I recently watched 6-Time Ironman World Champ Mark Allen talk on the Relaxed Running Podcast.
He fully credited Low Heart Rate Training (specifically Phil Maffetone method) for so much of his success. It seems that a lot of runners say they follow LHR training but don't follow it to the degree that Mark seemed to.
Maffetone method is just doing easy runs at 180-age HR right? I do most of my easy runs far below this. Don't really see the difference between this and normal 80/20 type training.
Mark Allen's success with Low Heart Rate (LHR) Training, specifically the Phil Maffetone method, is indeed compelling. The idea behind LHR training is to build a strong aerobic base by training at a lower heart rate, which can improve endurance and reduce the risk of injury.
No, it doesn't make sense to implement this for running.
1) maffetone method is just completely made up and not based in any actual science. Using 180 - age is a guess of where you should be limiting yourself if you want to do as much volume as possible, but everyone's HR is different and most people do not land at that number. Run at an easy pace for you, not what the guy trying to sell his book tells you to do.
2) an iron man is a completely different event than marathons or shorter altogether. An 8-10 hour event requires you to have excellent fat burning capabilities because you just can't go that long on carbs alone. Running marathons or shorter are much more carb dominant in the race, so you don't need to be chasing that specific adaptation instead of spending that time and energy elsewhere.
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It definitely works as I had a teammate (Trevor) back in the late 80's/early 90's) who used to regularly go out on long runs of 90 and 150 minutes every week but at 7 to 8 minutes pace. He ended up Southland Conference Champion in the steeplechase, 5000m, and 10000m and 2nd) 1500m in the 2 day conference meet. I lost contact with him after I transfered but he was sold on the method)
Everything is relative (sample week for him):
M- 4800-5000 yards/3 hour ride/6-7.5 miles
T- 1.5 hour swim/5 hour bike/12-14 miles- intervals
W- 4800-5000 yards/easy ride/6-7.5 miles
R- 1.5 hour swim/5 hour bike/12-14 miles- intervals
F- 4800-5000 yards/3 hour bike/7-9 miles
S- 1,000-1,500 yards/100 mile bike/fast continuous run or a 10k
S- 3,500 yards/easy ride/long run- 20 miles
((25,000-30,000 yards of swimming, 400-450 miles of biking, 70-80 miles of running))
Threshold Enthusiast wrote:
No, it doesn't make sense to implement this for running.
1) maffetone method is just completely made up and not based in any actual science. Using 180 - age is a guess of where you should be limiting yourself if you want to do as much volume as possible, but everyone's HR is different and most people do not land at that number. Run at an easy pace for you, not what the guy trying to sell his book tells you to do.
2) an iron man is a completely different event than marathons or shorter altogether. An 8-10 hour event requires you to have excellent fat burning capabilities because you just can't go that long on carbs alone. Running marathons or shorter are much more carb dominant in the race, so you don't need to be chasing that specific adaptation instead of spending that time and energy elsewhere.
I agree, it's probably not worth the time/effort to get fat adapted if you are running shorter races. It's literally months and months of crawling along, sometimes walking.
Lots of people sh*t on the method, but they also don't put in the time/volume to see it through, because of the above. If you look at NERunners post, you'll see he was doing like 30-40 hours of work per week, for months and months. Not many people are willing to put in that kind of time, and I don't blame them - it's just not necessary.
Mark Allen was in his early twenties when he started this, so was using a heart rate of 155ish. I understand he had a max hr of 190ish. So his easy runs were capped at circa 80% of max. Hardly low hr training.
Contrast this with older runners, where the 180 formula gives a very low %age of h max.
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80% of max isn’t low hr training.