I’m a believer in Phil Maffetone‘s approach to aerobic training, which is basically that you should do most training at no more than 75% of your max heart rate.
This doesn’t mean I don’t ever do anaerobic work, or speedwork, or anything else that elevates your heart rate past that. I just default my aerobic training to that lowered maximum. It’s also similar to the 80/20 approach that Matt Fitzgerald vouches for.
Maffetone is also in that esoteric ‘do everything barefoot’ camp, and it’s a key reason the Primal Blueprint’s Mark Sisson aligned with his beliefs in writing Primal Endurance. I don’t subscribe to that mostly because I live in cities where soft ground is often littered with hidden sharp objects, many of which can be very dangerous. I’ll trade the benefits of barefoot running for the needed safety of wearing shoes during exercise, thanks.
But I bring up Maffetone to talk about this piece on shoes that I’ve long since had loaded on a browser tab for discussion. Much like how Sisson wrote his “I hate endurance training BUT if I were to train for a marathon…” piece, Maffetone is anti-shoes but here he writes a piece on what kind of shoes you should get if you need them.
I’m always a supporter of the “not my thing but here’s a good way to do it if you must” perspective. I like being open minded to different approaches, even when I have convincing reasons not to follow them. I know others will follow them, and long as no one’s getting hurt or killed in doing so we’re typically better off helping each other maximize those efforts.
But, as I do, I digress. Maffetone raises a good point about what I call “The Hoka One One Problem”: We like padded shoes, but they’re not good for us.
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