Dr. Phil Maffetone Interview by Floris Gierman about Heart Rate Training, Nutrition and Recovery

Hello, my name is Floris Gierman, located here in Orange County, California, and today we have a very exciting video interview coming up with Dr. Phil Maffetone. He's an internationally recognized researcher, educator, and author in many different fields including nutrition, exercise, sport medicine, and biofeedback. For more than 35 years, he has worked with athletes around the world, both on a professional and amateur level, and he has written more than 20 different books, including one of my favorite ones over here. It's called The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing. Um, and then one of his latest books is called 1:59: The Sub-2-Hour Marathon Is Within Reach. Today we're going to discuss a variety of different subjects. Including heart rate monitor training, nutrition, and also recovery. Some of the basic fundamentals will be discussed here, but then we also quickly dive into more specific details. Without further ado, here's Dr. Phil Methadone.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Floris, is Floris the way to pronounce your name?

That's correct. That is the right name right there.

Good. And where's your, your name from? Is it a—

I'm from Holland. So I'm actually from Holland. Yeah.

Now you say Holland, I could, I could hear it.

Yeah. I'm from Amsterdam. I moved here about 10 years ago.

So great.

Yeah. And what about you? Where are you living at this point?

Uh, I am currently in Arizona. I spend half the year here and then half in the Catskill Mountains of New York. My, my kids and grandkids are all there.

Okay.

Kind of in the area, and so it's a good, good reason to go there and get away from the warmer weather here. I'm in the mountains here, so it's not that hot in the summer, but it's warm enough.

Yeah, nice, nice. I'll kind of dive right in over here. Like, I've been following your work for about 2 years now after hearing about your work on the Trail Runner Nation podcast for the first time with Don Freeman and Scott Waugh.

Oh yeah, fun. Just, that's always a fun one.

Yeah, it seems like you guys always have a blast on that one. And your podcast and articles and book have made a really big impact on many athletes, including myself. I'm sure you hear it all the time, but I want to start off with a big thank you for all your work that you put out there.

Well, thank you, and, you know, your discipline and dedication is impressive, to say the least. So, you know, keep up the good work.

Nice, nice. That's good. So I want to record this video today to share your knowledge with some of the people that are reading my blog and my website, but I also want to kind of explain to people the experiences that I have with your different approach about running, nutrition, and biofeedback. So there are 3 areas that I would like to jump into today. The first one is the heart rate monitor training to become a faster and healthier athlete. Then the processed carbs, refined sugar, and different healthy alternatives. And the importance of rest, recovery, and training your brain. Does that sound okay to you?

Sounds perfect.

Nice, nice. That's good. Well, let's jump right in. So your training approach is based on building an aerobic base first by using heart rate monitor and by running most of your runs at a relative low heart rate. And after you've experimented with athletes, you came up with the 180 formula to calculate an athlete's maximum aerobic heart rate. Can you explain what you noticed when athletes first started training this way and their improvements that they've made over a longer period of time?

Sure, the first thing I noticed is that in many cases, the training that they were doing and the training I was doing coming from track and field was not a healthy form of training. There were high injury rates, fatigue, many athletes would drift into overtraining, which can lead to depression and, you know, just, you know, one health problem after another. And essentially what was happening is that training at higher heart rates was creating initially fit athletes who were unhealthy and eventually unhealthy athletes who were falling apart. And I was in healthcare to help people. My goal was to improve health. And so I thought there has to be a better way. And what I noticed, I guess one of the first things I noticed is that the 220 formula, which has been around for decades, was not a very good way to evaluate or not a very good way to train because it resulted a higher heart rate.

Okay, like it would actually let you train like at a way higher heart rate?

