MAF training requires managing life stress first, then building a solid aerobic base through consistent running, mobility, sleep, and nutrition. The key metric is running faster at the same heart rate. The speaker dropped his pace to 4:30 min/km while staying relaxed by obsessively optimizing his lifestyle.
Chapters
Look at your stress in your life. That would be the first and most important aspect. Trust the plan. It's— sometimes it can be difficult, you know, when you feel like you're not seeing progress or things like that. But just know that every time you're doing something like this, you're pushing your body to be more optimal. And it's helping to iron out the creases that that maybe in your previous lifestyle might have been affecting your performance. And give yourself enough time to be within building that base. The base is, you know, I don't care, all the best athletes, all the best sports teams, if you look back, it's always about the fundamentals. It's the common theme. If you look back, the team with the most solid fundamentals tend to be the teams that perform best. When it comes to under pressure or, or whatever. So always look at them foundations, and the best way to build your foundations is do base training. Um, if you're going to plan for races, I like to think of more, more than 2 or 3 races a year. Um, also make sure that you are incorporating movement work, so move work, um, or mobility training, just different types of movement patterns, trying to move your body in as many different directions as is designed because that's what we're naturally designed to do. We aren't designed to do one thing only. And seek advice. You know, like, don't feel like you've got to do it yourself. I guess failing is the best thing, and for me has been the most valuable lessons in my life. You know, every time I've failed at something, it's— I don't even say failing, it's just been a learning experience. It's not what to do or what not to do for next time. There is no better feeling when you're running and you can see you're getting faster but your heart rate's staying the same. The energy was improving. I was actually looking forward to running, um, you know, it was like, oh, can I go a little bit longer? You know, yes, I was running at a set plan, but I was like, oh, maybe I can do an extra 10-15 minutes. It was just like, it was very enjoyable, um, and I just felt stronger. That was, that was the thing. And I just, from the whole aerobic standpoint, I just wish that I had known about this years ago, to be honest. But yeah, it was a very quick turnaround for me. But that was, I think that was due to me being kind of obsessed with lifestyle. I'm a huge fan of looking at trying to optimize myself. And I feel like the sleep aspect was good, my food was good, the amount of stress I had in my life was good. So I was able to adapt very quickly. And then just before My last race, I was able to drop down to a 4:30 minute K, which is a 7:15 mile. I was still within my math, which was crazy to think because when I first started running, I never thought I would be able to run a 4:30 and be quite relaxed. But yeah, I was able to do that and as we talked about, I actually had to slow down again and I had no problem this time. I understood the benefits behind it. Yeah, just to slow down even more so, just so I could get back to feeling more refreshed after running.
