What better way is there to kick off a new year of blogging than with a curmudgeonly post attacking a fellow member of the running community?
Actually, I’ve been meaning to write about Will Cooper’s interview of Phil Maffetone for a long time. Perhaps now that several months have passed, I can do it in a fair, dispassionate manner!
I don’t dispute that Maffetone has a lot of coaching experience — much, much more than I do — or that his methods have produced excellent results for some athletes. But some of his ideas are, in my opinion, unscientific, and I hope that the readers of UltraRunning magazine (which published the interview in its September ’08 issue) won’t be unduly influenced by them.
The Maffetone approach is based in large part on his “180 minus your age” formula, which is the heart rate at which he thinks people should do most of their training. There are at least a couple of problems with this formula. One is that it does not take into account the well-documented variability in maximum heart rate among people of a given age. Thus 35-year-olds like me who exercise regularly and have no major health problems would be assigned a target heart rate of 145, but this would represent a much higher fraction of max for some of us than for others.
A second problem with the 180 formula is that Maffetone seeks to apply it to all endurance athletes, regardless of whether they’re training for a 5K or an ultramarathon. The interview includes the following exchange:
Will: I’ve been reading some of my fellow bloggers who are using the 180 Formula in training, but are racing marathon distances (or less) at a much higher heart rate, in some cases 20 or more bpm higher than their MAHR. They seem to be getting positive results. Should one expect to have a higher “racing” heart rate than “training” heart rate at marathon distances or shorter? What about for longer distances, such as a 50 or a 100 mile runs?
Dr. Phil: When you’re in races of marathon distance and less, you normally run harder than a training run – it’s an anaerobic event. So your heart rate should be much higher in this type of race than a training run. The longer the race, the less difference between the training and racing heart rate.
For now, set aside the fact that 10Ks and marathons are not anaerobic events by any common definition of the word “anaerobic.” What Maffetone is advocating here is that people train for short races by running at much slower than race pace. For those familiar with the exercise physiology concept of specificity, this makes little sense. A good training program should simulate the demands that will be made on the body during the target race — not lull the body into a false sense of comfort!
It’s clear from this interview and Maffetone’s other writings that he considers high-intensity “anaerobic” training to be dangerous and of limited value. Here’s another interview excerpt:
Three other important features of anaerobic training: 1) it won’t take much to benefit from it, 2) you will need more rest/recovery from it, and 3) if you perform too much of it, the aerobic system can quickly deteriorate. To be safe and still obtain benefits, I often suggest only three or four weeks of anaerobic training to get maximum anaerobic effects, and for many ultra runners, just a single, longer workout once a week. Consider a 10 or 15K race as a very effective way to get an anaerobic workout. So if you’re going to add anaerobic training, proceed carefully and only after allowing your aerobic system to become well developed, and perform a good aerobic warm up and cool down around it. Be sure to monitor your MAF Test every two weeks or so during this period, and if you start running slower at your MAHR – stop anaerobic training immediately. Most importantly, anaerobic training is a significant stress, as I discussed earlier. The average person who has a full time job, a family and other things to do in life often has little room for another stress.
It’s true that, for certain athletes, anaerobic training is stressful and leads to injuries. But for every one of those whom I know, there’s someone else for whom total mileage rather than speedwork is the stress that must be managed carefully. Those people can’t log a lot of miles, but they stay in shape by making every mile count — i.e., by doing lots of high-intensity running, in conflict with Maffetone’s recommendations.
I find little precedent in the scientific literature for Maffetone’s stance that speedwork is often harmful to aerobic fitness. In fact, if we regard VO2max as an adequate gauge of aerobic fitness, numerous studies tell us that VO2max increases most when we regularly train near our maximum heart rate. (Here’s one old but representative review: H.A. Wenger and G.J. Bell, Sports Medicine 3: 346-56, 1986.)
If Maffetone is as misguided as I’m making him out to be, why have his athletes achieved so much success? Maybe his real expertise is in aspects of training and nutrition other than those discussed above. Maybe he’s an exceptionally charismatic leader for whom athletes would run through a wall (being careful not to exceed their MAHR, of course). And maybe his athletes’ successes reveal the strengths and limitations of his program.
The highest-profile athletes I know of who have been associated with Maffetone are Ironman triathletes Mark Allen, Wendy Ingraham, and Mike Pigg and ultramarathoner Stu Mittleman. These are champions whose key races lasted many hours, so, for them, the strong focus on aerobic base-building was mostly appropriate. But I doubt that these or other Maffletes have achieved comparable triumphs in shorter races.
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