Yeah, sometimes, you know, 10, 15, 20 beats higher I've seen, depending on how the individual figures out what their heart rate should be based on quite often nothing. And then I noticed that athletes who were running with a lower heart rate had a better gait. They looked better when they were running. And I got to the point where if I was out for a run and I saw some other runners, or if I was driving on the road and I saw runners, which unfortunately still today they run on the road with a lot of traffic, you could almost tell what their heart rate was. And I applied that idea to the track where I was starting to go every week with runners, and I would look at runners and I would, I would say, well, that That runner looks like, you know, she's running at a 1:45 pace. And suddenly, you know, I was accurate when I stopped or when I looked to see what their heart rates were. And so the first thing was gait, and I noticed the whole body mechanics, the biomechanical issue was a significant factor when a runner changed from being a lower heart rate aerobic to a higher heart rate anaerobic. And that's a significant finding. And when you look at the big picture, body mechanics, when they start to falter, it's a problem within a race, of course, and it's a problem in the course of the season as your body becomes more stressed from training and from health in some cases. Things start breaking down, and then the end result is that runners are slower at the same heart rate, which is just the opposite of what we want to do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so there are a lot of different training techniques out there, even regarding heart rate monitors. You just touched base on the 220 max heart rate formula. Then another way to calculate the heart rate to be running at, or at least your different zones, would be to go to a lab and actually do a lactate threshold test. But even there, some of the outcomes are pretty significantly different than with your 180 formula. The thing is, I did it for myself, for example. I went to the lab and actually the number 148 came out. And then I did your test and the exact 148 came out as well. So there it was very, like, exactly the same. But then, for example, one of my friends, Paul, he's 46 years old, he doesn't have any different conditions. So he, with the 180 formula, gets the number 134. But when he goes to the lab, he gets an aerobic heart rate zone from 136 to 154. So then, then my question would be, like, what Why would yours be so much lower than what you would do in a test, and why do you feel the 180 Formula makes more sense in that case?

Well, I spent a long time evaluating runners, mostly runners, back in the, in the '70s into the '80s. The running boom had exploded, and most of the people I saw who were athletic were runners, so I had a lot of runners and looking at gait and then evaluating health in various ways. What I did was calculate a heart rate based on my evaluation, and it really took 3, 4 years to realize that this lengthy evaluation, which sometimes could take 2 hours,— plus we would then go to the track and evaluate gait and look at the heart rates in relation to that gait. It took a while before I realized, gee, there's probably a simple formula that I can come up with that will give me the same or identical heart rate as I can determine in my clinic, and that became known as the 180 Formula because you first subtract age from 180. What's unique about it is that, number one, we don't rely rely on the max heart rate to obtain that formula. Instead, I relied on the health of the athlete. Those who were healthier ended up with a higher heart rate, and those who were not as healthy had lower heart rates. It relied on fitness levels. It relied on gait changes. But in the end, the 180 Formula didn't didn't, it always gave you a good gait, but the process of determining the 180 Formula didn't so much involve gait, but it, you know, it did not involve max heart rate, which has severe limitations in terms of accuracy. And I think most of the heart rate formulas out there rely on that max heart rate. What, for me, was most important was to look at the individual and come up with an individual number and base it on their level of health and their level of fitness. And that was very important.

And like with the 180 Formula, you also take into account that, for example, if you've had 2 colds or more per year, you have to adjust your aerobic pace, correct? Correct. Because, for example, I now have a 2-year-old daughter, and regardless of me trying to live as healthy as I can, I've noticed that I've sometimes gotten a little bit more sick. Just by her catching a cold and me being around her. As much as I try to avoid it, I still have sometimes gotten sick in that case. And there I do notice if I change my actual training zones from 148 to 143, that the body seems to be more in line. It seems that everything makes more sense.

Yeah, that's a good observation. You know, even though you're exposed to more viruses and bacteria and other potential infections, it's still the bottom line, it's still your immune system that is taking the brunt of it. And people who have, as minor as you might consider them, there are still significant factors from a health standpoint. And so if you put on top of that some running at a heart rate that's a little bit higher than your body would want, it's going to be an additional stress. And the problem with stress, physical stress, chemical, and mental emotional stress, is that it's cumulative. So if you have a stress here and a stress there, and then you go for a run, and it's supposed to be a low stress thing, and it's supposed to help counter stress, but if the heart rate's too high, you're now adding another stressful event in your day, which is not a healthy thing to do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Then one other question, kind of in the 180 formula area as well. For example, when people are a little bit older, I read about this quite often. So for example, if there's people who are 50 or 60 years old, like let's say my parents, they're 60 years old, and they run not that regular, or they don't have a base of 2 years consistent training, would they really have to be training at like, let's say, 180 minus 60 minus 5? So like, then they're at a heart rate of almost 115. For them, it's often basically walking with part of it jogging. Is that correct? Do you see improvements happening over time even at such a low heart rate?

