Skip to main content

Dr. Phil Maffetone & Dr. Mark Cucuzzella: Be Your Own Health Advocate (At Any Age), Minimalist Marathoning, and More on MAF vs. Race Pace

By July 15, 2017October 11th, 2020Podcasts

On this show we dive into a fully holistic and integrative chat about what it really takes to be your best self with health and performance!

  • Mark Cucuzella shares his incredible journey that’s led him to overcome injury and run 2:24 marathons, and at age 49 he’s still running sub-2:50 making him one of the best master’s marathoner alive.
  • How MAF training helped Mark overcome years of overtraining, and still allowed him to have major success in the marathon.
  • How and why Mark switched from a high-carb diet to a low-carb diet five years ago, while still training, leading to better management of his insulin resistance, health and more positives.
  • Mark and Phil discuss MAF Method principles, progression with MAF, and more.
  • The very important role of a healthy diet in making progress with the MAF Method. However, Mark still got results with MAF on a high-carb “unhealthy” diet; why?
    Comparisons with Lydiard-style training
  • On health markers like HbA1C – Mark says normal and healthy would be 4.5-5.0%, while pre-diabetic is 5.7%-5.9% and diabetic is 6.0%
  • Mark is a doctor who takes a different approach to health than what we see in Western medicine–because we can see more clearly that Western medicine is failing us as it relates to chronic disease, etc.
  • Instead of dissing high cholesterol look to the ratio of triglycerides and HDL.
  • Healing without drugs, and instead: Food as medicine.
  • Mark has to manage insulin resistance and poor glucose tolerance (in his genetics), and how he does this effectively.
  • “A Beautiful Medicine”
  • On taking charge of y our health and well-being and problems with mainstream medicine
  • Running Boston in Vibrams, and the Harvard research that’s being done by Irene DavisLoading rates: lower loading rates equated with less injury issues.
  • Discussing minimalist vs maximalist shoes and injury.
  • Shoes don’t cause injury, the dysfunction does.

Special thanks
Endurance Planet