The Maffetone
Method.

Who is Phil Maffetone

Maffetone came to training from health care, not from a track. What he noticed in the athletes he treated was a pattern: they trained too hard, too often, and ended up injured, ill or stuck. His answer was a hard ceiling on heart rate for most training, so the aerobic system gets built before anything else.

Mark Allen is the classic example. In Maffetone's telling, Allen had to slow down dramatically when he started training at his MAF heart rate, then got steadily faster at the same heart rate over months, and went on to win Ironman Hawaii six times.

The MAF 180 formula

Take 180 and subtract your age. Then adjust:

• Minus 10 if you are recovering from a major illness, surgery or a hospital stay, or take regular medication.
• Minus 5 if you are injured, regressing, get more than two colds a year, have allergies or asthma, or are just starting.
• No change if you have trained consistently for up to two years without those problems.
• Plus 5 if you have trained for more than two years without problems and are still improving.

The result is the top of your aerobic range. Train between it and 10 beats below. Drag to your age and find yours. The full MAF calculator has more on how it compares to Zone 2.

Why it works

Easy running at a low heart rate trains the things endurance is built on: more capillaries, more mitochondria, better fat use, a stronger heart. It does it with little stress, so you can repeat it day after day. The problem for most runners is that their easy runs are not easy. They drift into what we call the grey zone, too hard to recover from and too easy to make them faster. MAF stops that drift with a number.

The MAF test

Maffetone's way of measuring progress is the MAF test: once a month, run a set distance at exactly your MAF heart rate and record the pace. If the pace at the same heart rate gets faster, the base is growing. If it stalls, something is off: too much intensity, too little sleep, too much stress.

What normal runners can take from it

• Put a ceiling on easy days. MAF or the top of Zone 2, both work. The point is to have a number and respect it.
• Accept a slow start. Walking uphill in the first weeks is normal.
• Measure the trend, not the day. One MAF test a month on the same route.
• Add intensity later. Maffetone argues for a long aerobic phase first. We agree with the order, then add one or two quality sessions a week. See how to build an aerobic base.

The criticism

The 180 formula is a rule of thumb. It ignores your resting heart rate and individual max heart rate, so for some runners it is too low. Very fit runners sometimes find MAF pace too slow to be useful. Our view: use it as a ceiling, check it against your Zone 2 range, and if they disagree, start with the lower number.

Sources: Phil Maffetone, philmaffetone.com (the 180 formula and the MAF test) and The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing (2010). Run Mastery is a running coach, not a medical service.