We’re back with another discussion of one of FasCat’s main training philosophies: Sweet Spot. A big question we receive by athletes is “how much sweet spotting should I actually be doing?” In fact, our training tip on the subject remains one of our most popular. So today we break it all down and explain how much is enough for the pre-season, during the base build, and in season race mode. We’ll talk about how sweet spot applies to the different disciplines within cycling, and share our top tips.
We highly recommend going and listening to our episode on the invention of Sweet Spot where Frank discusses the basis of the philosophy. As always, thanks to everyone for rating and reviewing the pod on Apple Podcasts, sharing with a friend or teammate, and continuing the conversation in the forum.
As a FasCat Coached athlete and training plan customer, you can now take advantage of our new partner Excel Sports with a FasCat team discount. Instructions are on our forum and are provided at the time of purchase.
Great podcast guys! I feel like I have missed this somewhere, but I’m wondering how many minutes of SS you are recommending for say a 40+ masters road racer on 10 hours per week building CTL. I assume the chart you posted doesn’t mean you do that many minutes every ride?
I thought it might be a weekly amount too, but I added how much I’m doing this week and it’s 180 minutes which is domestic pro level according to the chart - that doesn’t seem right!
For group rides etc., would you take normalized power or average to see how much SS you get during the ride. For example, I hit low SS for normalized power at my local Saturday Worlds for two hours. But average power is zone 2. That’s because of lights, lulls in the action etc.
For group ride I would use normalized power but only for the sections and durations of the group ride where you were riding hard. IOW exclude the easy 20 minute roll out of town (for example) and the slower parts before or after non ‘game on sections’.
Our How to Sweet Spot on a Group Ride Training Tip has a paragraph and image of analyzing power data:
Great podcast Guys, really good information, now, by looking at this chart and the suggested daily SP recommended, How we adjust the plan that we are following?, let’s said I’m on SP#2 advance, Do I add more SP intervals to my daily Work out prescribe to achieve my 180 minutes daily ? That will increase my time on the bike, which I’m OK with that, but at the same time will increase my TSS and will be off accordingly with the plan I’m follow.
I guess my question is: Do I pay more attention to the SP daily number or my TSS? and how I can adjust my plan?
You do not need to adjust your plan based on the podcast, #FtFP.
This podcast and all podcasts are talking generally a large audience. If you are on a sweet spot plan keep following that - we in no way meant for these general guidelines to be used to change the plan.
A good training plan is like an onion - there are many many layers. In this podcast I was talking about one layer - a daily sweet spot workout.
If you were to do Sweet Spot 1 > Sweet Spot 2 > Sweet Spot 3 you’d achieve the amount of sweet spot in these table simply by following the plan Stick to it!
When looking at the amount of SS during a group ride or race, do you look at average power or NP? For example, at the local Saturday Worlds, my NP is in SS range, but average is in zone 2. Can I count this as SS training?
I can’t remember which podcast I recently heard the trivia about the blue whale, but I’m shocked there werent people racing to answer for the FedEx cookie. It’s vegan so it’s basically salad…
Stick to it!