After reading my last Maffetone Method post my wife informed me that it didn't make a lot of sense and there were a lot of grammatical errors in it.
So here's my second attempt, hopefully this one doesn't get deleted halfway through writing it....
The Maffetone method teaches your body to be as efficient as possible by burning stored fats rather than ingested sugars for energy. The way it does this is by for ing your body to run aerobically rather than inaerobically. In other words, your heart rate is not allowed to exceed a certain level throughout your training. Maffetone has a formula for figuring out your aerobic heart rate that is something like 180 minus your age, then plus or minus up to 10 based off your physical conditioning and other factors. I use 150 because it feels best for me.
I decided on 150 because that's 180 minus my age (28) and the. Minus an additional 2 because, well.... Because 150 is a easy number dammit. I seem to be able to run for several hours on just energy from stored fats as long as my heart rate stays under 150, so I think it's working out pretty good for me.
As your body becomes more and more used to getting energy from your stored fats, it will become more efficient at it. This means that your aerobic pace will increase, or is that decrease? Either way, you will get faster and be able to run longer as your body becomes a mean, lean, fat burning machine!
So what started out as a 14:00~15:00 minute per mile pace for me eventually got down to a sub 10:00 minute per mile pace before I took a few months off. Now that I'm starting back I'm around a 10:30~11:30 pace depending on mood and weather. My goal is to be able to run around a 8:00 pace aerobically for a good distance (marathonish distance).
There are other tricks to the Maffetone method though. In order to help drive your body to burn stored fats and not ingested sugars is to lower, or totally remove, the amount of processed carbs and sugars you consume. Both stored fats and ingested foods work together as fuel. Most "energy" foods (IE, pastas, sugary candy, GU's, energy bars, etc..) work like a high octane fuel. It's good for short bursts, but it burns so hot that you run out of it very quickly. Stored fats act more as a lower octane fuel, and now you can burn the same amount of fuel, but go miles and miles future down the road.
If your loading yourself up with the high octane fuel, your confusing your body. It's trying to burn the ingested sugars, but your trying to make it burn stored fats. Your body gets all out of whack and you end up loosing all your hair and growing a pitiful excuse for a mustache. You attempt a crummy combover, but you aren't fooling anyone.
Luckily, the Makers Diet falls right in line with Maffetones recommended dieting plan. I'm finding that my miles are coming easier than ever before now that I'm utilizing both methods. I haven't done any MAF tests (Maffetones recommended way to test your progress) yet, but I expect that I would see that I'm already doing well compared to my first few tests back in 2011.
Another big component to the Maffetone method is that it reduces the amount of stresses placed on the body, therefore reducing inflammation and the risk of injury. Maybe ill go further into that in another post though.
Stomp of Approval!!!
Showing posts with label maffetone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label maffetone. Show all posts
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
The Maffetone Method!
There are a lot of different thought processes in the running world on how to become a faster and more efficient runner. One of the more commonly accepted is the "No pain, No gain" philosophy, which really just says you have to run hard and fast during your training in order to run fast in a race. I havent found this to be entirely true...
When I started running barefoot I was doing short runs at very slow speeds at first, steadily building onto my distances little by little but never doing any type of speed work. I was very surprised when I timed my first "fast" BF mile at 6:37. The best I had managed the year before running shod was a 7:14, and I was dead afterwards. Here I was now, almost 45 seconds FASTER without any proper "training" do get this result.
Fastforward a few months and Im running half marathons on no speed work, just easy runs, and I managed to run a 1:42 as a PR. Then I had a few months breal untill my next half marathon, so I started focusing on speed work, thinking it would be the key to get me into the 1:30's. Turns out it wasnt and I had the worst race of my life and had to walk a few times and finished with a 1:54 (my second slowest half marathon). So in search of an answer I came upon the discussion of the Maffetone Method on the Runners World Barefoot forum and became very intrigued. So I ordered the book online and am still in the process of reading it.
Maffetone suggests looking at training from a holistic approach in that one should be concerned formost on ones health, and not their physical fitness. In such he suggests a healthy diet, reducing stresses on oneself, and a good training regimen. His key thing on training is building an aerobic base, which is what I am currently in the process of attempting to do, and so far I am very pleased with the results!
Im order to build this base you have to run under your aerobic threshold, which is based on the heart rate at which your body stops burning stored fats for energy and starts burning eaten sugars instead. Maffetone has developed a formula for determining what your aerobic threshold HR is, mine is 152 but I keep it under 150 for all of my runs.
Theres a few ways to measure your progress while using the Maffetone method. The most obvious is to monitor your HR and how it corresponds with your pace. When I first started my pace at an avg HR of 150 for a 5 mile run was a little under 15 minutes per mile, with miles 4 and 5 closer to the mid 16's. To put this anoher way, it took me 1 hour and 14 minutes to run 5.5 miles, with several walk breaks because my HR would start climbing too high to continue running. Now Im running closer to 10:00~10:30 per mile pace for most of my runs.
The other way to check your progress is through a MAF test, which stands for Maximum Aerobic Function test. The way Maffetone suggests this test is by running 5 - 1 mile repeats at the same HR and the longer you train at this method you should notice 2 things start to change. The first is that your miles will get faster as your aerobic speed increases, but also your mile times in each session will get closer and closer as your aerobic conditioning improves.
