So many similar studies, including this one, suffer from the same flaws pointed out by Olympic coach Steve Magness.
In brief, the training protocols used in these papers are not representative at all of how actual athletes train. And athletes do not train that way because it doesn't work nearly as well as the training protocols that have become popular since the 1960s or so.
With this I am not trying to invalidate the research. What I am doing is warning laypeople from drawing overly simplistic conclusions from studies like these, such as concluding that "Exercising hard is good". Successful endurance athletes spend the overwhelming majority of their training at low and moderate intensities, because that is what works best in the long term.
Professional athletes don't train for cardiometabolic health. They train to perform at competitions. The study is perfectly fine for the people it is intended to serve in the context of their lives. Normal people neither want nor need to train like athletes. They certainly don't need to follow a training program to compete at the Olympics. But they would still be well served to train in some form because of their increasingly sedentary lifestyles. Optimizing that form for efficiency is a key to population health. This paper is just the latest in a stream of evidence that suggests shorter but higher intensity bursts of exercise might be the more efficient way of training if you want to min-max your workout time and health as a normal person who has a real job and possibly a family and other hobbies.
In fact professional endurance athletes have to train at low intensity because they put out so many watts at higher intensities that they can't get enough fuel in to sustain it for the number of hours they train. If they do then they end up with chronic fatigue etc. Once an amatuer is under a certain number of hours a week (10?) and relatively low wattage it doesn't make sense for them to train at low intensity. (You could be a really fast amateur and still be putting out relatively low watts compared to a pro).
I do recommend learning what Steve Magness says about the subject. He covers that as well. Even as a complete amateur you still would not structure your training as they did in that paper, because it makes zero sense.
Just to add my interpretation of what Magness would say, which is: intense interval training tends to show significant gains over moderate work in shorter (8 weeks) study periods, but those gains level off quickly in the long term. A more blended training approach that incorporates all types of training intensities (hard, moderate, easy) will outperform just doing hard interval training, over the long term. And this advice applies to all types of athletes, not just people training at a high level.
Yes. And he emphasizes spending most of your time doing easy volume. Because especially as a regular Joe you won't recover well from doing high intensity intervals three or four times a week, especially when you haven't built a strong aerobic base through lots of easy volume.
And Magness isn't saying anything revolutionary here. Every other coach says very similar things. But Magness has the credentials to make him more authoritative than a random coach out there.
Isn't it likely that blended exercise is best for longevity anyway? i.e. per week 1-2h Zone 2 and 20 minutes HIIT (nordic 4x4?) and then as much strength training as you can fit in, say 3 x 1h PPL per week, and maybe some sauna too.
This is likely around what is best for most people and probably cutting the strength training time to 1h before cutting the rest if you "don't have time".
Most people don't exercise at all. If some of these people draw the wrong conclusion from such a study and start exercising at high intensity, it will still be better than their current couch-potato training protocol.
Good and best is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your comment.
What are you talking about when you speak of good/best outcomes? I think especially when it comes to talking about fitness it is important to be explicit about outcomes because only with outcomes in mind can you talk about what “good” actually means.
In that context I’m a bit confused by your focus on (endurance) athletes. Their overriding goal is obviously increasing their athletic performance in a way that keeps them injury free. Their main focus aren’t health outcomes. That’s not the same. So if you focus on them you are in danger of talking past each other.
To that point: sure, those studies often have unrealistic protocols but the way (performance) athletes train is also unrealistic for most people!
If those studies are about population health they should have realistic protocols (in terms of: realistically achievable and adhered to by non-athletes, in the best case also empirically grounded in the sense of: this is a realistic range of activities non-athletes might actually engage in on a regular basis) for non-athletes.
Why would you need to exercise unless you were living an unnaturally sedentary life due to being trapped in wage slavery? Shouldn't this be retitled to something like overcoming illhealth related to sedantism?
The point of all these articles is that if you exercise hard you get extra health benefits. Even folks that move all the time and clock 15k steps per day may not get those benefits because it's not the right exercise.
Yeah. The formula isn't terribly complicated: don't eat crap and move your body in different ways.
Despite doing exercise (including high intensity stuff like spin class) I was overweight and had a HOMA-IR of 3.8 (Moderate Insulin Resistance) and insulin 13.2 (Early Insulin Resistance).
This was because I was addicted to sugary stuff.
I cut my refined sugar intake to almost zero and in two months HOMA-IR went to 1.02 (Normal Range) and insulin to 4.9 (Optimal / Longevity Range). My triglycerides had peaked at 228 (Moderate Risk) and dropped to 96 (Normal/Good). Glucose went from 116 (Prediabetes) to 85 (Healthy).
My assistant in cutting all that sugar was Claude. I used Claude as my buddy: I'd chat with Claude when I had cravings and it gave me alternatives and support. And it worked.
Such good advice. Another probably unpopular use of AI - I was using Claude to figure out all the music I listened to at university and what would have been playing in the bars at the time. I was loving the nostalgia and I would not have remembered 205 of it without the conversation!
In brief, the training protocols used in these papers are not representative at all of how actual athletes train. And athletes do not train that way because it doesn't work nearly as well as the training protocols that have become popular since the 1960s or so.
With this I am not trying to invalidate the research. What I am doing is warning laypeople from drawing overly simplistic conclusions from studies like these, such as concluding that "Exercising hard is good". Successful endurance athletes spend the overwhelming majority of their training at low and moderate intensities, because that is what works best in the long term.
And Magness isn't saying anything revolutionary here. Every other coach says very similar things. But Magness has the credentials to make him more authoritative than a random coach out there.
This is likely around what is best for most people and probably cutting the strength training time to 1h before cutting the rest if you "don't have time".
What are you talking about when you speak of good/best outcomes? I think especially when it comes to talking about fitness it is important to be explicit about outcomes because only with outcomes in mind can you talk about what “good” actually means.
In that context I’m a bit confused by your focus on (endurance) athletes. Their overriding goal is obviously increasing their athletic performance in a way that keeps them injury free. Their main focus aren’t health outcomes. That’s not the same. So if you focus on them you are in danger of talking past each other.
To that point: sure, those studies often have unrealistic protocols but the way (performance) athletes train is also unrealistic for most people!
If those studies are about population health they should have realistic protocols (in terms of: realistically achievable and adhered to by non-athletes, in the best case also empirically grounded in the sense of: this is a realistic range of activities non-athletes might actually engage in on a regular basis) for non-athletes.
Despite doing exercise (including high intensity stuff like spin class) I was overweight and had a HOMA-IR of 3.8 (Moderate Insulin Resistance) and insulin 13.2 (Early Insulin Resistance).
This was because I was addicted to sugary stuff.
I cut my refined sugar intake to almost zero and in two months HOMA-IR went to 1.02 (Normal Range) and insulin to 4.9 (Optimal / Longevity Range). My triglycerides had peaked at 228 (Moderate Risk) and dropped to 96 (Normal/Good). Glucose went from 116 (Prediabetes) to 85 (Healthy).
My assistant in cutting all that sugar was Claude. I used Claude as my buddy: I'd chat with Claude when I had cravings and it gave me alternatives and support. And it worked.