How To Sweet Spot During a Group Ride

Twenty years ago, I introduced the concept of Sweet Spot Training, and it’s been incredibly rewarding to see so many athletes embrace it and reap the benefits. Since then, I’ve written follow-up articles like “How to Sweet Spot” and “How Much Sweet Spot,” inspired by frequent questions from athletes, friends, journalists, and fellow coaches. In one of those articles, I mentioned “Group Ride Sweet Spot” as an example, but this technique is so valuable that it deserves its own dedicated discussion.

Group rides in the sweet spot can be a powerful way to improve fitness, and I’ve spent years coaching athletes on how to incorporate this strategy into their training. Now, I’d like to share those insights with you so you can learn how to do the same.

What is Sweet Spot Training?

It's zone and a training technique - both combined together. In the graph below, the sweet spot is located between high zone 3 and low zone 4: between 84% to 97% of your FTP (power at threshold). For the non powermeter user I would call it "medium hard" - below your 40k time trial race pace, but harder than a traditional tempo workout.

How to do a Sweet Spot Group Ride, Podcast 👇

From the How To Sweet Spot tip its example # 2: "ride on the front in the wind, take longer more frequent pulls. Do more work, be aggressive. While all this is going on, use your powermeter to confirm that you are indeed sweet spottin'. Or participate in a group ride with stronger riders that force you to ride harder just to stay with the group." Let's break that down with several of considerations.

The "hard" group ride:

One of the most effective training methods—long before sweet spot workouts—has been riding with stronger cyclists. Whether it’s women riding with men, Cat 3s joining P1/2 groups, or older athletes training with younger ones, keeping up with a faster pace often means you’re naturally riding in your sweet spot.

When the group’s pace is just right, you’ll feel like you’re getting faster in the moment. How do you know you’re truly in the sweet spot? By perceived exertion during the ride and by checking your heart rate (HR) and power meter data afterward. Ask yourself, “Am I riding at 84–97% of my race pace—just below threshold?” If the answer is yes, you’re in the sweet spot.

A quick glance at your power numbers can confirm it. Later, when you analyze your ride, look for sustained periods (more than 10 minutes) where your heart rate or xPower was between 84–97% of your FTP. That’s your sweet spot.

I like to calculate total sweet spot time by reviewing CoachCat's 'time in zone' by heart rate and with power data.  For example, in this New Year's Day Sweet Spot Ride, I achieved 90 minutes in my sweet spot during a 2.5 hour group ride, or 60% of the total ride time. 

Since heart rate holds more steady than power, its goes into the zone 'buckets' better.

 

That’s a great training day. I had fun and wouldn’t have reached that volume of sweet spot work on my own. 

Go with the Flow

The "medium" group ride

What if you are riding with a group that may not push you near as much as the hard group ride? For example a team ride where most everyone is equal in ability and power output. In this case there are two ways to ride in the sweet spot:

1. Take longer pulls on the front
2. Ride out in the wind

Approach these rides by taking longer than normal pulls on the front (in the sweet spot). Then rather than dropping all the way back to the very back of the group, only drop back a few wheels so that you can take a pull sooner (like 1-3 minutes) with less coasting from sitting in.

When you take sweet spot pulls that are truly in the sweet spot and don't go harder (use your powermeter to double check during the ride to not pull too hard) you can drop back for 1-3 minutes, catch a breather and hit the front again for another long sweet spot pull. Depending on your ability level and the dynamics of the group ride, you may be able to take sweet spot pulls over and over again for 1, 2 even 3 hours or longer.

What if you can't make it back up to front after you've recovered? Then simply slot out to the right of the wheel in front of you to catch more wind and less draft*. Modulate your draft and the speed of the group will put you right up in the sweet spot. Check your powermeter during and data after. Experiment and adjust. This is where windy days in crosswinds tend to promote good sweet spot training. Plus skills. The next time it's gusting sideways for your group ride, relish that you'll probably get in more sweet spot training because of the cross winds.

*slot out to the right towards the edge of the road and never to the left where cars from behind are coming. Sharing the road goes both ways and the group is already presumably two abreast. Making the group 3 riders wide is not safe nor good group ride etiquette.

"Train Dumb, Race Smart":

Leave your ego at the coffee shop when using these sweet spot techniques, because once you’re on the front, your teammates can easily attack you from behind. That's ok (!) keep your sweet spot pace and/or let others in the group do the work to bring them back. 

Riding hard at the front—effectively in your sweet spot—is an old-school method that predates sweet spot training itself. While you’re out front getting a solid workout, everyone behind you is conserving energy in your draft. You know you’ll get attacked, and you might get dropped—that’s the “dumb.” But the “smart” comes later, when you’re fit and prepared for what really matters: race day, where you’ll do the sitting in.

Don’t be a group ride hero who sits in and attacks all the time. Take longer pulls, face the wind, and get that quality work in. You’ll emerge stronger, faster, and a better teammate when it counts the most.

Group Ride Sweet Spot Metrics: OTS, Training Load, xPower and Time Spent in the Sweet Spot:

Back in front of ye 'ol computer post ride, you'll want to confirm that you were riding in the sweet spot first and 2nd, measure how much. Confirming is easy with our color-coded data visualizations of the power and heart rate graphs + time in zone. 

Look at all the 'green' in the power data and gps trace here:

 

Upon opening up a power file, Optimized Stress Score (OTS) is my goto metric when answering the question "how much sweet spot did the athlete achieve?" That and time in zone as illustrated above.

When I introduced sweet spot training in 2005, it was a training technique I was using to generate large TSS's day after day. Because remember, we were using our own data to develop the Performance Manager Chart (aka TSTWKT). Thus we learned and showed (with power data) that sweet spot training is wonderful for generating large TSS's that raises an athlete's training load ,that leads to higher power output (we measured that too).

Circling back to the topic of sweet spot training on a group ride, I was doing that too. I just haven't thought to write the training tip until now!

From the data above, I achieved an OTS of 181 in 2.5 hours and raised my training load from 39 to 42.

Summary

Sweet spot training during a group ride is a terrific training technique for building a huge aerobic engine. 

The bigger the base you build (as measure by your training load) , the faster and more powerful you will be. In summary there are three primary ways to ride in the sweet spot during a group ride:

1. Join a group ride with stronger riders that push you up into the sweet spot
2. Take longer "Sweet Spot Pulls"
3. Ride out in the wind for less draft and more watts (sweet spot)

For all three, use your perceived exertion, powermeter and heart rate during the ride to verify that you are in the sweet spot and post ride when you analyze your data.

Lastly, we tell athletes to do Sweet Spot Group Rides in every sweet spot plan that's in the CoachCat library (mostly on Saturdays).  

We even host our own Sweet Spot Rides on Zwift where everyone is invited!  

We target a specific kiloJoule goal to achieve our sweet spot training and keep things social with a dedicated Discord channel and in-game chat. By working together, we help each other tick off the kJs and make the time fly by.

We form an A, B, C & D group so you can sweet spot at your ability level.  The front of each group waits at the top to regroup so we can roll together to the next climb.

Interested? Just head to the Zwift Companion app and search for the FasCat Coaching Club. It’s free to join and a lot of fun—see you there!

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