Sweet Spot Training

[jackb]

Hi Cody
It’s seems there is a lot of buzz about “sweet spot” training lately and wanted to get your thoughts on it (pros and cons) and if your base builder program addresses it.

Thanks

[Cody Waite]

Thanks for the question, @jackb

Yes there certainly is a lot of ‘buzz’ about ‘sweet spot’ training the last few years.
To clarify, my understanding of ‘sweet spot’ is riding just under your Anaerobic Threshold power (or ‘FTP’ if you follow that concept). Different people say different things, but roughly between 5-8% below AnT. This is a moderately hard effort, and sustainable for 30-60 minutes for most reasonably trained rider, and up to 2 hours for the very fit… essentially being your ‘2-hour’ race pace (where AnT is 30:00-60:00 race pace).

Again my understanding of a ‘sweet spot’ training plan consists of doing a lot of work at this sub-threshold ‘sweet spot’ intensity… beginning with a relatively small amount of time, and building up to more and more time, and longer and longer intervals as you gain fitness.

This CAN lead to large improvements in fitness in relatively short amounts of time (i think most “SS” programs are 8-12 weeks in length).

My thought on this is that it’s a ‘short cut’ to improved fitness. Yes if you need to get fit quickly, don’t have much time to train, and want to be your best for a short period of time… it CAN work.

However, if you want long-term improvements in aerobic development you are missing the HUGE benefits of slower based endurance training that will have you continue to improve year after year (and have the training remain more enjoyable!), hence allowing your desire to train year after year remain.

“SS” training is simply too hard to elicit the fat-burning, aerobic infrastructure enhancing long term gains that come with lower intensity aerobic training. At “SS” you are burning a large carbohydrate fueled fire that will burn a lot of calories in a short time, get you fit quickly, but fizzle out just as quickly when you stop. You are also having to work moderately-hard for 3-5 sessions per week and that burns up the motivation to train pretty quickly as well and plateaus are inevitable.

In my option, the better way to do this is… work HARD when it’s time to work hard, and go EASY when it’s time to go easy… instead of moderately-hard most of the time. Train your body to use fat for fuel at higher and higher work loads overtime, then when you go hard you go really hard and train the muscles to put out bigger power.

There are two main camps in terms of endurance training, particularly surrounding base training today…
1. Sweet Spot: moderately hard work most of the time, gets you fit fast, there’s a limit of sustainability over time
2. Polarized: train most of your minutes going slowly (80%) and some of you minutes going hard (20%), you can improve for decades!

You can likely see I’m passionate about this topic. There is a time and place for “SS” in the overall year of training, but it’s short and limited, and not something to rely on over long durations for sustainable fitness gains.
(we will do a small amount of “SS”, although I won’t call it that ;-), as a bridge between our lower intensity aerobic training block and high intensity anaerobic training block).

Hope this is helpful and not too bias 🙂

[Cody Waite]

…others with “Sweet Spotting” experience can chime in on this too.

We’re all inclusive here 🙂

It works and people see improvement. That is why a lot of online training platforms promote it… “look! in 8 weeks I’ve upped my power 15%!”…. Congrats, but lets see where you are in 3+ years compared to your slower riding training partner that develops an actual aerobic base of fitness. I’m not saying it isn’t effective, I just don’t think it’s the most productive way to train for longterm development.

[jfoster21]

Thank you for your response here Cody!

I agree with you here given my limited experience and simply based on science. I trialed an SS training the other day with 5min intervals and 10min rest followed by 3hr easy aerobic training. This training format was impromptu and more just to see how it felt using SS. My question is this;

1. Regarding “polarized” training is it better to perform the 20% of AnT and/or SS training at the beginning or the end of the 80% aerobic pace? My thought is that it’d be better to utilize the fast fuel (carb) in the beginning and then use the slow fuel (fat) for the duration after you’ve burned up the fast fuel (carb)… but I’m not sure if this is an accurate approach.

[Cody Waite]

So ‘Polarized Training’ is typically described as a training program consisting of 80% low-intensity and 20% high-intensity.

This 80/20 reference is related to your training session distribution:
As in 1 out of 5 workouts is high-intensity; or roughly 1-2 sessions per week of intensity and the other sessions are low-intensity.

Does that make more sense?

[jfoster21]

Okay, yes this makes more sense as being a training program distribution rather than individual workout structure.

Also, say we did a single workout with SS or AnT intervals combined with aerobic base pace. Do we get better/more adaptations if we do the SS or AnT at the beginning or the end of the workout in your experience/perception?

[Cody Waite]

I suppose there would benefits to both…

1) doing the ‘quality’ first would ensure best effort/power on the intervals, overall stress being less.
2) doing the ‘quality’ at the end would require more effort as fatigue is increased, but simulating more of an endurance effect (ie. asking for more work at the end on tired legs).

Which is “better” would depend on objectives.

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