Tawnee Prazak embraces the MAF Method on her popular podcast show, and also uses it to balance fitness and health, for herself and coaching clients
Tawnee Prazak is well-known in endurance sports circles as a coach and host of Endurance Planet podcast. But her journey to health came only after training and a super busy lifestyle had left her drained.
With a master’s degree in exercise physiology and strength and conditioning, and numerous certifications as well, today Tawnee uses the MAF Method in her own training program as well as with her coaching clients. She also often mentions the program on Endurance Planet and frequently includes Dr. Phil Maffetone as a guest on the show.
“I have been an athlete my whole life starting with recreational exercise and got into endurance sports in 2006,” Tawnee says. “Right away triathlon became my life. I wanted to be part of this sport for the rest of my life, and for the first time it felt like something that was just me and I was in control of everything.”
For the next six years, Tawnee says she raced dozens and dozens of races. She went back to school to get her master’s degree, and she started a business.
During this time she was a top-ranked amateur triathlete with more than 50 podium and top-10 race finishes to her name. She competed in dozens of endurance races, including 13 half-Ironmans, short-course triathlons, full Ironmans, cycling time trials, ultra mountain bike races, road and trail running races, ultra swim events, outrigger and SUP competitions, and other events.
Initially, she found really great success with this high-energy lifestyle.
“I had really good results and was a high-stress person. I think the stress was sort of what kept me going,” she says.
But then the strain began to take its toll. As it started to catch up with her, Tawnee would experience epic performance crashes in both training and athletic competition, and notice that her health was failing.
“I reached the point where I realized I wasn’t healthy,” she says, noting her menstrual cycle has also ceased.
“I thought, I want to have kids some day. I’ve got to fix this — I don’t want to continue down this avenue, and need to take some time to figure out the health side of things.”
After a year of declining performances in 2013, her doctor told her she needed to put on the brakes and recover. The writing was on the wall.
Then she met Phil.
“When he and I finally met, I was already at this point of embracing the road to finding health. Phil and I hit it off and I knew right away that it was going to be a long-lasting connection.”
She invited him on Endurance Planet, and afterward he said, “I could tell you are stressed out when you were talking today.”
And thus began Tawnee’s road to recovery.
“Spending time with him, talking with him doing podcasts, it started to make sense,” she says. “I started to embrace the concept.It finally started to click and to make sense how it all integrated.”
It wasn’t long until Tawnee’s health improved. In 2014 she got her period back and started to see improvement in health results. In 2015 she decided to test it and through proper heart-rate monitoring and using the MAF Test she was able to qualify for the Boston Marathon and then finish it in the same year.
“You can fix yourself the right way,” she says.
