(lighthearted music)
- Welcome back to the Triathlon Training Explain Show,
powered by TrainingPeaks,
and this week, I'm out on the bike,
and I'm gonna be delving into Sweet Spot.
Now, you may have already heard
of the term Sweet Spot training,
or perhaps you're already using a little bit
of Sweet Spot training in your own training programme,
but do you know what it is actually doing,
what it's purpose is,
and how to use it to its best advantage?
Well, that is why I'm here.
I'm can be doing a gist,
I'm gonna be answering those questions,
and I'm actually gonna be giving you
three key Sweet Spot training sessions
that you can implement into your own training programme.
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As the name suggests, Sweet Spot training
is a specific intensity aimed
to deliver the ultimate bang for your buck.
It's basically a training effort and volume
that are ideally structured
to give you the maximum physiological gains,
which sounds quite appealing if you're someone
that's quite limited for time,
but to work at our Sweet Spot intensity,
we need to know our Functional Threshold Power,
or FTP for short.
Now FTP is our maximum sustained effort for 60 minutes.
Now this is, essentially, our lactate threshold.
This is the point in which we start
to accumulate lactic acid in the blood at a faster rate
than it can be flushed out.
It's basically our tipping point.
Go beyond that, or try to go at this intensity
for over an hour, and you're pretty much gonna come
to a grinding halt.
(upbeat music)
So, by knowing our FTP, we can work out our training zones
and our Sweet Spot.
Our Sweet Spot is the area just above tempo,
and just below threshold.
It kind of crosses into upper zone three,
and lower end of zone four
when using the Doctor Andy Coggan Seven Zone System.
It's defined as being between 84% and 94% of our FTP,
and 75% to 85% of our maximum heart rate.
But, if you're training by feel,
then it's an intensity that I like to call moderately hard.
It's a tough, but sustainable effort,
just shy of your upper threshold.
And of course, if you're riding with friends or mates,
then you could hold a little bit
of a conversation with them,
but I'd say you're gonna struggle,
and also, you probably just want to save your breath
for the effort instead.
Now, Sweet Spot training is really valuable
because it has huge physiological benefits very similar
to that of training at threshold,
and of course, you can recover quicker from it,
the end goal being, that you'll bump your FTP up,
basically meaning that you can ride harder or faster
for no extra effort.
So it really should be a staple session
for most triathletes, though I do appreciate
for those Ironman athletes out there.
It is an intensity above that that you'll be racing at,
so you may not want to include it in your training
during race season, but it's definitely hugely beneficial
during your off season, and again,
for those racing Ironman 70.3 distance or middle distance,
it is a fraction above your race intensity.
But I used to use it all the time for my training,
because not only would it help to increase my FTP,
it also made race day feel
a little bit easier than training.
But then of course, a lot of people racing Sprint
and Olympic distance aren't gonna
be racing at this intensity.
I think it's time we took a look at some sessions.
Right then, if you're starting out with Sweet Spot training,
then you're going to want to start off
with some relatively short reps and some nice recovery.
I've got a session just here.
We've got 15 minutes at zone two,
just to get yourself warmed up,
and then we're gonna go into four lots of eight minutes
at Sweet Spot, and then we're gonna match that duration
for the recovery, so we're gonna take eight minutes recovery
between each of the reps,
and then we're gonna finish that session
with 15 minutes at zone two as a warm down.
Now, for the next session, as you can see just here,
we're gonna start off again with 15 minutes at zone two
to get ourselves warmed up,
but now we're gonna start increasing the duration
of the efforts and reducing the recovery,
so we've got four lots of 10 minutes at Sweet Spot,
and we're gonna take five minutes of recovery
between each of the reps, and then again,
finish with 15 minutes zone two warm down.
But the ultimate aim, is a session like this one here.
Again, we're gonna start with 15 minutes zone two warm up,
but now we've got three lots of 20 minutes at Sweet Spot,
and we're gonna start with 10 minutes recovery,
but I'd like you, over time, to start reducing that recovery
down to something like three minutes recovery,
And then again, finishing
with 15 minutes zone two warm down.
(lighthearted music)
Now, the key to Sweet Spot training is the accumulation
of the workload with the ideal goal being
that we complete 60 minutes or more
at Sweet Spot during a session
like that last session I described.
Obviously, do build up to this over time,
depending on your fitness level.
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and if you'd like to see some other videos,
like our FTP Explained
and How To Do Your Functional Threshold Power Test,
just click down here.
If you'd like to find out what the training zones are
for cycling on the bike, then just click down here.