sweet spot training without the numbers

Team Banana Spokesman

I keep reading about swweet spot training. I cant work out where this spot is coz its described by riding in different zones/levels.

i have no powermeter

i have no HR device

can someone describe where the sweet spot is please? without all the tech/numbers/percentages?

is it just "tempo"? higher/lower? should i be in massive pain?

only have 90 minutes a day to train but want to increase the power quickly without wasting time. most times i go out and ride as hard as i can with a warm up/down.

ride_whenever

If you've got 90 mins a day, no powermeter or HRM and no inclination/funds to get one then just go as hard as you can as long as you can.

It sounds very backward, but until you've seen this sort of program work then you'd be right to be skeptical. But you can do very well from it.

Simon Notley

The sweetspot is between tempo and time trial effort. Imagine you were riding a really long TT or riding a 25 but saving yourself for something else...

chrisw12

ride_whenever wrote:

If you've got 90 mins a day, no powermeter or HRM and no inclination/funds to get one then just go as hard as you can as long as you can.

It sounds very backward, but until you've seen this sort of program work then you'd be right to be skeptical. But you can do very well from it.

I like this advice. I've got all the toys but this has been my mantra for a lot of my rides lately.

chrisw12

Also call me ignorant, but what is sweet spot with the number?

I've done a lot of searching on a lot of forums and there seems to be so many different answers.

I'm using the Coggan levels as in training peaks. I assumed it was at the lower end of the threshold scale or about 50/100mile tt power or 90% of ftp?

jonginge

Blog from Alex Simmons with graph of zones:
http://alex-cycle.blogspot.com/2008/01/ ... ining.html

Team Banana Spokesman

but the point of sweet spot training is so I can go out and do it every day. tiring myself out means I need a rest day.

i found this: http://forums.roadbikereview.com/showth ... p?t=112091

the graph says that i should go fast but not too fast.



on a side note: i was told that my hard rides where i sprint 10 times in 45 minutes would only train vo2 max and nothing else. true?

chrisw12

Thanks for the link, I knew Alex would have the answer.

That sweet spot band seems very wide though 90-75% (of ftp)? Also I don't see much point in the lower end, my longest ride of 6hrs was done at 75%.

To the op, I train between 10-12hrs a week and ALL(except the one above) of my rides average above 80% in other words you can train in the sweet spot every day (easily).



Maybe I am under estimating ftp. :?

oldwelshman

Well when I race I am generally at 155 hr but when I train alone I get no where near that, presumably due to less adrenalin affaecting hr also, so what HR would I train to?
Mine also seems to be non linnear. I can do over 20 mph at hr 110, then it seems to hover there at varying efforts until I do race effort when it jumps.
I normally go on effort as I have a prtty good idea of when I am taking it easy, going hard or flat out.
Same on track but heart rate is higher on track due to igher cadence.

Alex_Simmons/RST

http://www.fascatcoaching.com/sweetspottraining.html

http://www.fascatcoaching.com/sweetspotpartdeux.html

bahzob

Having a powermeter is a great help but its not absolutely essential. A couple of alternatives.
- if got a cycle computer that can be mounted on a rear wheel use speed as an independent variable. Especially useful if training on turbo/rollers. There are caveats about making sure setup is repeated. However if can do this then should be possible to mirror quite a bit of power training but using speed instead of power as your measure. e.g. do a test to see what best average speed u can maintain for 20 mins and do sweetspot around 5% or so under that. Will need a bit of trial and error as depending on conditions relation between speed and power may be far from linear but after a while it should become second nature to relate speed to effort power. If got a HR then can monitor HR vs speed and should help monitor progress.
(* aside - even though I have a powermeter I do sessions using speed to pace just to ring changes a bit and also to avoid getting fixated on given watts number that can become a limiter if not too careful)

- listen to breathing, Bit of chicken and egg here as the fitter you get the easier breathing becomes for a given effort. That said to establish sweetspot zone try doing a ramp test and riding harder and harder as time progresses (perhaps using speed as above as a measure). Monitor your breathing and you will find various points e.g.
1 - can breathe through nose only, dead easy
2 - can breathe through nose only but needs breathing needs effort
3 - got to start breathing through mouth but its easy
4 - heavy breaths through mouth but under control
5 - start to lose control of breathing, start gasping
6 - last 10 secs probably cant breathe.
- if still cant breathe after then probably overdone the test and are dead.