I did a slightly different version thats reccomended by Hadd in the famous Hadd post. In this version you run 5 - 2 mile repeats at varying HRs. I have done this test twice and have seen pretty amazing results, which are listed below...
First Test
2 miles @ 139 avg HR = 27:26 (13:43 avg pace)
2 miles @ 147 avg HR = 28:06 (14:03 avg pace) not sure why I got slower here...?
2 miles @ 168 avg HR = 21:41 (10:49 avg pace)
2 miles @ 178 avg HR = 17:26 (8:43 avg pace)
I was running out of time, so I skipped the 160 HR cap run.
Second Test.
2 miles @ 135 avg HR = 23:21 (11:40 avg pace) 1:55 faster per mile
2 miles @ 146 avg HR = 20:56 (10:28 avg pace) 3:40 faster per mile
2 miles @ 155 avg HR = 18:33 (9:17 avg pace) no previous data to compare against... grrr....
2 miles @ 167 avg HR = 16:02 (8:01 avg pace) 2:48 faster per mile
Ran out of time (got kicked off the track) before I could attempt running 2 with a 180 HR cap, but I imagine it would have been quite a good bit faster than the previous tests results.
These tests were conducted roughly a month apart, one when I first started this method, and the second one about a month later. So in just a month Ive gotten around 2~3 minutes faster per mile at the same HR with no speed work type training.
Guess you could say that Im sold!
When I started running barefoot I was doing short runs at very slow speeds at first, steadily building onto my distances little by little but never doing any type of speed work. I was very surprised when I timed my first "fast" BF mile at 6:37. The best I had managed the year before running shod was a 7:14, and I was dead afterwards. Here I was now, almost 45 seconds FASTER without any proper "training" do get this result.
Fastforward a few months and Im running half marathons on no speed work, just easy runs, and I managed to run a 1:42 as a PR. Then I had a few months breal untill my next half marathon, so I started focusing on speed work, thinking it would be the key to get me into the 1:30's. Turns out it wasnt and I had the worst race of my life and had to walk a few times and finished with a 1:54 (my second slowest half marathon). So in search of an answer I came upon the discussion of the Maffetone Method on the Runners World Barefoot forum and became very intrigued. So I ordered the book online and am still in the process of reading it.
Maffetone suggests looking at training from a holistic approach in that one should be concerned formost on ones health, and not their physical fitness. In such he suggests a healthy diet, reducing stresses on oneself, and a good training regimen. His key thing on training is building an aerobic base, which is what I am currently in the process of attempting to do, and so far I am very pleased with the results!
Im order to build this base you have to run under your aerobic threshold, which is based on the heart rate at which your body stops burning stored fats for energy and starts burning eaten sugars instead. Maffetone has developed a formula for determining what your aerobic threshold HR is, mine is 152 but I keep it under 150 for all of my runs.
Theres a few ways to measure your progress while using the Maffetone method. The most obvious is to monitor your HR and how it corresponds with your pace. When I first started my pace at an avg HR of 150 for a 5 mile run was a little under 15 minutes per mile, with miles 4 and 5 closer to the mid 16's. To put this anoher way, it took me 1 hour and 14 minutes to run 5.5 miles, with several walk breaks because my HR would start climbing too high to continue running. Now Im running closer to 10:00~10:30 per mile pace for most of my runs.
The other way to check your progress is through a MAF test, which stands for Maximum Aerobic Function test. The way Maffetone suggests this test is by running 5 - 1 mile repeats at the same HR and the longer you train at this method you should notice 2 things start to change. The first is that your miles will get faster as your aerobic speed increases, but also your mile times in each session will get closer and closer as your aerobic conditioning improves.
I did a slightly different version thats reccomended by Hadd in the famous Hadd post. In this version you run 5 - 2 mile repeats at varying HRs. I have done this test twice and have seen pretty amazing results, which are listed below...
First Test
2 miles @ 139 avg HR = 27:26 (13:43 avg pace)
2 miles @ 147 avg HR = 28:06 (14:03 avg pace) not sure why I got slower here...?
2 miles @ 168 avg HR = 21:41 (10:49 avg pace)
2 miles @ 178 avg HR = 17:26 (8:43 avg pace)
I was running out of time, so I skipped the 160 HR cap run.
Second Test.
2 miles @ 135 avg HR = 23:21 (11:40 avg pace) 1:55 faster per mile
2 miles @ 146 avg HR = 20:56 (10:28 avg pace) 3:40 faster per mile
2 miles @ 155 avg HR = 18:33 (9:17 avg pace) no previous data to compare against... grrr....
2 miles @ 167 avg HR = 16:02 (8:01 avg pace) 2:48 faster per mile
Ran out of time (got kicked off the track) before I could attempt running 2 with a 180 HR cap, but I imagine it would have been quite a good bit faster than the previous tests results.
These tests were conducted roughly a month apart, one when I first started this method, and the second one about a month later. So in just a month Ive gotten around 2~3 minutes faster per mile at the same HR with no speed work type training.
Guess you could say that Im sold!
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