The MAF Method: A Personalized Approach to Health and Fitness

by Philip Maffetone

I devised the MAF method to help walkers, runners, cyclists and athletes of all ages and ability reach their full human potential. The methodology is based on 40 years of clinical and scientific research, balancing the 3 forces of exercise, nutrition and stress to build your aerobic system, the fat-burning engine responsible for fuelling all of the body’s needs. I’ve been helping people personalize their health and fitness needs for more than four decades. This eBook takes you through the key features of MAF — why and how it works and the way food, exercise and stress are able to significantly help us. By the end you’ll be ready to start. MAF is an open system that can be used by itself, or be integrated into any approach you may be currently using, or help you start all over again. That’s because MAF provides assessment tools that help take the guesswork out of exercise, food and stress management. These tools, such as the MAF Test and Two Week Test, can help you better understand whether your workouts and eating patterns are really right for you.

Genres: Nonfiction, Health, Fitness

78 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 12, 2020

Reviews

[Igor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Small book, quick introduction to Maffetone. Four stars given for the message being important, though this book is marketing material for his other books ... nevertheless, valuable content, distilled to the essence ... .

[Chris Nitsas · Rating 2 out of 5]

I heard about MAF training (i.e. Maximum Aerobic Function training) and it sounds right. Many runners say that you should do most of your training at lower heart rates and it will help you become faster.

The idea is to train your aerobic engine, i.e. your body's ability to generate energy without resorting to the more tiring and stressful anaerobic system. Plus, aerobic training causes less injuries and is easier to recover from, so you train more.

How do you do that? You train at an intensity that doesn't make you pass a certain heart rate: 180 minus your age, minus another 5-15 depending on your fitness level & health.

So I decided to read Dr. Maffetone's book to see what else he has to say.

In the end I'll rate this with two stars because I found it "ok". I believe most of the things that Dr. Maffetone says, including those about processed food, but they can all be summarized in 3-5 pages. The rest of the book just tries to sell you on the idea. Thanks for the work that went into this, but I just don't feel that I gained more from the book than what I learned from reading a couple of articles about it.

[Vilius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eat healthy, do Z2.

[Natalia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not convinced by the whole theory and my woo-woo detector went off quite a few times, but the basic premise sounds common-sensical enough and I'm willing to try it.

[Lars · Rating 1 out of 5]

Short and dangerously dogmatic

First of, I am a former triathlete who has done some rather obsessive research about endurance training and the like, so I know about this stuff.
What the author writes is rather solid overall, but there are some things where I suspect that his statements are not supported by actual science. There also not many of them, as this "book" is extremely short. I skimmed it in hope of some interesting points as I got it for free (paying for this little content would be hard to justify).
The main point (or at least what the author is known for) is the importance of (really) low intensity training. On its own, this is simply correct, even though it may surprise some people - there is a reason why professional endurance athletes do almost their training at very low intensity.
But the measurement of low intensity is dangerously simplistic: The author simply gives a formula of 180-age to get a maximum HR for aerobic exercise. While this formula may work on average, there is a lot of variation between different people - which the author addresses *not at all*. For example, according to the author my HR range for low intensity training is 149-159. Except that this is actually hard, not easy, my actual low intensity range is 130-140. Professional triathlete Lionel Sanders has a max HR of around 150, so everything he does is supposedly low intensity (it definitely isn't, the formula is just too simplistic and dogmatic).
What really pisses me off is that this is a very basic and obvious problem with the formula which the author simply does not address even though he definitely knows that.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can download this book for free from Phil Maffetone's website. I had known about Maffetone for quite some time and I knew about his formula although I had never tried to apply it rigidly. This year I'm going to try it. But there's so much more to this book than just his idea's on aerobic training. It is important to understand how Maffetone came up with his formula and that is described in detail. But the basic idea is that fitness and health are not necessarily the same and many runners are fit for their sport but not very healthy. This is the basis for Maffetone's life's work. He wants to help people become healthy while they are also becoming more fit. There are several aspects of good health that I found track quite well with my own interest and discoveries of wellness. Reducing sugar for one and also his skepticism of running shoe technology which actually surprised me. He actually advocates periodically going barefoot which I thought was quite interesting.

[Rachel Rosenthal · Rating 2 out of 5]

I downloaded this to learn about how to do heart rate training more effectively in running. Instead I learned (again) that if I consume even the smallest amount of sugar, I will immediately drop dead of cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s all at the same time.