The point just between 4/5 is roughly where sweetspot lies. Again, despite having a powermeter, I use this for pacing my long outdoor sweetspot work (its safer, avoids eyes being fixated on power display rather than road..). I also use this for my events abroad that involve long climbs (another reason sweetspot training is so good is that its pretty much the perfect zone to aim to do mountain ascents in).

inseine

That's a good post bahzob. Isn't it also a question of how you feel the day after, since part of the idea is that you get good training benefit but you can do it again next day (if you want to). It's, sort of, the max repeateable effort and i guess we're all bit bit different in that respect

Team Banana Spokesman

bahzob wrote:

The point just between 4/5 is roughly where sweetspot lies. Again, despite having a powermeter, I use this for pacing my long outdoor sweetspot work (its safer, avoids eyes being fixated on power display rather than road..). I also use this for my events abroad that involve long climbs (another reason sweetspot training is so good is that its pretty much the perfect zone to aim to do mountain ascents in).

Thanks pal. That expains it well.

teh graph I posted has two lines that cross. is the crossing point the best place to ride? 88% I think...... (That % cant be a target unless I have a PM obv.))

It shows that (about) 95% of ftp will train your ftp most & going at 100% will train it less. true?

if I do 90 mins of sst a day and 15 mins of sprints on the turbo twice a week is it a good use of my time if thats all tehe time I have? is it realistic? if it comes down to it would 1 hr at 100% ftp every day be possible without burnout?

chrisw12

Team Banana Spokesman wrote:

bahzob wrote:

The point just between 4/5 is roughly where sweetspot lies. Again, despite having a powermeter, I use this for pacing my long outdoor sweetspot work (its safer, avoids eyes being fixated on power display rather than road..). I also use this for my events abroad that involve long climbs (another reason sweetspot training is so good is that its pretty much the perfect zone to aim to do mountain ascents in).

if I do 90 mins of sst a day and 15 mins of sprints on the turbo twice a week is it a good use of my time if thats all tehe time I have? is it realistic? if it comes down to it would 1 hr at 100% ftp every day be possible without burnout?

I'm a bit confused, are proposing the above schedule EVERY day or twice a week?

1hr at 100% ftp every day I'd say would be impossible. That's doing a timetrial (full on for one hour every day!)

Team Banana Spokesman

I was reading the tss thread until it got silly.

a 1 hour tt is 100 tss, no??

and anything below 150 is considered to be possible to recover from in 24 hours?. it was listed on some link in that thread.

:?:

Garry H

Team Banana Spokesman wrote:

on a side note: i was told that my hard rides where i sprint 10 times in 45 minutes would only train vo2 max and nothing else. true?

I think it depends on the ratio of sprinting to rest intervals. If you were to say sprint for 20 seconds then rest for 4min40secs, then I believe you would be training power. Generally speaking of course.

chrisw12

Team Banana Spokesman wrote:

I was reading the tss thread until it got silly.

a 1 hour tt is 100 tss, no??

and anything below 150 is considered to be possible to recover from in 24 hours?. it was listed on some link in that thread.

:?:

I'm giving too much advice on these threads and I'm the same as you guys in that I'm no coach, no expert and a pretty average cyclists, so please don't take the things I'm saying as right but

150 pts per day is at the top top end of maximum. When I've seen surveys done on this very few people can get to 150pts per day on a consistent basis. You may manage it for a short length of time but...


Now your other point,

An hour tt is 100 pts yes, but again doing a tt every day will give you no recovery and is just too intense. You can easily get 100 pts per day (I'm there at the moment) but it takes me on average 2ish hours to get there.

Just as an example I do manage to get IF rides~=1 . ie.e a one hour ride done at timetrial intensity but there's no way I'm doing that three days on the trot (two might be a stretch.)

Hope that helps, at the end of the day perhaps you should just suck it and see and report back.

sub55

chrisw12 wrote:

Team Banana Spokesman wrote:

I was reading the tss thread until it got silly.

a 1 hour tt is 100 tss, no??

and anything below 150 is considered to be possible to recover from in 24 hours?. it was listed on some link in that thread.

:?:

I'm giving too much advice on these threads and I'm the same as you guys in that I'm no coach, no expert and a pretty average cyclists, so please don't take the things I'm saying as right but

150 pts per day is at the top top end of maximum. When I've seen surveys done on this very few people can get to 150pts per day on a consistent basis. You may manage it for a short length of time but...