Sure, you do see improvements. And you know what, what people don't understand is that most of the studies that show exercise is healthy are done on people who are walking. So just, you know, going out for 20 to 30 minutes, 3 or 4 days a week, which doesn't sound like much to, you know, those of us who are working out a lot, tremendous benefits can be gained from that. Now, they're not gonna be able to run a marathon, in under 3 hours, but that, that would not be their goal. So the person who says, well, I want to run a 10K or 5K and build up my aerobic system, that relatively low heart rate becomes a starting point because that's the level of their aerobic fitness. And unless they start at that level where their body can handle the workout, then building their aerobic system will never take place. The problem with a lot of runners, especially those who come into the sport later, 30, 40, 50 years of age, but really even a young person, they'll start to progress, they'll start developing their body, and then they'll kind of jump, they'll skip ahead. It's like going to school, you know, first grade, second grade, third grade, and then you say, you know, this This is— I'm gonna jump into high school because I don't like these. It doesn't work because your brain and your body don't develop efficiently, and your aerobic system is in a deficit that you never recover from. So, plus, you know, when you start hitting 30 and 40 years of age, your body makes some changes. One of them is most evident one is that we become more insulin resistant. And so we start relying more on fat as an energy, or at least we should, but if we're not able to produce that energy from fat, then we stay in that slow category, and that's, that's a reflection of the dietary component of the Aerobic System.

Yeah, yeah, that's a really good point. And just to go back at what you were just saying, that a lot of people train at too high of a heart rate for what they should be training at. I experienced the same thing myself when I was training for my first marathon a few years back. I was often training at a heart rate that was, that was pretty much up there, even though I didn't run with a heart rate monitor. I could notice the signals in my body were indicating that when I was done with a run, I was very low on energy. I would feel very tired, very hungry. In the afternoons, I would have that energy dip and everything. So when I first heard about your training method, it was pretty controversial to some of the things that were out there, but I decided to give it a thought, to give it a try. One of the tests that you describe to measure your progress is the math test. You actually warm up for 15 minutes and then on a track you run for 5 minutes— sorry, for 5 miles, and you calculate once you run at your maximum aerobic heart rate what your pace is. And so I did this about 18 months ago, and at that point my average math pace was 8 minutes and 21 seconds per mile. And then as I only started running aerobically, I was able to drop that pace in, in one month's time by 38 seconds. So the next month I ran the same Maff test at 7 minutes and 43 seconds. And over time, it was a combination of things. It definitely also increased mileage helps, improving my nutrition, but also to stay training within the correct zones. I was able to shave off time almost every month. Sometimes after a race I noticed the progress kind of stopped or even went backwards a little bit because your body had more stress. But it was crazy to see, and now, like last week I did an aerobic test at a heart rate of 148, I was able to hit 6 minutes 31 seconds per mile.

Wow, that's great. Definitely makes a difference. Yeah, and you know, you're very observant, and that's a problem that many runners have is they are unaware of their body, and For too many athletes, it's all about the workout and there's a big social component and they don't realize that their body's hurting and maybe they do but they won't admit it. So, you know, being aware of your body and that's why I don't like to see athletes listening to music or podcasts while they work out. There's plenty of time to do that In the car, at home, instead of turning on the television and listening to the news and getting all that stress, listen to a podcast at home. So, you know, listen to your body and you've done that really well and it's a very important thing.

Yeah, for sure. And then some of your athletes, they have won races without doing any interval training or speed work. They trained only aerobically. To run fast, like in a half marathon or a marathon or a 50-miler even, how important is the role of interval and speed work, and why do so many people feel the need of doing this interval and speed work?

Well, we have a no pain, no gain society, and everyone thinks more is better and speed is important. You know what happened in the '70s, '60s and '70s when the running boom hit, there were very few coaches. And the need for coaches evolved from track and field. A lot of coaches came over from track and field and started coaching marathoners and 5 and 10K runners, but marathoners and eventually ultra marathoners. And with that, they brought their their approach to training, which was intervals. And so, how big of a role does it play? It plays a minor role. When you look at a marathon, or most endurance sports, the vast majority, in the marathon it's 98%, the vast majority of your energy comes from the aerobic system. And so, if 98% of your effort is gonna be generated by the aerobic system, why would you want to spend so much time doing anaerobic training when it's gonna play a relatively minor role? And yeah, I've seen, I've seen, I've seen so many athletes in all, all the endurance sports from 5K on up to the ultramarathon, the double Ironman, and you know, all these longer events. I've seen many, many who have only trained aerobically, did no speed work whatsoever, and would perform their best. In the early '80s, I did a study where I had 223 runners that spent 3 to 6 months building an aerobic base, no weightlifting, no anaerobic training whatsoever, and then at the end of their base period, they would run a flat 5K. And 76% ran a personal best. These are experienced runners, so that's pretty significant.

