Sweet Spot Training Guide for Cyclists

Let’s look in this sweetspot blog 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.

Even though there is no replacement for the long ride when it comes to aerobic fitness, you can use sweet spot training to supplement your aerobic fitness build, and begin the process of pushing out your FTP ceiling.

But let’s call it what it is: high tempo, low threshold.

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. Also, consider what physiological changes might take place when you take part in any type of training.

Last thing to mention: sweet spot does burn a lot of calories, especially carbohydrates, so make sure you check out our Nutrition Posts….short take away: eat carbs for these training sessions!

sweet spot cycling

What Is Sweet Spot Training In Cycling?

Sweet spot training consists of spending lots of time riding at 84-97% of your Functional Threshold Power (FTP) if you are cycling with a power meter. Usually, a rider will start with smaller blocks of tempo, maybe 10-15 minutes, and progressively increase the duration of their intervals. Sweet spots claims to be a “magic bullet” for time-crunched cyclists in terms of fitness reward for the amount of effort spent. I don’t agree with that, but more on that later.

When I started seriously training in 2009, I remember Sweet Spot being prescribed at 93-95% FTP. 80-90% was tempo, 91-92 was somewhat ignored (lol), 93-95% was Sweet Spot, and Threshold was 95-105%.

How hard should sweet spot training feel? The reason why sweet spot is popular among cyclists is that it’s comfortably hard: athletes feel like they’re getting a good workout in but they don’t have to venture too far into the pain cave. Unfortunately, this is why sweet spot training is also not that effective on it’s own. If you only do sweet spot, you’ll only get good at going kind of hard… that’s not going to help you win races.

To clarify, I have no issue with Sweet Spot Training, but do have a problem with the overprescription of it. A Sweet Spot FTP Plan doesn’t have athletes ride hard enough to actually move the needle, and a Sweet Spot Base Plan has athletes riding too hard for that time of year. We can get into these in more detail, but it’s just the wrong dose of training at the wrong time for both scenarios.

See Also: Cycling Muscular Endurance Training

How To Use Sweet Spot Training

Most of the information regarding Sweet Spot training from before 2020 will recommend that you want to start off small, making sure to elongate the sweet spot intervals for longer periods of time, beyond the 20 minute time range that many cyclists use for intervals.

You can start with 4 x 8 minutes or 2 x 15 minutes at sweet spot, with half of the interval time as rest (so 4 or 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).

See more on this below, but I no longer prescribe these really long sweet spot intervals due to their high fatigue cost versus the benefit gained for the athlete, especially when the goal is to increase their FTP.

Huge note though! These intervals are not to be your entire training regimen! These are done 1-4 times a month if applicable.

Personally, I almost never do Sweet Spot intervals. There is an opportunity cost to every workout that we choose to do, and there are much better intervals for my training and racing. More on this later, but in short: if I’m looking to increase my FTP, I’m training with Over Unders, Suprathreshold and VO2Max work. If I’m looking to work on Muscular Endurance or some Lactate Shuttling, I’m doing longer Tempo Intervals.

Make sure you’ve tested your 30-60 minute power to have accurate data on your FTP. The old recommendation was that 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. 2 hours of sweet spot is very hard to complete, but it’s all about increasing your duration week after week.

The reason I find the above outdated is that so much of the training emphasis and energy must be placed upon this goal (of hitting Sweet Spot for 90-120 minutes) that we can’t spend the time on other workouts that will aid in better race results. If you just want to chase a 2 hour power PR, this could be a route to go, but it won’t make you FAST FAST for a bike race.

I wouldn’t do this too often though. While there are big aerobic gains to be made, racing is not a fitness competition. I lean on this during the preseason, but I don’t use Sweet Spot a lot DURING the season.

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.

See Also: Bike Trainer Stand

When Should I Do Sweet Spot?

Sweet Spot Training For Base Miles / Preseason

You might hear about Sweet Spot Base Training plan or see SSB used a lot in forums, but this should not be the meat and potatoes of your winter training. Yes, sweet spot training can help your muscular endurance and increase your ability to push a lot of watts into the pedals, but use this sparingly.

I might use this midweek with some high torque, or perform one long interval on the weekends. While some will claim that this boosts aerobic capabilities, whereas others will claim it’s too glycolytic and actually not helping, I look at it differently: it teaches us to stay ON THE GAS for a long period of time, and this can be helpful for road racing, a long break in a crit, and definintely gravel racing.

If you get used to a 60 or 80 minute interval, when you go back to a 2 x 20 or even a much harder 4 x 8 minute interval, it seems so short! Trick your mind, everything is relative.