Now your other point,

An hour tt is 100 pts yes, but again doing a tt every day will give you no recovery and is just too intense. You can easily get 100 pts per day (I'm there at the moment) but it takes me on average 2ish hours to get there.

Just as an example I do manage to get IF rides~=1 . ie.e a one hour ride done at timetrial intensity but there's no way I'm doing that three days on the trot (two might be a stretch.)

Hope that helps, at the end of the day perhaps you should just suck it and see and report back.

Hope that helps

no

birdy247

I had a read on the links Alex posted. I looked at the example plan and it talks about riding sweet spot and tempos this month.

What would the difference be between sweet spot and tempo. A i right in thinking tempo is low end zone 3 and tempo is high end zone 3?

Regards

bahzob

Hope this helps then:

TSS is an attempt to put a number on training load. There are some things u need to know about it:

- By itself and just for a day its pretty useless. It only makes sense when used with a tool like WKO where you take a moving average of TSS. (In fact 2 averages: one long term over several weeks to measure overall load, the other short term over a week to measure short term.)

Here its a useful tool to help measure your overall training load over a full training plan. Here its pretty helpful. Typically:
- Long term average will rise consistently as the overall load increases
- Short term will look like an ascending saw tooth as you do hard periods followed by rest
- Just before an event the short term will decline as you ease off to stay fresh.

- TSS can be misinterpreted because it puts a specific number next to a training session. In reality there is a wide variance in how people react, some can tolerate a long term average of 150 Tss/day others only 80. It is NOT the case that the person who can do 150 will necessarily ride better in an event than the one doing 80.

- TSS is also misleading because it gives undue weighting to longer rides.
e.g. an event like the etape will be over 400TSS. Most can ride the etape, not many could do 4 25 mile TTs in a single day.

- follwing on from above in reality the TSS you can tolerate will depend on the type of rider you are. A chugger like me who rides longer distances can cope with average TSS well above 100 if thats made up of sweetspot stuff. I find it hard to reach 100 if its made up of sprint workouts,

bahzob

birdy247 wrote:

I had a read on the links Alex posted. I looked at the example plan and it talks about riding sweet spot and tempos this month.

What would the difference be between sweet spot and tempo. A i right in thinking tempo is low end zone 3 and tempo is high end zone 3?

Regards

Unfortunately there's not a lot of consistency in what people call zones. Its safer to use %s of FTP.

Sweetspot is 85-95% of FTP. This shows why its such a good zone for training. Its under threshold which makes it not too stressful to do and recover from. But its higher than the usual 75-90% of "tempo" so for a given duration you get more training benefit.

birdy247

bahzob wrote:

birdy247 wrote:

I had a read on the links Alex posted. I looked at the example plan and it talks about riding sweet spot and tempos this month.

What would the difference be between sweet spot and tempo. A i right in thinking tempo is low end zone 3 and tempo is high end zone 3?

Regards

Unfortunately there's not a lot of consistency in what people call zones. Its safer to use %s of FTP.

Sweetspot is 85-95% of FTP. This shows why its such a good zone for training. Its under threshold which makes it not too stressful to do and recover from. But its higher than the usual 75-90% of "tempo" so for a given duration you get more training benefit.

Unfortunately, I don't have a power meter. I do however have a rear wheel speed sensor which i use as a second best stand in. My ftp is around 26Mph (160 ish BPM) on the turbo, i ride Sweet spot around 24 Mph (150ish) so would my temp be around 22-23 Mph which usually gives me around 140ish HR.

Regards

bahzob

The idea of sweetspot is to get as close as possible to threshold redline without crossing it. So I'd suggest 25mph rather than 24mph.

HR is a bit tricky as it can vary according to conditions especially comparing indoor turbo to outdoor, If its any guide my threshold bpm is 172 and rises from mid 150s to 169ish during the course of a sweetspot workout. Put another way, as per my earlier post, top of sweetspot is just at the point when you are having to breathe heavily through the mouth but you've got things under control.

Regarding other zones, my opinion is that other than for skill purposes (one legged pedalling et al) there is no benefit in spending any work time on a turbo at lower than sweetspot intensity. Work efforts at <85% "tempo" really need to be sustained for longer than an hour to be any use and this is not much fun indoors.