Hi Nic,

Another piece of advise is not to get caught up on ‘this or that has being said,’ it is fundamental principles behind such statements that are important – for example not doing the weight training in the aerobic base period. Maffetone is not against strength training per se, what he is against is anaerobic efforts when you are trying to regain fitness and develop fat burning (aka base building period). In my opinion he says to avoid such workouts, because for a good number of people strength training=lifting to failure and “leaving it all in the gym.” I point you towards my article on strength training and also what Pavel Tsatsoulne repeats every 5 lines in his books – to build strength you should lift heavy NOT to fatigue and very few times (low reps) which means extremely short workouts. For the same reason Dr. Maffetone is a huge fan of the so called slow weights – where you have a set of dumbbells at home/work and every time you pass by them you do a lift or two. Since it is very short you are not fatiguing and producing lactate/stressing your body very much. In addition in the case of extreme aerobic deficiency (my case) and/or overtraining it is the recovery/rebuild that is important and as such this is a very good reason to avoid anything strenuous. Overall as the expression goes “your mileage may vary” if you are not seeing progress in your MAF tests/pace there are things to look at and while diet and MAF hr set too hight are usually the main culprits, doing too much anaerobic work is a close second.

As far as your MAF test, i think you can benefit from some lower gearing in order to get your cadence up a touch since 53rpm average cadence is a touch too low and really muscling the gear. I am personally not giving up my 11-32 cassette for those reasons – being able to spin up (70-85rpm) almost all climbs that my local terrain can provide. Or you can find a less steep hill, though this one seems to be a good segment to test.

Indeed, this is the reason behind this blog to share my experience and those of others, so I would be very happy to discuss and exchange notes. I have started following you on Strava as well.

Best of luck, you will be amazed at the progress by going with MAF.

-Nikola

Thanks, I’ll check out the podcast. Seems like Maffetone though says to not do much weight training though during the aerobic period because he considers it anaerobic. Wondering as well because I like to do pretty gentle body weight core work for overall better strength and injury prevention. Did my first MAF test today on a local climb, plan to do it monthly and hopefully get some nice improvement. Check it out: https://www.strava.com/activities/630183447/overview Feel free to follow me, it’d be cool to have someone to exchange notes with on this.

Hi Nic,

I am constantly working on improving, that is a big part of the so called MAF method. That includes getting it wrong every once and a while (aka not doing any strength training in my case..=) ) Nine or so months ago, I started just like most people who came to his methods, including Dr. Maffetone himself; I was broken and overtrained and realised that it is not through suffering that you get good results and enjoyment from life and athletic pursuits – it is through health and a total holistic approach. Just as I mentioned in my previous comment to you, in my search for strength training methods I literally just came across Pavel Tsatsouline’s work. He is a former Soviet special forces strength coach and he is the guy who introduced the kettle bell to the west in the 90s. His approach is absolutely no frills and true simplicity. You can google his books and he appeared on the Tim Ferris podcast as well (episode #55). I will do a post on his methods quite soon, I already went through almost 3 of his books – absolutely amazing stuff in there!

As far as your situation I can advise you the following.
1. Cutting out any junk food and refined carbohydrates (sugars, grains, etc.) from your diet is where 80% of your progress would come.

2. Calculate your MAF heartrate including all the adjustments (how to do that here), if you are hesitating between two values, go with the lower one.

3. Ride for 3 weeks not exceeding your MAF HR and see how it feels. If you are super slow, you definitely have work to do and are not ready to race – you like most athletes out there are aerobically deficient to a degree and have relied on your anaerobic/glucose burning system to do all the work with all the negatives such as stress and chronic inflammation, etc.

4. As far as your cyclocross races in the weekends, there are about 3-4ish months to cyclocross season here so if you start now you can see where you stand. There is no such thing as ‘not supposed to be doing this or that type of effort,’ there is your body not being able to take the stress of high intensity (aerobically unfit) – aka not being ready to race. Your MAF tests and general feelings should be a good guide; if you are progressing without injuries (and i mean the no injuries part), you are on a good track and can add some anaerobic work/racing. Your body will tell you if you are ready. If not ready yet, MAF tests start slowing down, learning more about health and fitness and being your own lab experiment is a more fulfilling purpose, rather than race results. Especially if you are a health care provider, you can add plenty of new knowledge to help others.

5. Group rides. When I am out training on any given day, 9 out of 10 groups, no matter how small, I see horrible grimaces of pain and suffering. I don’t care about the social aspect – if it is a hammerfest that aims to split the group in the crosswind, it is not social, it’s an ego driven parade. My advise here is to see if you can get some like minded people to do what you do (MAF methods) and actually enjoy riding. As that group gets better/fitter WITHOUT all the suffering, it would be the best way to advertise your services. Otherwise you showing up to group hammerfests and going with what everybody is doing (‘racing’ at all costs) while being a proponent for slowing down in training and healthful approach, etc. is the same as the overweight, wheezing and chain smoking lung doctor telling to his patients that they need to get healthier, and I mean this with absolutely no offense. In the words of Gandhi – be the change you want to see in the world.

Stick with it and you will be amazed, I am positive.

Best of luck and let me know how you fare!

-Nikola

Hi Nic,

While cyclocross has a lot of accelerations and sprints out of corners, up barriers etc. and is indeed an intense form of bike racing, anything lasting more than 3 minutes is more than 95% aerobic. As you, yourself mentioned having that aerobic engine would indeed help ‘absorb’ the anaerobic work. For example, it is the slow twitch muscles that are better endowed with circulation and have higher levels of the lactate transporter (MCT1) that readily takes up lactate from the fast-twitch fibers (that have higher levels of the MCT4 transporter) and as such having a developed aerobic system would allow the fast twitch muscles to work better before ‘choking.’ In addition, it is the slow twitch muscles that are the ones responsible postural and direct joint support – you need that stability in order to produce high power. Or putting it simply – If you are already working hard (high HR, burning glucose rather than fat) keeping easy ‘endurance pace,’ what is out there left for hard efforts? The above are just a few of the many many benefits. Furthermore among the greatest benefits of the MAF method is getting healthier and in tune with your body’s needs, since Dr. Maffetone himself mentions that a good number of athletes are fit but unhealthy. I can attest from personal experience that it is only a matter of time until you completely break down and having chronic gut problems, constant cravings (for sweet foods foods), high levels of stress hormones and dancing on the edge of overtraining (due to high intensity anaerobic training) is NOT a part of being a serious athlete.

One thing that I certainly would put a greater emphasis in the coming months is strength training both on (low cadence big gear efforts NOT to fatigue, etc.) and off the bike (body weight/kettlebell exercises/slow weights). This was the first winter in more than 10 years that I spent virtually zero time in the gym and while my MAF results show awesome progress (the third part of the MAF series coming soon) at this years national TT championships (recap also coming soon) on the hilly and windy terrain my lack of strength was a big limiter, i just coulnd’t push a big enough gear. Though as an extremely aerobically deficient athlete, not doing any anaerobic work (as well as not racing) was the only way to go at it in the last 9 months (I was barely slogging at my MAF HR for the first months). With that being said I feel that now I can try to incorporate a strength workout every week and my MAF tests would be my guide if it is too much, etc. Of course I will also be posting my exploits in the world of cyclocross.=)

Best of luck with your cycling and stay tuned for more articles on the blog!

-Nikola