Maffetone Method

Gabe Peterson

I've been reading Natural Born Heroes by Christopher MacDougall, the follow up work to his opus to running Born to Run.  The focus of this book centers around the story of rebels on the Greek isle of Crete who kidnap a Nazi general deep behind enemy lines, and how their diet and conditioning regiment of natural movement was key to their success.

He spends time detailing his experience with the Maffetone Method.  It consists of two parts:

1. Building your aerobic engine by never letting your heart rate go above 180 minus your age during workouts.
2. Avoiding sugars and fueling with fats.

This approach was famously used by Mark Allen during his streak of six Kona championships.  

The first part sounds like the classic triathlon training advice of doing lower intensity that goes against the EN grain -- and a recipe for super boring workouts.  The second is surprising that one could function as an endurance athlete.  He makes a compelling case that there were no Gatorade stations for our hunter-gather ancestors and old school marathons cranked out races without drinking anything.  There has never been a death caused by dehydration in a marathon but plenty caused by drinking too much.  

I'm not seriously thinking about it, but curious if any ENers have had experience with the Maffetone Method?  

Al Truscott

It's true Mark Allen consulted with Maffetone early on in his quest to unseat Dave Scott @ Kona. Back in those days - the early-mid 80s - training with HR was just being developed. Allen has since said that the way he used Maffetone;s advice was not as a full time training method. Rather, he discovered that he needed to train for about 2-3 months at a low intensity, and then switch over for an equal amount of time working the higher end of the intensity spectrum.

Even earlier, in the late 60s/early 70s, "LSD" training was all the rage in swimming - just miles and miles of "Long Slow Distance". Then the East Germans came along and showed what could be done with high intensity work (of course, their ability to engage in said work was chemically enhanced - just take a look at the female medal winners in the '72 olympics).

IMO, there is no question that training at all levels of intensity is preferred to an exclusive focus on any one effort level.

As to the protein/fat diet, McDougall is a romantic, IMO, idolizing the "Nobel Savage" at the expense of learning from the actual science of muscle physiology. Of course, John Withrow might have another point of view ...

John Withrow

Don't have much to say about the Maffetone method other than I don't have enough training time to do it successfully. I'm certain it works and many people have been successful with it, but those are the same people that have the time in their lives to dedicate 15, 20, 30 or more hours per week to training. Many (but certainly not all) of the Ultra guys also do it (I know you have flirted with the ideas of some ultra events).

Lots of us have experimented with "lower carb" of "fat adapted" diets in the Haus, so it's not as taboo as you think. I have certainly gone pretty far down that rabbit hole last yr with what I think was great success. I dialed a lot of that back this year and also had a successful season. So my summary is there are lots of ways to skin the nutrition cat, many of them are absolutely successfully executed by different people on this team. They vary widely from super Carb fueling (ala core diet and Coach P) to vegan (Tim Cronk) to vegetarian with no dairy (Brenda Ross) to Gluten free to High Fat Low Carb (HFLC) to No Processed Food to Mostly Processed Food, etc. etc. etc...

If you want to read about the HFLC thread I started click here:

http://members.endurancenation.us/Forums/tabid/57/aft/15585/Default.aspx

Jim Yanoschik

The Maffetone method is an offshoot of traditional training. Most cyclists in the off season will do "base" (aerobic) work. Then the plan will call for interval work. The base work will get the body ready for the more intense work with less risk of injury. The Maffetone method proposes the Maximum Aerobic Fitness (MAF) test. For the run test, the HR and time are the constant and the speed/distance is the variable. Like most tests, you want to keep the conditions the same from test to test so a treadmill was recommended. So you run for 20' at a HR of 180-age +/- some factors and you will get a speed/distance. You keep training aerobically and keep testing every couple of weeks. As your aerobic fitness improves your pace will increase at the same HR or conversely, you run the same pace at a lower HR. When the slope of the results of the test start to flatten out, you add hard interval work. When those test results from your anaerobic block start to flatten out you go back to aerobic work. So deeper into the program, you are bouncing between aerobic and anaerobic work. Mark Allen used to say that most triathletes don't go easy enough on their easy days, and not hard enough on their hard days. Just wanted to clarify that the Maffetone method is not all aerobic.
As John and Al have said there are a lot of ways to get results. "Life is an experiment of one." Find out what works for you.

Gordon Cherwoniak

Gabe,

Beyond what Al mentioned remember that Mark Allen was also a very good short course athlete back in the day winning the World Championships in 1989 which was Olympic distance. He might have won others but this was the year of his first victory in Kona as well. 

As has been pointed out time is a big constraint in building the aerobic engine and for me it's not a options to do 20+ hours a week.  Building the base up can be done its just a different paradigm than EN. 

