An EN member posted about “Maximum Aerobic Function Training”: …What is MAF Training: For me, it was doing ALL TRAINING at aerobic threshold – swim, bike and run, with no high intensity strength training to send my body any other signals. To find my MAF, I used the “180 minus my age” formula, which was 135bpm, then added 5 points as I have been consistently fit for at least 6 months. The good thing is that when running and biking (and swimming very easy) at MAF, my body needed almost no recovery, leading to healing and consistency (at my age, this is probably the key and what led to my gains)…
My reply to the forum:
1. Whenever this comes up, I reflect on what I heard Mark Allen say at an IM medical conference I attended once during Kona Week. He spoke of his frustration at not being able to perform well, or even finish, @ Kona for years, and then adopting the advice of Maffetone. He explained it in what could be described as periodization terms. He noted his initial skepticism, but was willing to try anything. Here’s what he said he did… for about three months, he did all his running at the aerobic heart rate, and noticed his per mile times progressively dropping. After about 3 months, they plateaued, and, on his own, he switched to a more intensive training effort. Again, that seemed to reach a plateau after 2-3 months, so he switched back to aerobic. He felt this switching back and forth gave him both the strength and endurance he needed to eventually get over the hump in 1989 vs Dave Scott.
Doing one thing all the time will eventually lead to stasis, and we’ll need to switch up our routine to start making more improvements. Same thing applies, to say, weight lifting routines. I switch mine every 3 months or so, as much out of boredom as wisdom, but it seems to at least keep me in the game (which is all I expect at this age).
2. I read the “180-age + 5” concept mentioned here, and discovered that I had indeed been doing this over the years as my “go-to” pace. This year, when I got back to running after a broken toe, I started slogging along at 118, which felt like a sweet spot to me. Turns out that’s 180-67+5! By August, I was ready to start throwing in a bit of intervals, and did a few shorter races. After IM MD, I started back into doing most of my runs @ 120-130, thinking that was the right range for the half iron I have coming up. And my times per mile over the past 6 weeks have indeed dropped, to where I’m down to 8:30/mile, from the 9-9:15 I was at earlier in the year.
3. I think this is a reason why the OS is so effective. Most of us have been doing lot of aerobic work naturally at the end of our season, aiming towards an A race IM or HIM. Then a bit of a break, and its time to throw in some hard stuff, Three months of that, and swing the pendulum back to “far” more than “fast”. IMO, this sort of an approach should not be an “either/or”, but more “a lot(MAF)/a little(intense intervals)” then switch to “a little/a lot”, which the proviso that “a lot” of intense intervals is a relative term, say going from 3% to 10-20% of time/distance.
4. The longer it’s been since one has done real athletic training (meaning: incorporating speed & intensity plus substantial endurance volume) – ranging from never to years to months to weeks – then the longer it will be both necessary (to avoid injury) and helpful (to build up the size and function of the heart) to stay in the MAF zone almost full time. Someone like Allen in the example above who had been training for years as a serious world beating triathlete only needs 2-3 months of MAF before being ready to switch to the other side of the pendulum swing. So this is not a one size fits all plan; it must be tailored to where you are in your athletic career.