The MAF 180 Formula:
Determining your MAF HR
1. Subtract your age from 180.
2. Modify this number by choosing one category below that best applies to you:
a. If you have or are recovering from a major illness (including any operation or hospital stay), are in rehabilitation, have been prescribed any regular medication, or are chronically overtrained, subtract an additional 10.
b. If you are injured, have regressed or not improved in training (such as poor MAF Tests) or competition, get more than two colds, flu or other infections per year, have seasonal allergies or asthma, are overfat, are acutely overtraining, or if you have been inconsistent, just beginning or returning to exercise, subtract an additional 5.
c. If you have been training consistently (at least four times weekly) for up to two years without any of the problems mentioned in a) or b), no modification is necessary (use 180 minus age as your MAF HR).
d. If you have been training for more than two years without any of the problems listed above, have made progress in your MAF Tests, and have improved competitively, add 5.
The resulting HR is the high end of the HR range with the low being 10 beats below
I selected category 'a', because I have been proscribed statins, and because my general physical fitness level is quite poor.
180 - 46 - 10 = 124
MAF range: 114 - 124
How does my previous conception of A1 and A2 fit into that?
My A1 target is about 113 - 121 bpm, and my A2 target is about 121 - 130 bpm, which corresponds to targets of about 65-70% HRmax and 70-75% HRmax using the standard 220-age formula.
When you’ve finished each workout, you should feel great — not tired or sore, and certainly not ready to collapse on the couch. Nor should you crave sugar or other carbohydrates: aerobic workouts program your body to burn stored fat, not sugar. Craving sugar during or after a workout may indicate it’s anaerobic.
That leads me to think that the upper range of my A2 target might be a bit high, not by much, a few points.
Decades ago I discovered that it is necessary to take a period of three to six months to exclusively develop the aerobic system. A heart rate monitor is an excellent tool to monitor aerobic development, when paired with the MAF 180 Formula---
Interestingly my instinct was to put the weight lifting on pause for a while before I read this.
The source of the MAF info is Maffetone's e-book The MAF Method(v1.0).pdf.