I'd say if you are stagnating with the traditional plans look at some of the posts from Dave Tallo and Tim Cronk on plan adjustments, but before that there are some good resources here on big bike weeks, big tri weeks or focus blocks perhaps getting sport specific time to boost fitness. 

Not sure this is more than a discussion due to the reading but if you have a specific plan/concern in mind post up your thoughts with an initial  plan in the forums.  For example, I did this last year and got some great feedback on 8-10 hours over 4-5 days on the trainer and many have posted big bike week schedules or what to do over this month.

 

 

Gabe Peterson

EN rocks! I knew I'd get expert advice.

I agree with the comments about Maffetone not being time efficient. With two young daughters and a busy job, I am all about time efficiency. I haven't trained more than 10 hours in a week this year. I've PR'd the HIM and half mary, and anticipate PR'ing the marathon in two weeks at St George. I took the "minimalist" high intensity approach detailed here for the triathlon training: http://members.endurancenation.us/Forums/tabid/57/aft/17889/Default.aspx

I agree with Al, McDougall takes creative license to make his point. I remembered Mark Allen used Maffetone from Iron Wars but my memory was that he did some high intensity work. He definitely wasn't on the carb minimalist diet.

JW, interesting to hear your experience with the fat adapted approach. That was the most interesting part of the Maffetone discussion in the book. I hadn't thought it would be possible to be successful as an endurance athlete without committing carbocide. I did Paleo for a couple years when my focus was on strength training with very good results, but gave it up when I switched to endurance sports. After reading Fitzgerald's Racing Weight , I upped my carb intake to about 400g per day. I thought I'd balloon up, but my weight has stayed steady and my body fat has actually gone down. My worry with consuming all the carbs is that both my dad and uncle developed diabetes later in life, so I worry there may be a genetic pre-disposition there. I'll have to read up on the fat adapted approach...

John Withrow

Gabe, that HFLC thread is a good one for lots of background on mine and other people's thoughts... I continue to "evolve" my nutritional habits. I do eat a bunch of carbs, but mostly from vegetables, potatoes and rice, etc. I currently eat "Gluten Light", so not militant about it. I drink plenty of beer and have an occasional wrap. My current weakness is Hint of Lime Tostitos... I think if you avoid "most" processed foods and a lot of the refined sugars (Recreational sugar and breads and pastas and pizzas) you can still have a really balanced diet and avoid the late onset diabetes. My dad just developed diabetes at the age of ~65, but cookies, cakes and candies have been a staple of his diet his whole life. I too am trying to avoid that. I still eat a large omelet and some yogurt every morning for breakfast, and do a LOT of fasted workouts. BUT, I also used Infinit and Gatorade Endurance (supplemented with Kind Bars and Larabars) for the bike at IMWis last weekend and took 5 Honey Stinger Gels on the run and switched to coke for the last half.

Al Truscott

Again, just my opinion, but I suspect the emerging science of gastro intestinal flora (gut bacteria) will tell us that the bugs you inherit from your mother @ the time of birth, as well as what you ingest along the way, may have as much to do with your body comp and weight control as the specific ratio of protein/carb/fat you eat. IOW, the zillions of microbes inside you will have their own food preferences, which will drive your ability to absorb and utilize various foods. Someday, we may be able to test for that and prescribe the right diet for your ecosystem, but , until Then, it's trial and error.

Jess Withrow

Posted By Al Truscott on 17 Sep 2015 01:49 PM


Again, just my opinion, but I suspect the emerging science of gastro intestinal flora (gut bacteria) will tell us that the bugs you inherit from your mother @ the time of birth, as well as what you ingest along the way, may have as much to do with your body comp and weight control as the specific ratio of protein/carb/fat you eat. IOW, the zillions of microbes inside you will have their own food preferences, which will drive your ability to absorb and utilize various foods. Someday, we may be able to test for that and prescribe the right diet for your ecosystem, but , until Then, it's trial and error.

^^THIS^^ has been intriguing me recently...  Dr. David Perlmutter's new book, Brain Maker (a follow up to his first book, Grain Brain) is full of current and well-referenced clinical and laboratory research on the subject of the gut biome.  Really interesting read.  

Regarding Maffetone HR training, I spent my first ~6 months training for IMLou with a coach whose workouts were Maffetone based.  Effective, sure, but boring and definitely not time efficient.  She was a believer as she'd had a serious hip injury and was able to slowly return to training and racing by basing her own workouts on Maffetone, though.        

Gabe Peterson

Al and Jess, very interesting -- I hadn't heard about this research. Glad I started this thread -- learning a lot. I'm going to pickup a copy of Brain Maker.