Sweet Spot Training During Race Season

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. However, this is not a replacement for long endurance rides, over unders, or FTP work at 105-110% FTP.

You can also use this because you can focus on repeatability of sweet spot efforts. You can stack a few of these intervals back to back and get some phenomenal adaptations, but again, you really need to graduate past this in order to have optimal race fitness.

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%!

I’ll say it twice: Sweet Spot should NOT replace threshold riding!

Century Ride Training Plan

So many century ride training plans are covered in sweet spot intervals. Honestly, it will help you get there because you are going to learn to PUSH PUSH PUSH those pedals for long durations of time. However, most athletes that do this, stop training right after the century. They start to think that cycling training is always gritting your teeth and pushing pretty darn hard (sweet spot pace) for long durations. Proper training is NOT that.

So, if you want to train for a century ride, find the right century training plan that will get you ready for your event while also helping you enjoy cycling! This way you continue to pursue your cycling endeavors after the gran fondo century ride. The right century training plan will have a wide variety of workouts across all training zones, ranging from Endurance, Tempo, Threshold and VO2Max! A little Anaerobic Capacity training might also fit in there, depending how much time you have until the event.

Sweet Spot Intervals

How do you do sweet spot training? Riding JUST UNDER 100% FTP, around 93-95% FTP at Sweet Spot, will push out your ability to really pin it when you have to. 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 in terms of lactate shuttling. We’re created more lactate than can be cleared, and it has to go somewhere. That said, once you can nail sweet spot intervals, you need to go harder so you don’t stagnate or plateau.

I was riding with a cyclist last week (end of November) who mentioned that he is using a sweet spot training plan from an online coaching source, and that he was doing 4 sweet spot workouts a week. This is way too much, and I really bring back up what was mentioned in the first paragraph: what is the goal of all of these workouts?

This is too much sweet spot cycling because the intensity of each ride is just making you very tired, and then where do you go from there? If you feel inclined to do an “FTP builder”, you must build and then use the adaptation before it goes away.

You can get a bump here and there, but true FTP building comes when you stop back from the trees, and look at your watts year over year. If you simply build your FTP and then go work on one minute efforts for a few weeks, I will make a bet that you will not have the same FTP when you come back!

Sweet Spot and FTP building workouts are best saved for a few months before your race season starts to get used to those hard efforts, and then sprinkle them in as appropriate, based on your racing calendar.

Sweet Spot cycling is great to incorporate throughout and towards the end of your Base Phase, and bringing the threshold cycling training in for your Build Phase. I usually don’t call them Sweet Spot Intervals though because the range is quite large depending on what source you reference (84-97% FTP). I use Tempo, Low Threshold, Threshold, Suprathreshold, and then on to the king of all workouts: VO2Max (which will increase your FTP!)

Unless you have a race coming up in January, you do not need to be doing sweet spot training in the autumn months. Focus on gaining strength and power in the gym, ride tempo, get your high torque work in, and prepare your body for the massive training blocks that await down the road. Always remember: USE IT OR LOSE IT.

Sweet Spot Workouts

You don’t need to make these too complex or overthink it.

Before you start doing these intervals, please read above, as Sweet Spot training is NOT the best way to improve your threshold power, and it’s actually just Low Threshold Training.

However, if you are set on the need for Sweet Spot intervals for training, give these a try:

4 x 8m @ 93-95%, recover 8m between.

Graduate up to: 3 x 15m @ 90-95%, recover 7 minutes between.

I no longer recommend long 30-45 minute sweet spot intervals because the fatigue cost is high, and you’d be better off working some over unders, or being fresh enough to ACTUALLY RIDE AT THRESHOLD (98-105%). If you really like long intervals, hit some long tempo sessions, building up to 40-60 minute efforts.

Getting Dropped From The Break

Do you find yourself making the break or lead group but getting dropped?
Do you find yourself in the break but don’t have any kick at the end?

This can be extremely frustrating since you were able to make the selection, but can’t seem to have the finishing kill at the end.

One thing you can do to help your chance in the break is to build out your aerobic base with endurance training, but people might tell you that you can accomplish this with sweet spot training. Your time would be better spent on Over Unders and Suprathreshold training to increase your FTP and Lactate Clearance, as well as VO2Max work.

Said differently, sweet spot may help you increase your workload and allow you to get farther down the road with the lead group, but you won’t have more matches when people really start throwing down! You’ll just be riding BELOW THRESHOLD.

I have spoken with many athletes that have admitted that even though they could rail 3 x 45min at Sweet Spot, and FELT FAST, it was not the fitness needed to do well in a cycling road race.

