I don't understand your problem with the research/article. All they are claiming is that short intense intervals produce comparable improvement in aerobic fitness and metabolic variables as longer endurance exercise, in untrained young men. This is supported by many other studies.

It doesn't try to prove that they will be equally good at running 10K, or have the same 'mental' benefits. That's a separate issue.

Think about all the people that are unable or unwilling to exercise like you do. Is it nonsense that they could significantly improve their health with short intense exercise? Who cares about fast and slow twitch fibres.

One of the largest challenges for regular people is finding 45-90 minutes to exercise in the first place. Research on shortening the length of time required for effective exercises is a worthwhile pursuit.

And the other thing is to keep focused for 45-90min on a bicycle in a gym, with nothing else to watch than wrestling and Justin Bieber in loop. That's where the real effort is.

That's why it's better to play sports. Exercise is more enjoyable when it's competitive. Don't punish yourself with exercise, reward yourself with play.

Or find a sport and find exercises to improve it. That's what I did. Soccer is fun, we often lose, but I love my team. We're pretty much considered the best sportsmen in our league (everyone respects us and enjoys playing with us because we treat everyone well, whether we're winning or losing). I took up running so I could play better.

I took up BJJ (individual rather than team sport) as a way to fill my evenings, and to try to get back into martial arts. I've taken up a strength training (bodyweight) as a way to improve myself there.

The exercise isn't always fun, but it has a purpose beyond "run faster" or "lift more" (though those are fine goals as well, just insufficient motivators for me).

Yeah, I have been doing BJJ for 8 years and just got my black belt. Recently started kickboxing too. On the side I jog and lift weights and do a handful of other sports for fun. I think of it as "training" as opposed to "exercise".

> just got my black belt.

Congrats. I'm still a white belt and will probably remain one. They go to a gym up in Atlanta when they want to test and award belts, on a Saturday, and it almost always coincides with a soccer game. Priorities. :)

I might accept that but it feels like a cheating shortcut somehow.

A major part of long distance running (10k+) is the mental aspect.

You are never, ever, going to get the mental endurance and discipline to run fast for distance by running for a short period of time, no matter how hard.

Training for long distance running is not a goal most people have. Discussions about endurance training and improving health of "normal" people are not the same discussion.

Most people don't want to be able to run 10k+, they want to stay healthy. Sports is fun as a hobby, but not everyone wants to have that hobby.

This kind of research allows people to think working out for only a couple minutes is okay if you do it hard.

I think many people could easily train to do 5k and then 10k and get many benefits. Our very evolution came about from persistence hunting which means many people should have the genetics for endurance and far fewer for intensity (speed).

I think you're confusing a trained person training to get better with a sedentary person training to not be sedentary.

In the weight training community there's a thing everyone calls "newb gains". It's basically this study in played out in a weightroom. In a nutshell, it's that you don't need interesting training programs or massive amounts of gym time to get started. Just a few basic lifts a few times a week. Once you get a baseline, your gains level out and you have to start being smarter with your training. I'll bet a solid handshake that the same general pattern will apply here.

This study took out of shape people that didn't exercise and asked them to exercise. The program isn't so much important as is the fact that getting people doing anything strenuous ends up being beneficial.

Eventually their "gains" will level out and if they want to run a 10k in under 45 minutes, they're going to have do a lot more interesting training.

Good points. I'm in the camp that sees the claimed benefits of SIT as a logical extension of cardio exercise to the set/rest/set approach of weightlifting, but this study doesn't really answer that question. I'd really like to see an "equal time" comparison group to account for newb gains (e.g. MICT for 10 min vs SIT for 10 min) as well as directly compare the effect of the different approaches.

>If intensity training for a minute was all you needed, you could do sprints in the parking lot to train for a 45 minute 10K. Good luck with that. //

That's not a logical conclusion. The intense workout is to achieve/maintain normal fitness not to enable someone to run a good 10k.

If you can achieve moderate fitness with an intense workout then it seems much more likely to me that a person with such fitness will choose sports or other activities instead of remaining sedentary for the rest of the day.

> Intensity training is good for fast-twitch muscle. Endurance training is good for slow-twitch. The two are not interchangeable.

[Citation needed]

Fast vs Slow twitch has been understood since the 1970s.

You think a body builder could ever run a 10K at sub-6 mile pace or a sub-6 runner benchpress what a body builder could?

The [citation needed] was for your association between muscle types and training types. For example, it's also a common assertion that intensity training is good for both fast and slow twitch muscles.