Maffetone Heart Rate Training

[MiddleAgeCRISIS]

Hello, just started training and I've been doing 2 sets of 10km per day for the last 70 days.

I started slowly so 3m splits and have gradually developed improved technique and strength. Ive kept my heart rate sub 120 until now.

Ive now started to research the impact of this and have come across the MAF concept by Phil Maffetone. So ive started to train at 135 bpm and thats 2.20 splits for 10km.

has any one else tried this approach? Goal is to lose weight over a 150 day period without issues associated with overtraining. Would welcome views and opinions.

[jamesg]

Well done, that's how professionals have always rowed: long distances done within capabilities so that it can be done tomorrow too. Presumably MAF says a lot more than that, so will read his book. But no doubt you've already seen the results: 2 x 10k a day at 2:20 (130 W) is a lot of work.

[mitchel674]

Rob, it's great to see how your times are coming down with your steady state work. Clearly you are improving your aerobic capacity. I still wonder how you have 3 hours per day to row. Plus, you were also mountain biking daily. Impressive.

Have you seen your desired weight loss? Are you taking rest days?

[Dangerscouse]

HR capped sessions are a great way of losing weight if that is your only goal and I have had great success from it, although I also included a good variety of faster and shorter sessions as well slow and long distances.

[MiddleAgeCRISIS]

Rob, it's great to see how your times are coming down with your steady state work. Clearly you are improving your aerobic capacity. I still wonder how you have 3 hours per day to row. Plus, you were also mountain biking daily. Impressive.

Have you seen your desired weight loss? Are you taking rest days?

Thank you. I have lost 2 stone so far.

I am a bit flakey on my opening weight either 19 stone 10 or 19 stone 7.

I was anticipating about a stone every 600km. I havent really changed my diet .

It takes me about 50 minutes in the morning and afternoon. I am aided by lockdown to be fair. I've decided to sort my weight out and keep going until I succeed.

I'm not taking rest days. I did have sleep issues on 30km days and I found i had a cumulative build up of stress. A much higher intensity row appeared to reset both elements.

I hope to do 3m metres and I hope to lose muscle mass along the way.

[MiddleAgeCRISIS]

HR capped sessions are a great way of losing weight if that is your only goal and I have had great success from it, although I also included a good variety of faster and shorter sessions as well slow and long distances.

Yes that's my primary aim for doing this. I am sat at 120 bpm or 135 bpm currently depending on how i feel.

[MiddleAgeCRISIS]

Well done, that's how professionals have always rowed: long distances done within capabilities so that it can be done tomorrow too. Presumably MAF says a lot more than that, so will read his book. But no doubt you've already seen the results: 2 x 10k a day at 2:20 (130 W) is a lot of work.

Thank you. I decided to research zone 2 training as a friend had said he had clocked my heart rate on my workouts.

My logic was that i could burn calories repeatedly , with a low risk of injury and without bulking up if i rowed at a sensible effort level.

If you google phil maffetone - he has a website, there are many you tube interviews and he coached the 6 times iron man winner.

I think its logical to treat the heart like any muscle and build its capability without too much stress.

I have previously only trained anaerobically so short sprints etc and throwing medicine balls around.

I have noticed that my climbing endurance is far better now when i mountain bike.

[Rod]

I first used Maffetone training just over 2 years ago and it worked very well for me as I improved my performances over all distances by quite a lot.

Effectively it explains that you will get huge benefits from building a good aerobic base. Lots of long slow rows at 18 to 20 spm...and by slow I mean below 70% of your maximum heart rate (so in the UT2 zone).

Your small blood vessels (capillaries) open up and grow more to where they are needed ( areas of highest oxygen demand) to deliver more oxygen to your muscles and carry away waste products, such as carbon dioxide and lactic acid.

Mitochondria in the muscles will multiply and you'll improve the body’s ability to burn fat for fuel. Your heart will become stronger and more efficient plus you'll have a lot more energy. If you google ''benefits of aerobic development'' you'll get a lot of good info.