So they already had the base going into it, or like, not the aerobic base, but they already had a high volume of miles, or at least—

Well, they had been training, yeah, but many of them hadn't run a PR in years. And you just ask around at a race, you know, how— the thing is, in many races, like in the ultra scene, it's hard to relate to a personal best But in a 10K or marathon, start asking people, you know, when was the last time you ran a personal best? And you'll, you know, in the new runners, they'll have personal bests more often, of course, but in an experienced runner, many of them will say, well, it's been years since I had a 10K or 5K or marathon personal best. And that's unfortunate because the aerobic system really doesn't peak until we're in our 40s. And then it doesn't just drop off. We come to this peak and it can stay pretty high. And there's some great, as we all know, there's some great 45, 50, 55, 60-year-old endurance athletes out there who are beating a lot of 20-year-olds.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's, that's interesting. That's good. And a question about training volume that I want to dive into. Let's say someone is training for a race. Marathon or an ultra or even a half marathon, and they want to peak at about 60-70 miles a week. With your approach, it would be mostly aerobic miles. Like, is there anything that you can say about how you would divide those 60 to 70 miles? I understand that you don't recommend going much over 2 hours, that you don't see much of an added benefits versus like the risk that you're going to be having. Can you explain a little bit, would you say like you would run 6 or 7 days a week, or would you say combine long runs with short runs, or maybe even 2 runs a day?

What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, it's very individual. It depends on the person, and it really makes a difference if we're talking about a professional runner who does not have to go to work. 5 days a week. It depends on the person and their lifestyle. If they have a family, if they have a house they have to take care of, there's other social obligations. And these things all are, really should be looked at as part of your schedule because they're part of your life and they influence your training because they potentially create stress, whether it's good stress or bad stress, usually a combination. So It depends on the individual, but you're right, I'm not keen on going much above 2 hours, 2.5 hours maybe. And if people need to better understand what it's going to be like for, say, a 50-mile event or something that's going to be longer than 2 or 2.5 hours, they can add a half an hour of walking as a warm-up and then a half an hour of walking as a cool-down. And now they're, you know, they're up to 3 or 3.5 hours, and that should give them a much better sense of the time factor because controlling time is just as important a factor in the longer races especially. But I like to use time instead of miles because the brain relates to time better. And most people can run in a race, can perform about 3 times what they normally would perform in training. So if you're 2 hours or 2.5 hours, you're 6, 7 hours in a race should not be a problem physiologically and mentally either. So that's a— I think changing to time in your log rather than miles is a very important thing to do.

Okay, that's good. So even for an ultra, even for a 50-miler, you wouldn't do any longer runs than 2.5 hours like that? Like, do you think that the walking for 30 minutes before and afterwards would would get you in a good enough preparation?

I think, yeah, I think for the average person, yes. There have been situations, for example, I worked with Stu Middleman for many years. Stu had many American and world records in various ultramarathon distances, and many of his races were on the track. So it was not unusual for Stu to, say, do a 6-day race where the whole race took place on a 400-meter track, and in some cases, a 200-meter track. The World Championships, I don't know if they're still in La Rochelle, France, but the World Championships, which was an amazing event, I've been to it a couple of times, and It's full of spectators and of course the best runners in the world, but it's on a 200-meter indoor track. And if you're not used to running on a track that long, it could really get to you. So what Stu did was I recommended he spend more time on the track running in one direction for a while and then reversing it and running another direction. Getting used to being on the track, and sometimes those workouts would be 2, 3, 4 hours or longer. And he would always begin with a long walk, and the walk would speed up, and then he would start jogging slow, and then he would start running faster. And then at the end, the reverse would take place. So in that situation, that's an exception to the rule. I would say, one could benefit by doing longer workouts on the track like that. If you're not used to running trails and you're going to be doing a trail run, you better get out there on the trail and spend some time on the trail to see how your body works.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then moving on to the nutritional side of things, because you've really opened my eyes and the eyes of many athletes around the world with your views about nutrition. And one thing that stood out to me the most was the dangers of processed carbs and refined sugars for your short-term and long-term health. Many people eat a significant amount of processed carbs and refined sugars. Some of them even don't know that they are processed carbs. Can you explain why processed carbs and refined sugars are so bad for you and what health benefits you can experience from avoiding these things?