Related Post: Mental Toughness for Cyclists

I looked at an athlete’s data who was struggling to have some extra kick at the end of the race. This is not a top end issue, which I talked about in the Polarized Training article, but an aerobic issue, or so I thought.

He never did long intervals to develop this type of power and sustainability in a bike race. If it came to a group sprint, he could win; but if he found himself in the break, he’d either get dropped or be so gassed at the end, that his go-to sprint was nowhere to be seen.

I sent him out in 2018 and had him do some long sweet spot intervals. Why? I thought that having him do these was increasing his aerobic base, but what I’m realizing now is that it highlighted that he just never went that hard continually. The benefit that he reaped was more from continually pushing on the pedals and developing more muscular endurance.

He immediately posts a personal best for that long duration, but when in a race are you continually pedaling for 45 minutes at low threshold? ALMOST NEVER. This never got him the win from a break that we were hoping for. Instead, after hitting this long range PR, we should have layered on the Over Unders and done some End of Day type intervals to have him prepared for the surges and attacks that would cripple him in the race.

But that was nearly 6 years ago (Dec 2023 edit), and we’ve learned a lot since then!

Even if you are training for an event that has a 90 minute climb or something very long, you would be better suited at working your VO2Max, Training at threshold, utilizing some over unders, and occasionally continuously pedaling to know what tolerating the lactate feels like. Some event specific work is good, but it should not be the sole basis of your training.

Why Is Sweet Spot Effective?

From what we now know, for the cost of fatigue versus the benefit gained, it’s not worth the time, especially if your goal is to increase your FTP.

Is sweet spot training hard? Kinda sorta. You burn a lot of kilojoules doing it, and feel like you’ve “gotten a great workout”, but you’ve really just added more fatigue that will take away from your VO2Max training and actual threshold training. Those are the workouts that can really make you faster!

Instead of doing Sweet Spot, I would ride more endurance, which not only improves your aerobic efficiency, it improves VO2Max! Yes, endurance training can improve your VO2Max by improving mitochondrial density in the cells, which is very important to power the bike.

We’re Doing Too Many Sweet Spot Intervals

Sweet Spot Cycling came out and has taken the cycling training plans by storm.

While sweet spot intervals and workouts have benefits for your fitness in a shorter time than more hours at endurance pace or zone 2, there are some cases in which athletes, MYSELF INCLUDED, have done way too much sweet spot.

While above, we sing the praises of how this type of riding can help cyclists hit higher watts at longer durations to not only help them survive in a cycling road race break, potentially leaving them with more matches for the final attacks and sprint with the accompanied training of over unders etc, but also how and WHEN to use it.

If one interval day of sweet spot cycling is good, four is better, right? WRONG. So, how much sweet spot training should you do? Great question.

How often should I do sweet spot training? No more than two days per week (and that already seems like overkill to me!) and only once a week during base season (if you choose to do sweet spot training). The rest of your week should be spent in zone 2, and using torque and tempo work in the base season. (During the season training selection is a whole other block in itself!)

Throughout your base period, follow our Five Blocks To Racing Posts.

Use tempo during the week while you’re gaining strength in the gym. Strength is the focus.

Use long tempo rides on the weekend to get your mind used to staring down the barrel of a 45 or 85 minute interval! It will make 2 x 20’s seem easy when you get to pure Threshold work.

In season, I don’t specifically prescribe a ton of tempo or low threshold work because we get a lot of that from racing or hard group rides. You want to get more specific, and FTP and VO2Max work is much more beneficial.

Related Post: Complete Guide to Cycling Interval Training

sweet spot cycling

Do more than just Sweet Spot though!

Why Do Sweet Spot Cycling?

Let’s first ask, “Why Should I Do Sweet Spot Intervals In Cycling?”

Sweet Spot provides many of the adaptations that Constant Power Threshold Intervals or FTP Cycling Intervals provide, but there’s less fatigue and stress on the body. It’s the balance between intensity and volume, since most athletes can do more sweet spot than threshold, because the stress it is less than threshold cycling intervals.

The claimed physiological gains that are made with sweet spot cycling are increased plasma volume, increased mitochondrial enzymes (power!), increased lactate threshold, and increased glycogen storage. These are all very important to cycling success, but your body will stop adapting to the training stress if this is all that you do!

Take note of the fact that even though it claims to increase your lactate threshold, you can most likely improve this even more with steady state FTP work at 105% or the huge variation of over unders, where you are really working on clearing lactate.

Lactate threshold improvements through sweet spot training are really more for the untrained, or new cyclist.

