Running at 55 years old

by Hanafi faizal zein
(Bogor,Indonesia)

Is MAF training can improve my run experience as i'm 55 years old ?

Nicole's reply:
Hi Hanafi, thank you for your question.
To reassure you, MAF training is for nearly all ages and at 55 years old, yes you can do MAF training!
If you were unde the age og 16 or over the age of 65, then perhaps you would need to adjust the formula.

The paragraph below was taken from The MAF 180 Formula

Exemptions:
The MAF 180 Formula may need to be further individualized for athletes over the age of 65. For some, up to 10 beats may have to be added for those only in category (d) of the Formula. This does not mean 10 should automatically be added, but that an honest self-assessment be made.
For athletes 16 years of age and under, the formula is not applicable; rather, an MAF HR of 165 has been used.

Comments for Running at 55 years old

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Feb 08, 2023
 just discovered MAF running
by: Anonymous

Hi Everyone
I wanted to ask a few questions if anyone can help me please – literally stumbled upon 80/20 training in the last few days. which them led to MAF training

Coming back to running ater some time- and was progressing along with a couch to 5k plan, although even running for a couple of minutes felt hard


this was the schedule for today
5:00 in Zone 1
5:00 in Zone 2
6 x 0:20 in Zone 5/1:40 in Zone 2
10:00 in Zone 1

So Zone 1 according to my watch was 114-117 heart rate
and zone 2 was 117-130.

my warm up for 5 mins i walked – as anything over that set my HR into the red zone.
also with Zone 2 – i ran very slowly ( which was a new thing for me ) and even then had to revert to walking many times to bring the HR down below 130

Dont think i have looked at my wrist so much ever before !! constantly trying to keep within the suggested HR Parameters.

At the end i felt fine, and for once i felt like i could do this again the next day- as i was not knackered as usual!

so i guess that i wa always running too fast ? and needed to keep my running at more of an aerobic level.

is it normal to have to slow down to almost a fast walk -even in zone 2?

Many Thanks
Andy
Feb 10, 2023
by: Nicole

Hi Andy, what you are describing is totally normal and many of us have had to spend time doing a lot of walking when we started doing MAF training. It basically means that your aerobic base could do with some improvement which is why your hear rate is shooting up quickly.
Just keep doing what you are doing and over a couple of months you should start to see that you are walking less and running more. Best of luck!

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