Boy, that's a, that's a huge topic. Um, you know, the, the trend in, in, um, having pasta before, you know, your pre-race dinner the night before and having, um, uh, sweet cereal in the morning, most of that came from, uh, the companies that make those products. It was, you know, here's some sugar, sugar equals energy, and there's nothing recent about those advertisements. They began in the, really in the '50s, where people were told that sugar and white flour are very healthy, and it's where our energy comes from, and hardly anybody talked about fat. Even though the first book I saw on fat and fat burning was called Eat Fat to Get Slim, and it was a bestseller in 1958, I think. But when I became interested in nutrition, which was in the '60s, it was clear from a scientific standpoint that the refined flour and sugar, which were very, very popular, was unhealthy. People didn't act well when they ate it. The studies were showing that it could be a problem. So for a runner today, the dietary component, in particular refined carbohydrates, is as important, if not more important, than building the aerobic system. And one of the reasons for it— there are many reasons for it, but one of the big ones is that when people consume refined carbohydrates, we make insulin, and what insulin does is it lowers fat burning and it increases sugar burning. So we end up relying more on sugar, which is a very limited fuel, and we reduce fat burning, which is our long-term energy. And the other thing that happens, and we've been noticing this for the last 10 or 15 years, for the first time, many athletes in all sports are becoming overfat. Okay, so the sugar burning is high, the fat burning is low, they're not burning enough fat, and therefore the fat stays stored in the body and it actually builds up, and that's a serious problem number one for the sport because your endurance is going to be diminished, and number two, it's a serious health problem. They've associated too much carbohydrate consumption with everything from heart disease and cancer to Alzheimer's and cataracts and hair loss and, you know, lots, lots of things— diabetes, of course. So there are health issues, and then the, the lack of aerobic development is going to impair performance.

It is, it is so crazy to me though when hearing what you're just saying and at the same time hearing mixed messages coming from the media and from even from some doctors who would recommend that food is part of a healthy diet.

Well, you know, it was not that long ago, and I have some ads on my website, that doctors were recommending that we smoke cigarettes. And that continued for a long time. And so the media, yeah, you have to ask who controls the media. Well, that's an easy answer. It's the advertisers that control the media. And I've had this happen many, many times where at a running magazine editorial meeting, Somebody will say, well, I have an article I want to talk about, you know, burning fat and how sugar can impair that process. And then, you know, the top editors will say, well, we can't run that because we have 3 companies that are advertising regularly in the magazine and they won't allow that. So you have to look at who's controlling the media and It's a big problem because people follow the media, people follow running magazines, and I used to say to runners, partly as a funny comment, but as a serious comment because I saw it in practice, invariably during a lecture in front of runners, somebody would ask, you know, why are there so many running, why are there so many knee problems in runners? And I would say it's from reading Runner's World magazine. And, you know, years earlier I had 3 runners in a row who had knee problems and they all had the same story, similar story. They were following a program in one of the running magazines and that's when they first hurt their knee. We have to be individuals. We have to use our brain to think about, you know, what is every run doing to us? Is it beneficial? Is it hurting us? Are we individualizing our program? Or if we have a coach, the coach should be helping us individualize the program. And if that's being done, then you're gonna have success. And the idea of one size fits all, one diet fits all, one running program fits all, is— it's very unhealthy.

So what are some alternative things that people would eat that are very healthy and beneficial?