There are also a lot of claims made in this book that are not backed up with citations. (For example, 75% of all PCP visits are attributable to stress? According to what source? How is this operationally defined?) There’s a list of articles in the back of the book but they’re all the author’s own work. Not a strong body of evidence.

[Travis Chambers · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm all about the MAF Method in practice. But this ebook is not the way to learn about it. Really poor overall.

I do have one good takeaway. Differentiating between health and fitness. Maybe this is mainstream, but since I've read almost nothing in this space, it was new to me.

Health is a summation of your nutrition, mental, biological state.
Fitness is your strength and conditioning.

Recognizing that it's possible to be healthy but not fit, or fit but not healthy, is a good mindset shift for me.

[Jamie F · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the key to heart heath in athletes, competitors, and every day people. Not only will you learn the lies the media, health care professionals, and governments tell you about optimal health, but you'll come away understanding why. I recommend that you purchase an inexpensive hearth rate monitor with a chest strap as an Apple watch will not be accurate enough while training.

[Rusty Knorr · Rating 2 out of 5]

No actual information on the method, only an introduction as a sales pitch to get you to subscribe to his training program on his website. No footnotes or references, just anecdotal opinion. While I believe the method of low heart rate training is valid, this book is not source material on how to utilize it. YouTube provides more information than this book.

[MM · Rating 4 out of 5]

MAF method is magical. The book is a great companion and inspiration if you are following Phil Maffatone’s method.

MAF stands for Maximum Aerobic Function where you workout at a heart rate of 180 minus your age.

[Jessica Skogberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quick read summarizing MAF method and encouraging slower approach to fitness and endurance training based on science, as well as ways to approach stress reduction. Lots more reading available on his website

[Sumayyah Tsabitah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brief introduction to maf... I just realized that maf training is beyond the training itself. Nutrition and stress management hold important key factor.

You can get the book for free in his website

[Phil Whittall · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the overall idea is excellent but there's not quite enough info in this in terms of grounding it in every day lives. It feels like a basic primer but the principles are super healthy and make a lot of sense.

[Pero Seusing · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book contains some good ideas, but Maffetone makes a lot of wild claims that aren’t really evidence-based. Also, despite him saying this approach is individualized, it’s actually quite generalized.

[Jassim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of the contents are repeated from his previous book The maffeton method and his blog.

[Rares Fabian · Rating 4 out of 5]

great at opening minds and beginning of a life changing journey.

[Geoffrey Youngblood · Rating 3 out of 5]

He only ever cites his own work. It would be nice for his ideas to be peer reviewed at some point to backup his bold claims.

[Dhivya · Rating 3 out of 5]

An advertisement rather than a book.

[Miro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short book with good lessons but he doesn't dive deep enough for anything to be substantial.

[João Maia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bem direto ao ponto mas de maneira mto breve sem se aprofundar.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Concise, but lacking in details.

[Gareth Snelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting and compelling read. Now to put it all into practice. Running this slow is not easy to get your head around

[YingYuan Chiu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Use 180-age to run
You will get faster and faster by that heart rate.

[Roberts Smitins · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the main reasons of the paradox that many runners are fit but unhealthy, is the fact that their aerobic base is relatively untrained.

It’s a huge simplification of the Maffetone Method, but the key principles look like this:

- Building your aerobic base via low heart rate training will enable you to run fast with a low heart rate.

- By making adjustments to your diet, you will be able to rely on your body fat (which is a more efficient energy source than carbohydrates) as a fuel during long-distance events.

- Running is a rather demanding activity. Thus, it’s very important to avoid burnout, injuries and overuse issues when running year after year. 

This book is more like an introduction to the Maffetone Method. In order to really understand how all this works, you will have to read one of the other books written by Philip Maffetone. 

I think this book is a great start to learning the basic principles of the Maffetone Method.

[Nick Short · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not enough here that I think is unique enough to warrant named ownership over the method described.

Heart rate monitoring for training is not exclusive to Dr Maffetone.

That said the content itself does not seem too controversial, but I gripe that main MAF method takes up like a page and the rest is on diet.

I like the recommendation to take a "MAF test" every month, where you track your running pace over 5 miles while not exceeding your MAF heart rate (180-age). Its suggested that many people will see their pace at this heart rate improve 5-10% or per month (up to a point).

It would be nice to have included some personal stories from people trying it out or pointers to empirical research validating these claims--and where it doesn't work, some exploration on the sources of variance.https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...#

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good info for endurance training, which is really Maffetone's thing.