You will improve all areas of your rowing if you do this.

Here's some good info
http://whchambers.com/always-training-i ... ur-health/

[MiddleAgeCRISIS]

I first used Maffetone training just over 2 years ago and it worked very well for me as I improved my performances over all distances by quite a lot.

Effectively it explains that you will get huge benefits from building a good aerobic base. Lots of long slow rows at 18 to 20 spm...and by slow I mean below 70% of your maximum heart rate (so in the UT2 zone).

Your small blood vessels (capillaries) open up and grow more to where they are needed ( areas of highest oxygen demand) to deliver more oxygen to your muscles and carry away waste products, such as carbon dioxide and lactic acid.

Mitochondria in the muscles will multiply and you'll improve the body’s ability to burn fat for fuel. Your heart will become stronger and more efficient plus you'll have a lot more energy. If you google ''benefits of aerobic development'' you'll get a lot of good info.

You will improve all areas of your rowing if you do this.

Here's some good info
http://whchambers.com/always-training-i ... ur-health/

Thank you, that's a helpful article. I have toyed with doing more volume or mixing it up but I think i will plod on until I hit my fat loss target which is another 60 days.

[Gammmmo]

I first used Maffetone training just over 2 years ago and it worked very well for me as I improved my performances over all distances by quite a lot.

Effectively it explains that you will get huge benefits from building a good aerobic base. Lots of long slow rows at 18 to 20 spm...and by slow I mean below 70% of your maximum heart rate (so in the UT2 zone).

Your small blood vessels (capillaries) open up and grow more to where they are needed ( areas of highest oxygen demand) to deliver more oxygen to your muscles and carry away waste products, such as carbon dioxide and lactic acid.

Mitochondria in the muscles will multiply and you'll improve the body’s ability to burn fat for fuel. Your heart will become stronger and more efficient plus you'll have a lot more energy. If you google ''benefits of aerobic development'' you'll get a lot of good info.

You will improve all areas of your rowing if you do this.

Here's some good info
http://whchambers.com/always-training-i ... ur-health/

How much volume roughly below 70% of MHR did you do per week? My contention with this method on the ergo (as opposed to on the bike) is it's hard to do sufficent volume into order to reap the benefits.

[Dangerscouse]

How much volume roughly below 70% of MHR did you do per week? My contention with this method on the ergo (as opposed to on the bike) is it's hard to do sufficent volume into order to reap the benefits.

That is the conclusion I have come to too, so I'm doing a hybrid solution ie some low & slow, some grey zone and some lung busters.

I'm also finding that 70- 75% seems to be more suitable for me, not least as I was training at circa 80% a few years ago and making good progress but not as much as I am recently.

[MiddleAgeCRISIS]

I first used Maffetone training just over 2 years ago and it worked very well for me as I improved my performances over all distances by quite a lot.

Effectively it explains that you will get huge benefits from building a good aerobic base. Lots of long slow rows at 18 to 20 spm...and by slow I mean below 70% of your maximum heart rate (so in the UT2 zone).

Your small blood vessels (capillaries) open up and grow more to where they are needed ( areas of highest oxygen demand) to deliver more oxygen to your muscles and carry away waste products, such as carbon dioxide and lactic acid.

Mitochondria in the muscles will multiply and you'll improve the body’s ability to burn fat for fuel. Your heart will become stronger and more efficient plus you'll have a lot more energy. If you google ''benefits of aerobic development'' you'll get a lot of good info.

You will improve all areas of your rowing if you do this.

Here's some good info
http://whchambers.com/always-training-i ... ur-health/

How much volume roughly below 70% of MHR did you do per week? My contention with this method on the ergo (as opposed to on the bike) is it's hard to do sufficent volume into order to reap the benefits.

I think you are right in that it is a volume led approach. I've previously trained at a higher intensity on a wattbike at an hour a day.

For me, training for two hours a day slowly has helped me more than 1 hour a day on the wattbike.