Real food. You know, when I was, when I had my clinic, I would give the runner a report. I had looked at their diet, I had done a diet analysis to see the levels of nutrients. And I'd say, you know, 3 of your vitamins are below minimum levels, and 8 of your minerals are below minimum levels. And so I don't want you to eat any pasta or bread or potatoes or cakes or muffins or cookies. And they would stop me in the middle of this list and say, that's all I eat. And I would say, well, that's why you're here. So, you know, people need to look at People don't know what real food is. Quite often we're so confused, we've been brainwashed by the media for so many years that people don't know the difference between junk food and healthy food. And those are the two cuisines that we have around the world. There's junk food and there's healthy food. And junk food includes processed packaged things that are somehow interfered with. White flour, for example, they'll take a wheat kernel, which many people have never seen, and they'll process it, they'll get rid of the bran, they'll get rid of the nutrients, they'll get rid of the healthy oils, and then they'll put synthetic vitamins into it and they'll call it healthy. And that is really the foundation of the diets of most athletes. And then of course there's the sugar issue. Sugar is found in so many packaged foods that many people say, "Well, I don't ever eat sugar. I have my coffee without sugar, and I don't eat desserts." Yet they're eating a lot of packaged foods that if you read the label, you'll find sugar high up on the list, meaning there's a lot more of it in there. So being aware of real food and separating it from the junk food is a real important place to start for people.

Yeah, that's a really good point for sure. Then I wanted to move on to the last subject that I want to discuss, and that is rest, recovery, and training your brain. The other day I went for a run. And after 5 miles into the run, I just realized that I had run for 5 miles, and it was as if the 5 miles just didn't happen. I was on the other side of the lake, and I was like, wow, that's really crazy. So my brain had switched really early on from the beta waves to the alpha waves very quickly, and I was able to maintain that for a very long time. Time and I analyzed my heart rate afterwards and it looked like my heart rate was about 5 beats lower than normally at the pace with more consciousness. I'm not sure if that was something that was just for that one time or if that's usually the case, but can you explain why sometimes when you run you can't remember several parts of your run while other times this doesn't happen and what can be done to make your body and brain work better together?

Yeah, that's a good question. I've been encouraging athletes to use their brain from the beginning because this is where it all begins. The brain says, okay, let's move the leg forward and move the arms. The brain dictates all movement and quality of movement, quantity of movement. The brain is continuously getting information from the body about how much energy exists, how much wear and tear do we have, how well are the muscles working. All this information from moment to moment is being fed into the brain, and the brain then is analyzing that like a supercomputer, and it's able to respond to that information. So if the fat burning starts to diminish, it may make some adjustments in pace. If the blood sugar is starting to lower a little bit, it may convert some of the stored glycogen to glucose to raise that blood sugar a little bit, because we need to maintain a good stable blood sugar during training and racing. So having a healthy brain is a big, big part of it, and the diet influences the brain considerably, and because the brain is about 60 or more percent fat, all the fats we eat potentially get into the brain, and the good fats make the brain function better. For example, EPA and DHA, two very important fats in fish or fish oil, they help the brain function well, but trans fats hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated fats, or the vegetable oil, the omega-6 fats, they can be unhealthy for the brain because they can create chemical imbalances, and that's a big problem for the brain. So the diet's a very important part. States of consciousness are very important, and you mentioned that you went 5 miles, you didn't realize it. And it's not unusual for people in sports to get lost in their world, running in particular, because we tend to go out and run for longer periods of time than other sports.

And I think you've done some of the things, right? I think you got lost one time on your bike while you were out there. You were like way far.

I got lost more than once on my bike, which is why I got rid of my road bike, because I would go out for a 2-hour ride and after 3 hours I would Where am I now? Even though I lived in the area, there's so many roads and you just— that's going into an alpha state. And many runners, for many years, we've heard about the runner's high. And I think what it is in part is that we develop a certain state of consciousness when we're out there. And we can do it when we're at home, we can do it You know, when we're at work, if we want to take a 5-minute break, we can just close our eyes and go into this runner's high, if you want to call it that. But all sports have the same things. And it has to do with the state of consciousness where your brain is making alpha waves, which is like a meditative state. It also has to do with the receptors in the brain, the brain chemistry. There are opioid-type, there are receptors in the brain that are similar to cannabis chemicals, so the chemicals in marijuana. And those receptors get triggered off and we have this wonderful feeling of, you know, being high, that runner's high. And if you get it on a bike, then fine, and if you get it, you know, when you're on a long hike, it's a wonderful, wonderful place to be. But if you're running with a group of people or just one person and you're just talking and talking and talking, you're probably not going to notice that. If you're listening to a podcast or listening to music, you're probably not going to get that runner's high. You might get into the music and that'll help maybe get that runner's high. But again, I like people to focus on their brain, which is focusing on the body. So, you know, what is your body doing? How is your muscle functioning? How are your feet feeling? Are the shoes fitting just right? How is your hydration? Do you really need water? Or are you just drinking it because you think maybe you need water? Do you need extra energy? Or is your fat burning really doing fine? This is a very, very important part of training, and using the brain for it is really the way to go.

