CHAPTER 3

DEVELOPING MAXIMUM AEROBIC FUNCTION—

How to Get “Heart Smart” When Building Your Endurance Foundation

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The first step in building great endurance is to fully develop the aerobic system, which provides many fitness and health benefits. These include improvements in performance, reductions in body fat, balanced muscles and supported joints, injury correction and prevention, improved immunity, and many others. A fully developed system allows more aerobic speed, which will translate into running, biking, swimming, and going faster in any endurance event.

 

 

This occurs even before training the anaerobic system, where additional speed and power may be obtained. A strong aerobic system also improves overall health, and these improvements in maximum aerobic function—MAF—should continue for years.

Over the years, a number of athletes have asked me, “Does MAF also stand for Maffetone, since they are the same first three letters of your last name?” Well, the truth is that this is a matter of pure coincidence. Very early in my career I used another term, “maximum aerobic pace”—MAP—to describe how runners run a faster pace with the same or lower heart rate as aerobic function progresses. But as I began seeing more athletes in the cycling, swimming, and multisport community, the term “pace” was not applicable. In addition, the term MAP is used in exercise physiology—it refers to maximal aerobic power, another name for maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max). The term “function” better describes what is really happening—building more endurance through better aerobic function.