Dr. Philip Maffetone

I realized that the human body would progress athletically naturally if it was not overstressed. I decided to see how successful an average person could be by following a no-pain approach to exercise. I was embarrassed that I had subscribed to the ‘no pain, no gain’ theory, so well entrenched in our society.

I’m horrified at how poorly some people care for themselves. Then when they get older and dysfunctional, they want a magic pill to make them functional again. There’s no magic pill, but there’s something almost as good: good aerobic function. The time to act is now.

Don’t underestimate the therapeutic benefits of walking: it gently stimulates circulation and aerobic muscle fiber activity, is mentally beneficial (much like meditation), and can help redevelop the aerobic system.

The most inexpensive and perhaps most successful workout equipment you naturally possess: your own body. Walking, jogging, running, swimming, and hiking are examples of natural activity. No machine will make your workout more effective than you can do with your own body.

It may be best to define training as an equation: training = workout + rest

Every exerciser’s worst nightmare is an injury. Unfortunately, it is a common occurrence especially among persons performing anaerobic exercise and among persons who do not warm up properly. Even more unfortunate is that most people believe that being injured is part of the workout game. This is not the case. If you exercise properly, you should never experience injuries (with the rare exception of trauma). If you do get injured, it means that you’ve done something wrong; the injury may be the result of training, diet, nutrition, stress or some other factor.

Aerobic - The ability to obtain more energy through increased fat burning. Anaerobic - The increased use of sugar for energy, and diminished fat burning.

When in doubt, go slower. It never hurts to work out easier, but working too hard can have adverse consequences.

“Proper exercise has two primary components. One is that it’s done in a balanced way. ... The other primary concern is fun.”

Every athlete has unique needs, and no single program will work for everyone. Most importantly, your primary concern should never be short-term; instead, your focus should always be long-term. By doing so improvements in performance should be consistent for years to come, despite your age or gender.

In a one-hour event, 98 percent of your endurance energy is derived from the aerobic system; in a two-hour event, 99 percent is. Does it make sense to spend so many hours a week on anaerobic work when 99 percent of your race energy comes from the aerobic system? Instead, it’s best to first derive your endurance speed from aerobic training, then, as time and energy permits, to add anaerobic training.

Overtraining is the most common problem that prevents endurance athletes from reaching their potential. It’s also the most common cause of injury and ill-health for millions of athletes. And overtraining is a problem that many athletes, coaches, and health-care professionals don’t recognize until it becomes a more serious condition.

There are no magic formulas or special diet plans unique to endurance athletes, except eating a balance of real foods. This will improve your endurance better than anything.

Adrenal stress can be caused or aggravated by the consumption of refined carbohydrates and sugar. This includes hidden sugars in many foods. How much is too much? Less is best.

In 1956, Roger Bannister became the first runner to break the four-minute barrier in the mile. He later wrote, ‘Though physiology may indicate respiratory and circulatory limits to muscular effort, psychological and other factors beyond the ken of physiology set the razor’s edge of defeat or victory and determine how close an athlete approaches the absolute limits of performance.

Most shoes pose a great potential danger to the feet, much more than does the ground itself. Sports-type shoes, tight shoes, and high heels can be especially damaging due to the resulting alterations in foot function.

Shoes are the cause of most foot problems.

The best shoes are those with little or no support, such as moccasins, sandals, flat sneakers, and shoes with thin and hard rather than soft soles. The worst shoes may be tight, high-heeled dress shoes and sports shoes with a thick sole that are also often filled with ‘special’ materials, including air, and those that are extremely cushioned.

The majority of people in the Western world probably wear shoes that are too small.

When was the very first time the human foot was injured by a shoe? Probably the first time it was worn. Nothing is more stable, supportive, shock protective, and efficient than bare feet.

In a December 1997 issue of the British Journal of Sports Medicine, researchers Robbins and Waked state, ‘Expensive athletic shoes are deceptively advertised to safeguard well through ‘cushioning impact’ yet account for 123% greater injury frequency than the cheapest ones.’

Nothing influences the foot as much as shoes. Nothing does the foot as much potential harm as shoes. And nothing restores normal function as quickly as when shoes are removed.

Which workouts are best for brain health? The answer is any training that promotes overall health, especially those that are aerobic. This can even include an easy walk, regardless of one’s level of fitness.