And then you mentioned earlier the 5-minute break. Can you say a little bit more about that?

Yeah. The alpha waves that we've been talking about, you know, this really great meditative state, which is a good way to describe it, is a very healthy state. One of the things it does is it reduces high stress hormones. So when we're at work, we tend to have a lot of stress. And if we can reduce those stress hormones, it would be really terrific. What alpha waves do also is they can correct muscle imbalance. And injury rates unfortunately are extremely high, 60% some studies show, even higher in some of the anaerobic CrossFit type activities, 74% I think in one study. The problem with injuries is that they're always preceded, almost always preceded by some muscle imbalance. So runners, they go out for a run, they may have some wear and tear and there may be some muscle imbalance and the process of recovery should correct that. But if you can sit down or lie down close your eyes and go into this alpha state for 5 minutes, you can have a little mini therapy session for your brain and body by going into alpha. You can reduce stress, correct muscle imbalance, balance blood sugar, improve fat burning, do a lot of very, very healthy things for both fitness and health.

And the good thing is that you can do it everywhere.

And it can be done in 5 minutes. People can go to my website, it's called the 5-Minute Power Break, and you just, you just You know, people who know how to do it know what I'm talking about, but a lot of people are just so caught up with stressful things that they never go into an alpha state, and it's a really sad thing because it can really help your sport.

I can see that, sure. And then rest and sleep is a very important part of your training, yet so many athletes don't sleep enough and don't rest enough. I've read somewhere on an article online, and I tried to find it, I couldn't find it anymore at this point, but that recovery happens for a big part at the third and fourth sleep cycle of 90 minutes. Why is rest and sleep so important, and how many hours of sleep should an athlete get at a minimum for optimal performance?

Well, we usually talk about healthy sleep being 7 to 9 hours of uninterrupted solid sleep. For someone who's running 50, 60 miles a week, 7 hours probably isn't going to do it. And for an athlete, a triathlete for example, who may be working out 25 hours a week, you're going to be closer to 9 hours to get that recovery. The recovery process is really where it's at. We get more of our benefits in training from recovery than from the actual training. So if we don't recover, then we're developing imbalances that are not going to allow our body to naturally progress. Humans should naturally get faster over time, and if we don't, then something is blocking that. It's like, you know, people starting a program with heart rate training and they're using the 180 Formula and they have to run slow and a month later they're still running at the same slow pace and they, they say, "Well, this doesn't work." Well, it doesn't work when you have things blocking your natural progress. So if you're eating too much sugar or if your stress levels are too high or if you're not sleeping enough and recovering enough, then of course you're not going to make progress. So sleeping is is a very, very important thing. And interestingly enough, one of the things that wakes people up in the middle of the night, other than 2-year-old kids, is stress hormones. Quite often, if your stress levels are too high, what happens in the middle of the night is your stress hormone starts to elevate and it wakes you up. And a lot of people are tired during the day and they wake up at 2 AM and they have all this energy and they wonder why don't they have this energy during the day. Well, that's what stress hormone does to you. And that's an indication that there's some very serious problems. And so the 5-minute power break, eating right, training in a balanced way, those will all lower stress hormones and just help you be a healthier, more fit athlete.

Yeah, that's a really good point right there. Then we're almost finishing up, like I got 2 more questions left over here. I'm just curious to hear, like you've talked about the different healthy ways of living and the importance of sleep and training right and eating right. What does your morning routine look like? Do you do any meditation? Do you do the 5-minute power break? What do you eat for breakfast?

