I posted this in another thread but it was a bit lost (or possibly ignored…if that is the case I will only cry about it briefly :-)).
I want to throw another question into the mix…
I’m 33 yr old female diagnosed with adrenal fatigue. That got me reading more on MAF and his book pretty much describes the overtraining/adrenal issues I have to a T. So in figuring out my road to recovery, I started trying to figure out what HR would be best to stay under for a while.
My max is over 200 so I assumed MAF may be a bit low (147). The top of my zone 2 (based on blood lactate testing with a 5 zone scale…but tested a few years ago) is 164. To add one more # to the mix, I had my metabolic efficiency point (MEP) tested last week (point where you switch from burning more fat to more carbs) and it was a shockingly low 130 - but I suppose maybe that isn’t so shocking given my current state.
From what I’ve read, the idea of MEP is that it can move and training below it is with the hopes that it will increase. MAF doesn’t make much of an allowance for it ever moving, just that your pace at that heart rate will increase. This is where I’m having a bit of a hard time reconciling though because as far as I know, MAF’s 180-age, or your aerobic max, is theoretically supposed to be where you are burning more fat than carbs, right?
Does anyone have any experience with getting their MEP tested and how does that reconcile with MAF?
Also 130 pretty much limits me to walking and riding my trainer indoors. Sadly I can’t really even ride outside because my HR goes way above 130 on the hills near me (…and they aren’t exactly mountains). I’m swimming a bit knowing overall my HR is much lower doing that but am also taking a bit of an ignorance is bliss take there as my hrm doesn’t work in the pool.
I posted this in another thread but it was a bit lost (or possibly ignored…if that is the case I will only cry about it briefly :-)).
I want to throw another question into the mix…
I’m 33 yr old female diagnosed with adrenal fatigue. That got me reading more on MAF and his book pretty much describes the overtraining/adrenal issues I have to a T. So in figuring out my road to recovery, I started trying to figure out what HR would be best to stay under for a while.
My max is over 200 so I assumed MAF may be a bit low (147). The top of my zone 2 (based on blood lactate testing with a 5 zone scale…but tested a few years ago) is 164. To add one more # to the mix, I had my metabolic efficiency point (MEP) tested last week (point where you switch from burning more fat to more carbs) and it was a shockingly low 130 - but I suppose maybe that isn’t so shocking given my current state.
From what I’ve read, the idea of MEP is that it can move and training below it is with the hopes that it will increase. MAF doesn’t make much of an allowance for it ever moving, just that your pace at that heart rate will increase. This is where I’m having a bit of a hard time reconciling though because as far as I know, MAF’s 180-age, or your aerobic max, is theoretically supposed to be where you are burning more fat than carbs, right?
Does anyone have any experience with getting their MEP tested and how does that reconcile with MAF?
Also 130 pretty much limits me to walking and riding my trainer indoors. Sadly I can’t really even ride outside because my HR goes way above 130 on the hills near me (…and they aren’t exactly mountains). I’m swimming a bit knowing overall my HR is much lower doing that but am also taking a bit of an ignorance is bliss take there as my hrm doesn’t work in the pool.
Cross over points are worthwhile from a nutrient oxidation standpoint, but not necessarily understanding the aerobic / anaerobic components of exercise.
Why don’t you have another lactate completed?
Else, err on the side of caution if you truly want to get better. This is a long process and you need to re-think your training moving forward.
Rethinking is what I’m trying to do right now - just having conflicting info on it all 
If I were to re-do the blood lactate testing and get new zones established - are you saying the new zone 1/2 would be considered “safe”?
I would double or even triple the amount of rest days that you were doing to try to get over the adrenal fatigue. And everybody seems to think they’re an exception to MAF 180 - age numbers… but once you get really fit, they line up right on the dot.
Just do less for a few months. A lot less. Future you will thank you for it.
I’ve been lying very very low for the past two months (3 weeks off completely and now mostly walking with the occasional very very slow 15-20 mile ride or :45-:60 min swim)- feeling a bit better (still fat) but trying to monitor and be smart about any training I do - hence the testing, reading Maffetone’s book, etc. I guess my main question is am I doing myself harm by doing 180-age since I now know my “crossover” point is much lower than that? Compared to the 125-130 my testing showed, 147 sounds great
You paid for metabolic testing, yet you don’t know your LTHR?
For starters, fully recover from over training, and then go from there. That maffetone formula is a populatuon average and has nothing to do with your specific situation.
Look at your old data. If you have done an all out 10k, take the last 30 min, that’s your running LTHR. Ditto for cycling and swimming. If you havent done anything similaar, you ought to determine LThR for each sport and go from there.
Metabolic RER ratios mean nothing, and fat burning zones completely misses the point of training and is an ineffective way to train, at best. Also, as others have mentioned, this ratio also changes as your cells adapt to training.
On Maffetone’s website, he claims that 180-formula allows you to know if you are building an aerobic engine. This is completely loaded with crap as exercises up to VO2max is by definition aerobic in nature, and you are improving different facets of your aerobic system. Zone 2 provides you with certain types of adaptations, but you are missing out on whole range of other adaptations by not going the full spectrum. Substrate utilization, at the end of the day, is but one out of many important facets of aerobic training.
I’m not very good with analogies, but it seems training by substrate utilization is like driving a hybrid car by caring only how fully the battery is charged
Rethinking is what I’m trying to do right now - just having conflicting info on it all
If I were to re-do the blood lactate testing and get new zones established - are you saying the new zone 1/2 would be considered “safe”?
I’d have to see results to give an opinion, but everyone’s definition of zones is slightly different.
Additionally, this is really a case were glucose can lend insight as well. I, personally, would be leery of making a decision with lactate data alone.
You do want to limit sympathetic activation, which comes with limiting anaerobic work, which does lead you to “base” training which tends to be “zone 2” and below.
Ultimately, helping you out of this is more than just training zones. If you were in our lab, we’d be talking about supplementation, recovery products, nutrition, workout intensity, duration, life stress etc etc.
I follow you on all of that - I have a few doctors that are working on the supplement and medicine (synthroid) side but none of them are too interested in the training side so I’m left reading everything I can to try to come up with the best plans on that side.
And yes you said it well on limiting sympathetic activation - I guess I’m just now trying to figure what that is for me. And it is hard to really know without some sort of hormone testing on a very regular basis which isn’t realistic. I’m monitoring resting heart rate and generally how I feel, but I’ve also learned we aren’t great at going by how we feel or listening to our bodies as endurance athletes. We are almost programmed to assume if we don’t feel like shit we aren’t working hard enough.
The other somewhat ironic thing - or perhaps a blessing, is that my life in general has probably never been better - I sleep 8+ hours a night and have a job that is great that rarely requires more than 40 hrs a week so it seems to mostly all come back down to overdoing it training vs overdoing life - blessing that life isn’t bad, but a bit troubling that I don’t have any other obvious stressors to eliminate.
Thanks for the info - I’m finding this all very interesting, yet confusing…I just don’t like that I’m the brunt of my learning!