[mitchel674]

I first used Maffetone training just over 2 years ago and it worked very well for me as I improved my performances over all distances by quite a lot.

Effectively it explains that you will get huge benefits from building a good aerobic base. Lots of long slow rows at 18 to 20 spm...and by slow I mean below 70% of your maximum heart rate (so in the UT2 zone).

Your small blood vessels (capillaries) open up and grow more to where they are needed ( areas of highest oxygen demand) to deliver more oxygen to your muscles and carry away waste products, such as carbon dioxide and lactic acid.

Mitochondria in the muscles will multiply and you'll improve the body’s ability to burn fat for fuel. Your heart will become stronger and more efficient plus you'll have a lot more energy. If you google ''benefits of aerobic development'' you'll get a lot of good info.

You will improve all areas of your rowing if you do this.

Here's some good info
http://whchambers.com/always-training-i ... ur-health/

How much volume roughly below 70% of MHR did you do per week? My contention with this method on the ergo (as opposed to on the bike) is it's hard to do sufficent volume into order to reap the benefits.

Paul, any idea how much weekly rowing volume would be required to be of benefit?

I'd like to give this Maffetone training a try on the ERG for 2-3 months, but I don't have 3 hours a day to row. I currently do about 100k steady state per month.

[Gammmmo]

On the bike you'd be looking at 15hrs minimum a week, preferably 20. A pro athlete who uses this approach (such as Mark Allen) I believe was doing 35hrs/week. So, I suppose what u could do if you've done plenty of biking and ergo training is compare sessions you've done and look at heart rate profiles and the overall perceived difficulty of the session and use that to introduce a "fudge factor" so for example 1hr biking = 30mins ergo. There may be discussion on the forum elsewhere as to how to estimate this factor. So, if it was me I'd be wanting to start with a block of AT LEAST 8hrs/week on ergo, re-test HR for a given power, see if it has dropped and if not try adding more volume.

Truth is, I didn't train like that on the bike nor on the ergo. You want some anecdotal advice which is why I thought Rod's input might be interesting.

EDIT: Personally, I don't think doing massive LSD volume is very healthy esp as we age, but that's another rabbit hole...

[dknickerbocker]

On the bike you'd be looking at 15hrs minimum a week, preferably 20. A pro athlete who uses this approach (such as Mark Allen) I believe was doing 35hrs/week.

I think in a lot of ways this is right but we should remember, you can improve a lot from low intensity training as you work up to those hours. Like someone who's doing 4 very hard (and hence, pretty short) erg sessions per week, let's say 3.5 hrs, jumping up to 6 hours might feel like a lot. You start wherever you are, push as much (easy) volume as you can, and then build from there. Eventually yes, we all run out of hours in the week, but you might find this takes you longer than you think and in the meantime you're improving.

But agree with Gammo that once you hit that magic number, you're at a decision point, and if it were me, i'd throw in some intensity instead of only pushing volume. Like, do a couple very hard sessions per week, and the rest easy. It's not exactly maffetone but I think you get the best of both worlds. You get a bunch of easy volume (building the capilarization and mitochondria etc.), and you can accumulate as much time as you're able at vo2max, both of which are great for building capacity, and you're using the big muscle fibers in your interval days making them more efficient relative to where they were before (never as efficient as the slowtwitch ones though).

For what it's worth, in my experience you can also use hard intervals to build your "base," you just have to be aware of the limitations, and you'll never get away from the fact that volume seems to be one of the best, if not THE best, way to improve. Part of it is the fact that you can keep getting those low-intensity adaptations over years and years at very low metabolic cost, but IIRC there's also a cell signaling pathway that depends very simply on just the number of muscular contractions that never really maxes out, and you'll never get that volume of contractions unless most of it is easy.

Strict maffetone also gets results but i bet is probably only "necessary" for people who otherwise have a tendency to overdo it, or are coming off of overdoing it. Otherwise i see no reason not to spice it up with some intervals.