After my article on base training a number of people got in touch to ask if it would simply be more effective to ride at ‘sweetspot’ to maximise training benefit if the amount of time on the bike is limited.

But while sweetspot is an important tool in any rider’s training armoury, the answer, unfortunately, the answer is not simple.

If we refer back to the last article I wrote on training zones, then ‘sweetspot’ intensity is between the upper end of zone three and lower end of zone four – or 88-93 per cent of FTP power or threshold heart rate, and between 75-85 per cent of maximum heart rate. Refer back to that article to find out how to find your FTP of maximum heart rate.

The idea of sweetspot training is to get the most training value for your time on the bike. Sweetspot training therefore balances the exercise intensity and volume of training – hence the term ‘sweetspot’.

The training effect you get from a session is a combination of how hard and how long you exercise for. The idea of sweetspot is that by riding at the maximum intensity that you can sustain for the period of your training session you get the maximum training benefit.

But what exactly are those benefits?