How To Train At Sweet Spot For Cycling | Triathlon Training Explained

Published on August 28th 2018

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You may have used sweet spot workouts in your training before, but do you know what it’s doing? Or, how to use it to it’s best advantage? Mark answers these questions and gives you 3 sweet spot workouts to try! Subscribe to GTN: http://gtn.io/SubscribetoGTN Check out the GTN Shop: http://gtn.io/dg In association with Training Peaks - http://gtn.io/TrainingPeaks Sweet Spot - as the name suggests, this refers to a specific training intensity that aims to deliver the ultimate ‘bang for your buck’, where the training effort and volume are ideally structured for maximum physiological gains. This makes the idea of sweet spot training particularly appealing to triathletes with limited time for training. But to work out this sweet spot intensity we need to know our Functional Threshold Power, or FTP for short. This is our best sustained effort for 60 minutes, essentially our Lactate Threshold, the point at which lactate begins to accumulate in the blood faster than it can be flushed out. So, knowing our FTP, we can work out our training zones. Our sweet spot is the area just above tempo and just below threshold. It kind of crosses into the upper Z3 and lower end of Z4, when using the Dr Andy Coggan 7 Zone system. It’s defined as being between 84% to 94% of our FTP or 75% to 85% of our maximum heart rate. If you’re riding by feel, your sweet spot is ‘moderately hard’ - it’s a tough but sustainable tempo just short of your upper threshold. You might be able to hold a short conversation with your riding mates, but to be honest, you’ll probably want to save your breath for the effort. The beauty of sweet spot training is that it has the same physiologically benefits and promotes the same adaptations as doing threshold, but it’s far less taxing on the body you can do more of it and recovery quicker from it. Have a go at the workouts in this video and let us know how your get on in the comments below 👇 If you enjoyed this video, make sure to give it a thumbs up and share it with your friends. 👍 Submit your content here: https://upload.globaltrinetwork.com/ If you'd like to contribute captions and video info in your language, here's the link - http://gtn.io/df Watch more on GTN... 📹 How To Improve Your Triathlon Training | What Is FTP? - http://gtn.io/FTP 📹 How To Train With Power | GTN's Guide To Your Training Zones - http://gtn.io/trainwithpower Music: Epidemic Sound Angel Dust - AGST Mother (Instrumental Version) - Staffan Carlén Ordinary Days (Instrumental Version) - Johan Svensson Satellite - Onda Norte Photos: © Triathlon / Getty Images