Healthy food is critical for runners. Each day the body breaks down during the catabolic phase of training. With the anabolic phase of recovery the body is rebuilt, repaired, and made stronger. The raw materials necessary for this revitalization come from the foods we eat. The best foods create a superior body—simply put, we are what we eat.

By building a strong and fast aerobic system, fat burning increases, physical injuries can be prevented, and running economy—often the missing link in enhancing performance—can improve significantly.

The time spent warming up and cooling down should be included as part of your total workout. So for a one-hour aerobic run, spend fifteen minutes warming up, fifteen cooling down, and a half hour in the maximum aerobic zone.

To remain healthy and injury-free, follow this simple equation: Training = Workout + Rest

There may appear to be a lot of information in this book, especially if it’s new to you and even if much of it is quite different from what you used to think. Implementing it, though, is really quite simple. Eat real food and avoid junk.

My traditional training equation is one that athletes should post in a prominent place where it can be seen every day: Training = workout + recovery.

The foundation of optimal endurance sports development includes the necessity to be healthy, thus avoiding the common patterns of injury, fatigue, poor performance, and plateau resulting from brain and body imbalance.

You want long-term energy to be free of fatigue, maximum support for your joints and bones, injury-free muscles, good circulation, and increased fat burning to slim down. You want both optimal health and great fitness.

As endurance athletes, we require continuous, untiring energy, even while sleeping. Increased fat burning makes us healthier, we think better, and are more fit. Otherwise, we are biologically impaired.

There are two primary factors that influence our ability to increase fat burning: eating healthy, unrefined foods; and working out easier rather than harder.

If sugar, in any of its many forms, is a part of your diet—whether it is the majority or just smaller amounts—you will only be healthier and become more fit without it.

So what is this one rule that fits all? It’s simple: avoid junk food. No one should eat it. I’m referring to our daily eating habits of meals, snacks, and desserts. There are always healthy alternatives—once junk food is gone, your diet will fill up with real food.

The human body is made to be athletic, evolving for millions of years into a great movement machine. ... We all possess the ability to move well, with accuracy and without wasted energy. We just have to remove the roadblocks.

The ageless Hall of Fame baseball pitcher Satchel Paige said it best: ‘How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?’ Too many people would say they feel or look older than they are. If that is the case, you can change it.

Yes, everyone is an athlete. The more we progress, the longer we endure, and the further and faster we persist throughout the human race. Endurance, intuition and instincts are all entwined, and the sooner we allow them to flourish, the more athletic we become. It’s not too late to continue the process, starting right now.

We don’t really have a health-care system—it’s disease care, and one that is among the most successful revenue-generating industries in history. The system discourages people from getting healthy by addressing symptoms instead of treating the causes of illness, and by keeping the elderly alive longer, a period when medical costs usually soar.

Of all the clinical tools I developed and used for assessment and therapy throughout my career, the consistent results from the Two-Week Test surprised me the most—and still do—specifically regarding how a person can go from one extreme of poor health to vibrant health in a short time. It’s simply a matter of removing a major stress—refined carbohydrates—in a person’s life and allowing the body to function the way it was originally meant.

There is nothing radical about the notion that refined carbohydrates are unhealthy, there are many radical diet plans that make it seem like all carbohydrates are deadly. They’re not. Finding your level of tolerance is what’s most important, then eat only healthy carbohydrates.

We call devices that measure heart rate ‘heart-rate monitors,’ but you could also call them ‘fat-burning monitors’ since monitoring your pulse rate during exercise is the best way to promote fat-burning both during and after your workout.

The story is clear, as is the research: exercise can potentially, significantly, contribute to better physical, biochemical, and mental-emotional health, which includes tuning your metabolism to be better at fat-burning. However, this is not true of either extreme—a sedentary lifestyle or overtraining.

Of course, most so-called energy bars are junk food too. They are really ‘fatigue bars’ because they zap our energy (right after you get that short-lived sugar rush). Likewise for sports drinks and other liquid beverages claiming to be healthy.

Any workout can become anaerobic when the intensity of running, biking, dance, and other workouts is too high. While anaerobic efforts may burn more calories during the workout, the process does not train the body to specifically burn more stored fat calories over the next twenty-four hours.

The concept of fat burning is important because stored fat is a great *potential* source of energy for everyday activity. In fact, even a lean person has enough body fat stores worth of energy to walk about 600 miles.

New research shows that up to 76 percent of the world’s population is overfat, defined as excess body fat sufficient to impair health. Even people who are not overweight or obese can still be overfat.