In part 1 Sweet Spot Training for Every Rider I described the benefits of Sweet Spot workouts improve a rider’s sustained power. This means that at a given level of effort you’re going faster. Even if you don’t use a power meter to measure it, increasing your sustained power improves your general riding, climbing and riding into a headwind.
For example, if you usually do a local 20 – 30 minute climb at 7 mph increasing your power may mean you can climb at 7.5 mph. Because sweet spot workouts improve your sustained power they also improve your cruising speed. If you normally do an endurance ride at 14 – 15 mph, sweet spot training may improve your speed to 15 – 16 mph.
How much you improve depends on your current fitness, the specific workouts you do and a variety of other factors, which vary among individuals. Sweet spot training will improve your riding; however, it may be more or less than the two examples.
What is the Sweet Spot?
In cycling the relationship between a rider’s training load (combination of volume, intensity and recovery) and performance is one of the basic principles of training. This applies whether you are training to go a little faster while you’re commuting, to do harder club rides, to finish a 100K or 100 mile ride or to peak for the state championship. Whatever the kind of riding you do, you can benefit from sweet spot training.
Training in the sweet spot doesn’t require riding more miles; it means riding the right miles at the correct intensity at the proper time. Training in the sweet spot you ride moderately harder than a conversational pace instead of riding very hard for a short time.
By not training as hard, you get more cumulative training overload in the week.
Sweet Spot by Perceived Exertion, Heart Rate and Power
The sweet spot is the same intensity whether you ride by perceived exertion, heart rate or power. For all three if you feel the burn of lactic acid you’re going too hard.
- Perceived exertion: RPE of 4 – 5 on a 10-point scale. (1 is barely moving and 10 is flat out for a few seconds.) The sweet spot is riding a little harder than a conversational endurance pace but not hard enough that you are going anaerobic. You should be able to talk in short phrases, not gasping for air.
- Heart rate: 93 – 97% of anaerobic (lactate) threshold.
- Power: 88 – 94% of functional threshold power (FTP).
Sample Workouts
Some riders like to do structured intensity workouts with timed intervals. Others prefer unstructured workouts that just mix up hard and easy riding. Both work. I hate intervals but enjoy unstructured workouts.
Before doing sweet spot workouts read my column on How Cyclists Should Approach Intensity Training for the Maximum Benefit.
Always warm up before any intensity workout and cool down after it.
Structured Workouts
Creating workouts you can manipulate three variables:
- Length of the interval
- Number of repeats
- Total time in the sweet spot (function of #1 and #2)
I usually start riders with a workout with a range of 3 – 6 repeats with the sweet spot interval time is twice the recovery time, e.g., 6 minutes SS and 3 minutes easy. If the interval time is an odd number, e.g., 7 minutes SS then I round up the recovery to 4 minutes SS. To get a benchmark I ask the client to do as many intervals as the rider can and to stop if the rider has trouble riding in the sweet spot. Continuing to ride wouldn’t have any training benefit and the rider would need more recovery time before another quality workout.
If you’re new to sweet spot training then you’ll need to experiment to determine where to begin, i.e., how much you can ride in the sweet spot now. Start with short intervals like:
- Repeat 3 – 6 times [4 min in the SS and 2 min EZ].
When you stop you should be able to do one more repeat. This way you’ll recover more fully for your next intensity workout.
- If you can do three for four repeats of the above then this is the right place to start for you.
- If you can’t do three repeats then use a shorter interval: Repeat 3 – 6 times [3 min SS and 2 min EZ]
- If you can do all six repeats then increase the length of the interval.
Only increase the length of the SS interval by one or two minutes at a time. For example, if you did 6 reps of 4 min SS = 24 total minutes in the sweet spot you could step up to:
- Repeat 3 – 6 times [5 min in the SS and 3 min EZ] All six reps are a total of 30 minutes in the SS.
Or:
- Repeat 3 – 6 times [6 min SS and 3 min EZ] All six reps are a total of 36 minutes in the SS.
Keep experimenting until you find the workout where you can do three or four repeats but not six. You may increase by more than one rep from one workout to the next as long as you stop if you start to struggle. Build up until you can do six repeats. Then make the intervals harder.
