alt Hacker NewsProfessional 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.
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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.
It is only efficient because of the short duration of 8 week study. It's like, pounding Leetcode is the most efficient/effective way to prep for an upcoming interview. But for the long term, it is better to mix up the type of work you do.
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).