Floris Gierman runs a sub-3 marathon as a training run, on camera, holding a selfie stick

People should be watching this guy instead of Seth DeMoor. Floris believes in his training method and practices it with consistency. He is also intellectually curious and doles out training advice to his followers without talking down to them. He also gets some great interview guests and the plugs for his clothing line, Path Projects, are always transparent and straight forward.

I like Floris's videos. If someone wants to learn about MAF training, his channel is the best source.

Also, PATH projects shorts (linerless) are a great product.

He may be a nice guy, but MAF is unscientific crap. Maffetone is not a doctor or a PhD. Despite four decades of selling his method via white papers and marketing material, there isn’t any peer-reviewer scientific article — not a single damned one — showing any of the claimed benefits of MAF training beyond the obvious one that always running slow is less likely to get you injured. MAF adds nothing to the body of knowledge pioneered by Lydiard, Karvonen and others and needlessly and poorly overfits a one-size-fits-all curve on everyone and to the detriment of many.

My arms would get tired holding the selfie stick for 3 hours. I don't know how pacers in marathons deal with holding their sticks (with the times on them) for all that time. Hello tingling arms and hands!

I have watched some of his videos and they are very good, and certainly recommended. Where I disagree with him, is with his unquestioning defence of the unscientific 180 formula for training heart rate. He would die in a ditch before he would accept that the 180 formula may be inappropriate.
When some experience no progress, after using the 180 formula, it always their fault, rather than admit it could be the HR formula. There is always some excuse, not enough patience, not getting enough sleep etc. It is difficult to respect a coach who blames the student, rather than the formula that they are prescribing.

I came off a serious illness and MAF training helped me build back to fitness at a conservative steady rate. While I don't think its 100% practical to skip intensity entirely, MAF makes sense for recovery and easy running.

I remember this guy when he was on reddit just starting MAF, he had written a blog about it. He was touting how great MAF was meanwhile he had basically doubled his mileage to achieve the results he was touting. Its funny how so few called him out on it either, everyone was like 'oh I need to start MAF training!'

But attaching yourself to a niche training style and selling yourself as an 'expert' in it is far more lucrative than telling people to run more mileage.

The MAF formula is a generalization that doesn’t work for everyone and maffetone does feel like somewhat of a charlatan but you can’t argue that he hasn’t contributed to some world class results. And running predominantly at or below your maximum aerobic pace during base is a successful strategy used by many. Malmo always talks about this running being the basis of his training - tempos at his fastest aerobic pace. Of course this was done by feel, which is a much better way to do things if you have that intuition. But lots of people have trouble finding this pace, often going too fast and compromising the benefits to aerobic development. I think this is where a conservative formula like MAF can be a good thing. But for lots the MAF formula is too conservative, especially as athletes get older and continue to develop through consistent training but the formula drives their MAF hr down. The coaches at uphill athlete have better ways of training at this same intensity, either through feel by focusing on specific breathing cues, or by dialing in the personal correct heart rate via heart rate drift tests. Interestingly this maximum aerobic heart rate can shift up with significant training, making periodic tests important to continue to develop.

It always depends what you want and for which goal you are training for.

If you are a competitive runner, running only slow does not do the trick.

If you have an aerobic deficite syndrome, because you trained to intense the whole time, running slow, for a period of time, can be beneficial.

Nowadys a lot of people claim 'Run slow to run fast', but take my words, there will come the countertrend, which is 'Run slow, but not too slow'. I accept bets !

Who will be the fisrt YouTuber who picks up that?

I like Floris as a person. He seems like a very genuine and hard working family man. That being said, and as a former "Maffer", I now heavily dislike the Maffetone method. It is fine for determining what an easy run should be, but it is definitely not a training or racing approach. Floris has his own coaching service, and without being a customer, I have been able to view the strava's of multiple members who are. They rarely do any speedwork, and when they do, its hardly ever at goal marathon pace.

There are literally thousands of other people who can do this.

I have found the opposite problem with the Maffetone formula. In my 20s I had a few lab tests done and the highest I could get my HR up to would be to around the 180 mark or maybe a few beats above and this was with the treadmill at 22kmh and the gradient starting to go up. According to the Maffetone formula I should have been doing my regular runs at something like 180-25 + 5 = 160 bpm (or 150 bpm to 160 bpm) which would have been far too intense; it would have been something like a threshold pace at the time. In my 40s I had a lab test for health reasons and had my max HR was measured at just about 180 bpm with the treadmill at 21 kmh before I had to stop. Even accounting for my advanced age the Maffetone formula would have given me 180-45 + 5 = 140 bpm (or 130 bpm to 140 bpm) which would still be on the hard side for a regular "easy" run.

I have known other runners at the same level and age as me who had very different Max HRs than mine - most were higher, one or two were lower.

And this is the problem with the Maffetone formula (like the 220-age for Max HR formula) for 2 main reasons:

1. It does not take into account the individual differences between athletes' max HRs - some have higher HRs than others regardless of their age and this is not necessarily related to the performance level of the athlete either.

2. It seems to make an assumption that youx max HR will decrease by 1 bpm per year which I don't think happens for people who keep very active throughout their lives. I am sure there is a slight decrease in HR max over a lifetime but not by that much in people who continue to do endurance sports.

If we are talking about running realtively easily and getting in a good amount of time doing that then I think most distance runners and coaches would agree with the principles of Maffetone. However, I just don't understand how you can have a single formula for HR with a single max number and use that as a guide of intensity of training for every single athlete. It just does not make sense to me.

He probably had insomnia for the next few weeks.

No one runs a marathon long run unless they are seeking attention (and views).

Overtraining and overuse injuries will undo his careful work done at a low heart rate.

Thank you for saying this. There's way too much psuedo science being passed off as science in this stuff. If you don't believe me, then look at Phil's "bulletproof" coffee recipe.

Despite what's purported by Maffetone, people should know that running beyond 30 minutes is almost all aerobic despite your pacing. Now, if it were physically possible to run all of your runs fast without getting injured, I would recommend doing that. However, people get injured, which is why you need to run slower for most of your miles, and prioritize quality speed workouts in addition to the slower runs. Use the polarized approach and see awesome results. Don't believe this weird "fatburning max" stuff, which has no scientific backing.

It is very much the opposite of “no pain no gain”

You can get fast by walking the dog every day. Do 80/20, but not the 20. It is Lydiard, but only the LSD phase ad finitum.

It's really just easy running. Some people are just so thick headed they cannot get the idea of running easy. They need a number to look at. So MAF gives them that number. It's not a bad number and works for most people. The thing about thick headed people is once they have an idea it takes a sledge hammer to the head to change it even a little bit. So when these dopes finally figure out low heart rate training they think they have to do that all the time forever.

MAF is good for recovery runs, that’s about it.