A scientific paper on heart rate training by Dr. Phil Maffetone
|If you haven’t read any of Dr. Maffetone’s books on endurance running, you probably should. Here are a few:
The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing.
Read his scientific article on heart rate training below or download the PDF here.
Source: The MAF Heart Rate White Paper – Dr. Phil Maffetone
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4 Comments
While I have used the maffetone method before and I agree with a lot of his principals, mostly keeping the majority of your endurance training low intensity, I do question calling this a scientific article. My main issue with this is that it was not published in a peer-reviewed journal. In fact, I do not see anything when I search pubmed for Maffetone. This is slightly problematic. As far as I can tell his 180-age formula has never been peer reviewed. I agree that most formulas for HR are flawed but they at least go thru standard peer review. His general principle is probably wise to follow but I have to question the rest. I read his yellow book cover to cover and it’s ok in some areas for sure. But the whole fat based diet is a bit much. especially lately the whole fat based fad is being oversold to what the actual evidence says.
And I must remain somewhat suspect to anyone who was trained in a pseudoscience. Chiropractic is not very rigorous when it comes to the scientific method. And I recall Maffetone also discussing acupuncture and other alternative nonsense in his yellow book. The general principle is great but how about some true peer-review and at least some attempts at RCTs before calling things science.
Andrew, I agree 100% that this is not peer reviewed. It’s scientific in that it had referenced other articles that were from peer reviewed journals. Agree with the study of chiropractics but I don’t think Phil is basic any of his philosophy on chiropractics. He’s basing it on what he has done personally with runners. That’s the interesting aspect of running. There are so many variables and training philosophies that we really don know “what” works. If you’ve ever published a peer reviewed article you would agree that it takes a long time and elimination of many variables or “controls” that could or couldn’t be beneficial plus the samples size are typically too small to learn anything from when it comes to running. That’s where social media and the Internet comes in and changes the rate at which we learn. Sure the control is gone, but when you have hundreds of thousands of runners discussing training patterns and what has worked, it far outweighs a sample size of 20-30 people. Just some things to think about!
Who said, “We are all an experiment of one.”?
I think you are correct on your points. And I do suppose I wasn’t exactly fair about the chiropractic comment. He was trained that way but most of his career was as a coach, with great results. You are correct about the nature of studies in fitness. I imagine it is difficult to convince large numbers of runners with goal races already set to change their training for the sake of research. I do wish he would publish in peer reviewed journals however.