Straight intervals are pretty boring. I often design patterns from my riders. For example, here’s a pyramid for a total of 30 minutes in the sweet spot:
- 3 min SS and 2 min EZ
- 4 min SS and 2 min EZ
- 5 min SS and 3 min EZ
- 6 min SS and 3 min EZ
- 5 min SS and 3 min EZ
- 4 min SS and 2 min EZ
- 3 min SS and 2 min EZ
Or you could climb a ladder for a total of 30 minutes in the sweet spot.
- 4 min SS and 2 min EZ
- 5 min SS and 3 min EZ
- 6 min SS and 3 min EZ
- 7 min SS and 4 min EZ
- 8 min SS and 4 min EZ
Or you could do the intervals in the opposite order descending the ladder, which is easier because you’re doing the hardest interval first.
Unstructured Workouts
You can mix up riding in the sweet spot and recovery riding any way you want. The recovery time doesn’t have to be one-half the sweet spot time. In general the sweet spot efforts can be longer if the recovery times are longer. Don’t bother tracking your cumulative time in the sweet spot. Just make each workout a little longer.
- Fartlek. Fartlek means “speed play” in Swedish. Just randomly mix up sweet spot and easy riding.
- Hill climbing. If you live in hilly country then climb hills in the sweet spot and recover on your way to the next hill.
- Bridging up. It’s challenging to do a sweet spot workout with a buddy because one rider’s sweet spot pace will different than another rider’s. To get around this one person goes up the road for X minutes at an endurance pace. Then the other rider bridges up riding in the sweet spot. Discipline yourselves to ride at the correct paces not faster.
- Drafting. One rider pulls in the sweet spot until he starts to fade and then drops back. The second rider pulls until he starts to fade and then drops back. Because the riders aren’t equally fit the pulls won’t be the same.
- Various cars. Every time a red car passes you start riding in the sweet spot until a blue one passes you. Or every time an SUV passes ride in the sweet spot.
- Random cross roads. If you have fairly frequent but randomly spaced cross roads each time you come to an intersection you alternate sweet spot and recovery.
- TV. During every commercial break ride in the sweet spot. Because the commercials are relatively far apart, in between ride at an endurance pace, not a recovery pace.
One year they were repairing a road near me. The gravel sections ranged from 0.1 to 1 mile and the paved sections were about the same. I rode sweet spot on the pavement and recovered on the gravel. A paved section wasn’t the same length as the adjacent gravel, which made it more interesting.
Sweet spot workouts are also popular on smart trainers and can be motivating with a few caveats:
- Discipline yourself to ride in the sweet spot even if the smart trainer says to ride harder.
- Start with shorter workouts and progress gradually.
- Always quit riding in the sweet spot feeling like you could have done more even if you haven’t finished the workout.
More Information
My eBook Intensity Training: Using Perceived Exertion, Heart Rate and Power to Maximize Training Effectiveness is written for health and fitness riders, recreational and club riders, endurance riders and racers. I explain in much more detail how training at different intensities brings about different physiological adaptations. I guide you through the process of establishing your own training zones so you can train at the proper intensities for your specific training objectives. I include sample year-round plans so you ride at the correct intensities at different times of the year. I provide over 50 structured and unstructured workouts at different intensities for different training objectives. The 40-page Intensity Training for Cyclists is $4.99.
My eBook Cycling Past 50, 60 and Beyond: Training with Intensity explains what happens to your body as you age and the physiological benefits of riding with intensity. I give you five progressively harder levels of training and give three to five examples each of structured and unstructured workouts for each level of training, a total of almost 40 workouts. The 27-page Cycling Past 50, 60 and Beyond: Training with Intensity is $4.99.
Coach John Hughes earned coaching certifications from USA Cycling and the National Strength and Conditioning Association. John’s cycling career includes course records in the Boston-Montreal-Boston 1200-km randonnée and the Furnace Creek 508, a Race Across AMerica (RAAM) qualifier. He has ridden solo RAAM twice and is a 5-time finisher of the 1200-km Paris-Brest-Paris. He has written over 40 eBooks and eArticles on cycling training and nutrition, available in RBR’s eBookstore at Coach John Hughes. Click to read John’s full bio.
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