[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.

[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]

Ruben,
I forgot to answer all your questions 😉

So measuring & weighing food will be helpful to begin with. After a while you will begin to look at food and estimate the amounts pretty accurately. Volumetric measurement is used most often for liquids & dry foods; weight measurements are used for “bulkier” foods like say strawberries or pizza that don’t fill volumetric measurements easily, compared to rice or oatmeal. So a food scale will be helpful as will measuring spoons & cups.

And for grams/kg allotments, use your current weight for macros… and create a total caloric deficit of around 300-500 calories per day to make a fat loss of 0.5-1 lbs per week. On lighter training days stick to a lower deficit (200-300) and bigger training days you can push it to a larger deficit (500-600)… this help keep you from feeling like you’re ‘starving’.

*keeping the intensity low here is key here as well when you’re dealing with caloric deficits…tap into those fat stores and don’t ‘ignite’ the sugar burning ‘furnace’ that will make you hungry later in the day.

Hope this helps!

[Cody Waite]

Thanks for the question Ruben.
My personal recommendation for someone that wants to really track the nutrition side of things is to use the app MyFitnessPal.

Rather than focus on specific grams of macronutrients, focus on percentages of macronutrients you’re consuming within your total daily “allowance” of calories. The app can be set to determine a daily calorie goal and if you link to your Training Peaks it will add in the training calories you burn as well. You can also adjust your macros within the app based on your current training focus (ie. base, build, peak) to compute your total grams per macro.
* The total grams will change daily based on how much training you’re doing on the given day; your percentages will remain more or less the same within training days of under 1000 calories.

On big days, training more than 1000 calories, you will want to focus on adding more carbs (on long rides and/or race or intensity days) and more fat (when it’s low intensity base training), while keeping protein grams more or less the same. Your protein needs in grams don’t change a whole lot…other than adding a bit more on strength days. You’ll naturally get more protein in on longer days simply by eating more total volume of food, without making an effort to eat more protein.

In general think of the macros as fuel: fat for slow endurance, carbs for faster endurance & speed, and protein for muscle repair. Consider the overall training objectives of your training period (ie. base, build and peak/race) for the big picture, as well as your daily training to adjust the macros to follow suit.

Here is a good article with a range of grams per body weight of macros to get you in the right area…
https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/understanding-nutrition-periodization/

Hope this helps!

…and yes we will get into fueling for higher intensity training AND fueling for racing in future podcast episodes. Thanks for listening (and don’t forget to leave a rating (5 stars!) and review.

[Cody Waite]

Not that I am aware of.

That said, some Garmin devices use a HRV algorithm to provide a recovery time recommendation following workouts (when you save them post ride). While these metrics were fun to see, I didn’t find them particularly useful.

Other HRV based devices like WHOOP and some HRV phone apps attempt to quantify recovery needs based on training and HRV status. I’ve played around a bit with some, again not personally finding them useful, but perhaps for someone newer to training they might be beneficial.

Anyone else on the forum have experience with “recovery measurement” devices out there?

[Cody Waite]

Great question Jon! Thanks for asking.

Short Answer:
YES! you are ‘cheating’ yourself a bit.

Long Answer:
Scooting forward on the saddle (and moving the seat forward on the seat post) puts you in a more ‘quad-dominant’ pedaling position. Meaning you can push more on the pedals with your quad muscles… which for most folks feel more powerful compared to their glute & hamstring counterparts that get used more when sitting “back” in the saddle.

For “max power” efforts go ahead and scoot forward to get in that power position. This is common in time-trialing, with track riders, when going hard to make a break or bridge a gap… also when in the drops on the road bike and on the MTB when pushing hard up a steep climb.

Keep in mind your quads have limited sustainable power by themselves, so the more you can ‘recruit’ your hamstrings & glutes into the pedal stroke the greater muscular endurance you’ll achieve. Focusing on pedaling with a more ‘heel-down’ feeling and pushing forward on the pedal stroke, as opposed to a toe-down pedal stroke will help to engage the bigger glute & hamstring muscles for improved muscular endurance.

Lastly… pedaling forward on the saddle can lead to issues with knee pain as it can create more shearing force underneath the kneecap (similar to squatting and letting your knees slide forward rather than keeping weight back and in the heels). Some riders are more sensitive than others in this area, but it’s something to be aware of.

Hope this helps!

[Cody Waite]

Thanks for the question! We’re still learning how to use the forum ourselves and missed this, so my apologies for the delay…

Answer to 1.
Sounds like a good place to start…185-your age for 80% HRmax for the initial AeT test. Then yes you will identify your HRmax via the Anaerobic Testing (highest HR you see, assuming you were feeling good & motivated for a max effort on the test). From there you can validate your calculated HR(AeT) and know your precise 80% of max.

Answer to 2.
We normally wouldn’t test on same day as strength… but within the Stock Plans, we include the testing option on Day 1, which also includes Sessions 1 Strength as well. Not ideal, but have to get started somewhere. In your case, best to do the test session first, then the strength later in the day.

Answer to 3.
The spin ups can be tricky to fully understand…
The goal here is two-fold: 1. a cardio/leg speed warm-up from very easy riding to fast cadence (although not particular “hard” from a metabolic standpoint, but perhaps challenging from a skill/ability standpoint); 2. spin-ups are leg speed drills… the objective is to be pedaling with very little resistance (i.e. 50w +/-) as in smallest gear. Then the target is to gradually increase cadence following the prescribed build.

* The natural tendency for Spin-Ups is to feel “too easy” and eventually “bouncy” in the saddle…most people want to shift to more resistance to smooth it out…this is cheating! the drills goal at least…. the goal is to find that challenging point and get better at achieving and eventually surpassing it to higher cadences over the weeks to come.

Check out our YouTube video for a visual explanation: https://youtu.be/NtsWg7QsNm4

[Author]

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