Endurance Training - Maffetone

[Arsen Gere]

Hi,
I have read in a couple of heart rate monitor threads here where people have experimented using an HRM for control rather than observation. This comes up in "Endurance Trainining and Racing" by Dr. Philip Maffetone. Does anyone have any personal experience of Dr Phil's methods and what are their observations. Another HRM book which I can't remember the title of also recommended going slower to go faster. Mentally I am struggling with this philosophy as most people do.

What I'm thinking is, looking at periodisation prior to the racing season this could be applied without risk, does this have merit?

 

[amaferanga]

Do you mean using heart rate zones and training in specific zones? If so then this is pretty common. What do you mean by risk?

The going slower to get faster stuff is fine if your riding 15 hours plus a week, but if you're only doing 5-10 hours or so (and you're training to race) then you'd be better doing threshold work instead of lots of long steady miles. A lot of people will do one long ride a week and then a few higher intensity rides around threshold. Also, don't confuse doing steady miles with doing easy miles - you should still be tired after a 3 or 4 hour ride at endurance pace. Don't make the mistake of doing lots of riding at recovery intensity or you'll have a tough start to the racing season.

 

[Arsen Gere]

Maffetone advocates a maximum aerobic function, a heart rate limit not to exceed, the idea being keeping your body in a lower heart rate zone to encourage the body to adapt to a pure aerobic operation. The idea being you stay below a threshold and speed increases as your body adapts without any anaerobic training. All interval work above your threshold being anaerobic. I do much as you advise at the moment with some success.
Maffetone implies I would have greater success if I stuck to the aerobic route and used very limited anaerobic work. The anaerobic bit comes from racing.
Some people here have stated they are trying this and I wondered if they had siginifcant improvements over the more usual steady ride plus some intervals and threshold training, aerobic/anaerobic mix.
Maffetone implies that I'd have a great start to the racing season, which is what I am struggling with and contradicts what you say and what I believe hence I don't want to 'risk' doing what he says when I have something that works, but could perhaps do better without the pain.

 

[screenman]

I stuck with the Mathetone method for 3 months after getting back on the bike, after a long lay off. The benefits I felt was positive, my speed increased, my resting heart rate decreased, on top of that I never felt tired. After a 2 hour ride I could go straight out and work unlike the old days when a 2 hour high level 2 would knacker me for a few hours.

 

[Rob3rt]

I don't know the background of this certain Dr, but sports scientists are good at working out why a certain sort of training works, but they don't have a great track record of coming up with new techniques in the lab and successfully applying them to competition! Might want to bare that in mind!

Screenman - Without knowing your history, I would tend to say it's a given that with 3 months of cycling after not cycling for a long time your RHR would decrease and speed would increase. It is not particularly attributable to the type of training you did.

 

[Arsen Gere]

Maffetones book is endorsed by Mark Allen who is a six times winner of the Hawaii Ironman. He also lists a number of achievements in training top athletes and various other people who adopt the holistic approach. That is diet, barefoot type running etc. He implies he had has had a lot of success. However I don't know how much of this is a selection bias, how many people had more success by not following him?
So among us mortals if people have had more success following this than traditional methods I'd be very interested to hear of their experience.
@screenman thanks for your info.

 

[amaferanga]

I don't think copying what a professional athlete does with 30 hours a week (or more) to train when you have much less time is very clever. Just because it's (possibly) effective when you do 30 hours a week, doesn't mean its effective nor the best use of your time if you only train for around 10 hours a week.

Also, I seem to recall from Matt Fitzegerald's book Racing Weight that he was quite sceptical that the athletes in question (including that Ironman guy I think) actually kept the intensity of their workouts as low as they were supposed to.

 

[screenman]

The OP asked for an opinion on the Mathetone system, of which I have experience, the other posts come from people with no experience of it.

I would certainly not race off a pure diet of this level, however for winter base miles it certainly felt good and did what I required. It seemed I was less prone to illness when on this programme than I was on the old Peter Keene or Peter Reade systems.

 

[Rob3rt]

Ironman training is a different beast to most other events. I'm not saying an IM athlete doesnt do speed training (they do, and as far as elites plenty compared to more mortals) but an Ironman by its very nature is going to be a mostly aerobic exercise and training is going to have to include a lot of volume (and thus intensity must be lower else injury risk would be too great). That's common sense.

 

[Rob3rt]

The OP asked for an opinion on the Mathetone system, of which I have experience, the other posts come from people with no experience of it.

I would certainly not race off a pure diet of this level, however for winter base miles it certainly felt good and did what I required. It seemed I was less prone to illness when on this programme than I was on the old Peter Keene or Peter Reade systems.

Since when did people have to have 1st hand experience of something to have an opinion about it?

 

[screenman]

Bit like saying a Ferrari drives horrible, when in fact the person may never have driven one.

The fact the OP asked for anyone with personal experience may have been a clue.

 

[Rob3rt]

ONE, of the OP's initial questions asked if anyone had personal experience.

One doesn't have to always have personal experience of something to be able to state a founded opinion.

 

[screenman]

How can you give a founded opinion without personal experience, surely it is unfounded.

 

[The Jogger]

I have used maffetone training in my jogging. It is the best way to avoid injury but is difficult with hills. I would try and do 1hr one day and 90 mins the next. In the running it's advised to do a 5 miler every couple of weeks to monitor improvements. I found it excellent for cardio base training. Positive results on rhr and recovery rate.

 

[Arsen Gere]

@The Jogger, thanks for that. I've already confessed to moving from road racing to trialthlon in the triathlon section, I get real knee and hip problems when I slow right down running. It changes my gate. So I tend not do do much below 8min miles. I can't decide on a 5 miler or a 5k park run to test my run speed or do they yield the same results?

So we have 2 for the method and some sceptics, me with an open mind tending to the sceptic side.
It looks like something to try in the early part of periodisation, round about now.

I noticed this season that if I did a very easy cycle ride on the Sunday about 80 miles or more the mid week 12 mile tt's I did improved. My tt times kept coming down all season (my second year of tt's after a long lay off, pb improving 2mins per year). ( See interleukin article). All the step changes in speed were after 80 milers, a bit of a plateau in between. But this may be coincidence or due to triathlons, duathlons etc. Therefore there may be some merit in using an HRM to control effort on a longer ride but it does not seem right. I may be answering my own question but this discussion helps!