20-minute sweet spot

In recent times “sweet spot” training has proven to be an effective way of improving performance as well as making the most of your time. In essence it’s a pace that’s just under your threshold so is a level that you can sustain for a longer period. By riding under threshold you’re not pushing your system into the red, which means you won’t be flooding your muscles with lactic acid. As sessions are less intense than interval and threshold work you’ll need less recovery time which has the added advantage that you’ll be able to perform them more often.

Indoor training doesn’t have to be all about super high intensity floggings. The advantage of the sweet spot session is that you can adapt your workout depending on how much time you have available. The important thing is to hit the sweet spot which is around 90% of your threshold power, or a level that’s just lower than what you would consider ‘hard’. As you’ll still improve your overall threshold this type of session can form a really valuable part of your training plan.