard to complete, but it’s all about increasing your duration week after week. The Cat 1-3 cyclist should aim to eventually work up to one long interval of 1.5 hours of sweet spot if you’re looking to drive a break or have to sit on the front as a domestique for a GC teammate. Make sure you’ve tested your 30-60 minute power to have accurate data on your FTP. There is an opportunity cost to every workout that we choose to do, and there are much better intervals for my training and racing. Personally, I almost never do Sweet Spot intervals. Huge note though! These intervals are not to be your entire training regimen! These are done 1-4 times a month if applicable. You can start with 2 x 15 minutes at sweet spot, with half of the interval time as rest (so 7.5 minutes for this example), and slowly move up, with the goal of getting to 45 minute intervals and beyond, with only 5 minutes of recovery between this longer sessions (for the more advanced riders). While you want to start off small, make sure you elongate the sweet spot intervals for longer periods of time, beyond the 20 minute time range that many cyclists use for intervals. Shout out to Frank! I used to be a FasCat athlete when I first started (you’ve probably heard me give MASSIVE KUDOS to my old coach Jason Hilimire.) This is taken from the man himself who reated Sweet Spot Cycling, Frank Overton from FasCat. Let’s define the sweet spot zone in cycling: 84-97% of your Functional Threshold Power (FTP). Last thing to mention: sweet spot does burn a lot of calories, so make sure you check out our Nutrition Posts….short take away: eat carbs!! In your training cycle, make sure that you ask yourself: how is this training applicable to my racing, or whatever training goals that you may have, if winning races isn’t your priority.
We’re Doing Too Many Sweet Spot IntervalsĮven though there is no replacement for the long ride when it comes to aerobic fitness, you can use sweet spot training to build your aerobic fitness and begin the process of pushing out your FTP ceiling.īut let’s call it what it is: high tempo, low threshold.
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Let’s look at how to use sweet spot cycling to help you be more productive with your cycling training on the bike, and win some races and drop some friends.
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