Sweet Spot allows you to push out how long you can ride at a high intensity, which will allow you to last longer in the break during a road race of your peers, but also in races where you are “racing up”, versus more talented riders. That being said, take heed, that if you are racing faster people, do NOT expect sweet spot cycling to keep you in the mix; you will definitely need threshold bursts and vo2max cycling intervals to stick around and not get dropped.

The big key is that you can recover faster from these efforts, which allows you to do more of them in a week, which has created this craze and overprescription of sweet spot.

Related Post: Improve Your VO2Max with 2 Cycling Intervals

The Problem With Too Much Sweet Spot Cycling

Why would sweet spot cycling be overprescribed? If a new cyclist gets on a training plan with tons of sweet spot, they’ll improve a lot! And therefore be happy! BUT THEN THEY PLATEAU. NEARLY EVERY TIME.

So, because of this, don’t do JUST Sweet Spot Cycling over and over, unless you only want to have a six to ten month window of gains.

So keep the following points in mind when using sweet spot, but make sure you are working on other aspects of your arsenal as well!

1) Use sweet spot intervals to make those cycling fitness gains mentioned above, but remember that there is higher fatigue associated with these, and you can easily plateau a few months down the road. The thing that is awful about plateaus is that it’s hard to see what’s going wrong. You’re doing this pretty hard sessions, but no more gains are occurring, so you’re left scratching your head with what to do.

2) Sweet Spot intervals are not a replacement for the long ride, where you get tired simply from the duration. No, your long ride doesn’t have to be 250 miles, and neither is ours. But a ride of 4+ hours is extremely beneficial and necessary if you want to take your game to the next level.

3) Sweet Spot cycling feels hard enough, so we avoid the much harder threshold work. We still need to add on threshold work for increased aerobic adaptations at your FTP max, while also learning how to mentally pin it and mentally push through at 100-105% FTP, which truly pushes the FTP up after you’ve made beginner gains from Sweet Spot intervals.

4) Too much repetition leads to mental burn out. This one is so common on the sweet spot heavy internet plans. We’ve done over 350 Power File Analyses now for people around the world, and everyone that has done the 3+ times a week sweet spot cycling plan says the same thing over and over again: “I made gains for a few months, and now I’ve plateaued, and honestly don’t want to get on the bike.”

This point #4 can go for any energy system: if one day of VO2Max is great, 4 is NOT better!

Vary your training up and you’ll make more gains that way. Do it in a progressive or block periodized manner and you’ll stay fresher and sharper than just repeating the same intervals at the same intensity over and over and over again.

Sweet Spot Cycling or Polarized Training Plan?

Confused about whether you should be using Sweet Spot or a more Polarized approach?

Check out the video below!

Sweet Spot Cycling Pitfalls

This isn't a diss record. Shout out to FasCat and TrainerRoad. I made a post on Instagram that I didn't think anyone should be on a Sweet Spot Plan. This is not a shot fired at anyone. The EVOQ team is positive output only. Please watch the video.

I get a lot of emails from people that were like, "hey, I've done two months, three months, four months of sweet spot in the offseason, I've plateaued and this is horrible!" Frank Overton does not want you doing sweet spot all the time. I believe he has a SIX WEEK plan, NOT FOUR month plan.

But as cyclist, we do one block and find some success, so why not do three?? More on that in my methodology below.

Let's call Sweet Spot what it is: by Frank's definition (he created this!) it is 84 to 97% of FTP. That's a huge range. So high tempo / low threshold; a day that you didn't really bang out your FTP intervals ;-) There's some gray zone in there.

If you want to get aerobically fit, you can do sweet spot. If you're super crunched on time, you do some sweet spot. But this will NOT get you race ready.

EVOQ Cycling Methodology

My methodology is based around:

Consistency: No matter what you do, if you don't do it often, it won't work

Workload: kj's; pedal the damn bike

Rotated Interval Blocks: 2 blocks in a row of the same thing Max. More on that in the video. Don't plateau.

Preseason Progression: I don't believe that you need progression if a race heavy block.

Event and Athlete Specific Stimulus.

(For some reason the Embed isn’t working on SquareSpace: CLICK HERE FOR THE VIDEO)

So when people were like, "yo, you're gonna go in and get those guys", I'm not. I hope that I've never put out a video that is throwing punches or jabs at somebody.

I'm here trying to share what I've learned, through coaching a lot of people through and chatting with thousands of you around the globe.

GRATEFUL. Might sound corny AH but I'm just keeping it 100 with you.

Ok, go crush the day and LET'S ALL GET IT!!!!

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Let’s Crush,
Brendan

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Brendan@EVOQ.BIKE

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FTP / ThresholdBrendan Housler