You know, I get so many questions about— here's one I got the other day: how often do you cheat? And they're talking about food. I don't cheat. I practice what I preach. And then some people call me a fanatic for doing that, but I want to be healthy. I want to see— I've got 12 grandchildren. I want to see my great-grandchildren graduating from college, and I want to see their children graduating from college. And we control a lot of that, as much as genetics. We actually control a lot of the genetics with the foods that we eat. So I grow most of my own food. And the animals, the meats and things are either raised here on the little farm or they're from a nearby farm that we barter with. And so I'm very strict and I've spent my entire adult life trying to figure out the best way to be healthier And it seems like every year I make some adjustments because I'm finding I can't eat as much of that, I need to eat more of this, and so forth. And so what I'm eating today may not be what I'm going to be eating a year from now. But I, you know, I've learned to reduce my caloric intake significantly. And I've done that by increasing my fat-burning capability. And so today I eat about 300 calories in the morning with my coffee. I have some heavy cream from the cow with coconut oil and an egg yolk, and I blend that up in the coffee. And that's, that's really technically my breakfast. So I have, like this morning, I had that about 6 o'clock. And then about 9:30, just before our broadcast here, I had 3 eggs and vegetables, and that was my first real meal in terms of solid food. And my day will go like that, and I'll have— I'm probably having 5 meals a day now. I used to have 6. And everything is healthy and my workouts vary with where I am, what I'm doing, the weather, and I could run, swim. We've gotten rid of the pool now, so there's no more swimming until next summer, this summer, but swim or run, bike, hike, and occasionally I do some weight training if I'm not working on the farm, lifting heavy rocks and cutting wood and that kind of stuff.

Yeah, right on. Perfect. Well, last question. This book here made the biggest impact in my life. Like, I'm very serious about that. It's called The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing, and it goes in detail about like we just touched the surface of what is all described in this book. Where can people find more about you and where can people buy your books?

Well, they should be able to buy the book anywhere. Amazon has it, of course, and I know Barnes Noble has it in their distribution for people who still use bookstores. And people can go to my website. There are literally hundreds of articles— some of which have not appeared in books— that they can read on the website. I'll give you a scoop. I'm, for the first time, announcing that there will be a follow-up— not a follow-up, but an addendum to the big book of endurance training and racing called Endurance. I think that's the title. It may be called Endurance Addendum. And it's all the things I've been writing about and then a lot of the new things that I've written for that book since the big book came out. And I believe— I haven't been given a date yet, but I'm thinking that's going to be coming out in the mid to late spring sometime.

Perfect. And is there a specific color for that book?

Because this is the big yellow book.

That's the yellow book. Health and Business, that was the big red book.

The red book. I don't know. The publisher is Skyhorse, the same publisher. I'm waiting to hear, I should receive the manuscript back from the editor any day now, and then I probably will be given some cover ideas. They don't usually listen to me, but I suspect it'll be a yellow cover, it'll be a smaller book. The big book is maybe too big. I've really not gotten any bad comments about the big book other than it's too big. And I have to say, yes.

That was the other one.

That was the latest one. 159 is the latest one, a more typical book. You know, the big book of endurance training and racing was as big, and likewise for health and fitness, because I spent a lot of time explaining things like how did I develop the 180 Formula. How did I come up with the 2-week test? And a lot of stories that I don't usually tell because I don't know, I don't think people are really interested in them, but apparently they are. And so there's a lot of stories about why this and why that and scientific, more scientific explanations and also different ways of explaining things which really can be helpful for many people. So It's been an interesting road to do the books. I think I've done over 20 books now. And maybe that's enough, I don't know. But I keep writing articles on a regular basis. Please do. The articles appear on my website because it's a lot easier for me to not have to deal with an editor in a magazine and have articles go back and forth. And what do you mean by this word? So I'd rather do it unedited.. And my writing has gotten better, but I'm not a great writer. But I like to put the information down and say, here's how you do this, and here's how you can figure out the best way to do that. So I do write for some of the online publications. Ironman Online has some of my articles on a regular basis, and the Natural Running Center, and some other online. But I do a lot of my own writing and they go on my own website, philmaffetone.com.

Perfect. That's great. And I will link to some of these articles that you've referred to as well in the show notes. Great. Perfect. Well, thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, Floris.

It's been fun. Definitely. And hopefully further down the line at some point we can connect again.

Sure. Anytime. These are fun venues to do. It's a great way to educate people because they're looking for good information out there.

Yes, perfect.

Okay, well, you have a great rest of your day.

Thank you, you too.

Alright, thank you.

Bye-bye now.