First time doing any sort of structured intervals training. I find myself doing fewer hours on the bike in Sweet Spot and my legs feeling just as crippled as when I spent hours in the saddle.
Is this normal with Sweet Spot training? I’m doing 5/6 hours a week instead of 12+ a week and my fitness is better & improving more readily doing the 5/6 weeks.
Is Sweet Spot training really that good??
Pretty normal. It’s definitely more intense than just getting out riding (unless your usual ride is a crit). A good way of thinking about it is that you are swapping duration for intensity. It’s possible that you aren’t used to the intensity level, at least not for the durations of the intervals.
It does work - see the FTP improvements thread - I’ve had a 13% rise in FTP over the last year on the Low Volume plans for example.
This will fade over time. Even at 5-6 hours a week you can get “comfortable” in the sweet spot with consistency and patience. One thing you can do to help the progression along is keep interval length the same but decrease the rest (5’ to 3’ to 1’ etc.). If you get to the point where 1-2’ minutes is all you “need” between intervals eliminate the recovery for longer intervals. Rinse and repeat. There are also a ton of custom workouts in the More Sweet Spot team you can check out, most if not all of which are doable on a low volume plan.
Thank you! Where is the more sweet spot team??
Yeah i’m doing the high volume plan and I can already comfortably do eclipse a few times a week. The intensity of that workout is perfect for me
Go to the TR website (not one of the apps, the actual website) and login. Click the drop down for Career/Workouts/Etc. and there will be an option for Teams. Click that and you can search for more sweet spot then join the team. Once you’ve joined you’ll have access to all of the team’s custom workouts through the regular workout finder function across all devices.