Connections link a sequence of three related research papers. The central article which links the other two papers has been published in Experimental Physiology. In a Connections article, an author (or authors) of the central article outlines its principal novel findings, tracing how they were influenced by the first article and how the central article has contributed to the developments made in the third article. The author(s) may also speculate on the direction of future research in the field. Connections articles aim to set the research in a wide context. The maximum oxygen uptake (VO2max) is the gold standard measure of cardiorespiratory fitness, as it represents the upper limit of oxygen transport and utilisation during strenuous exercise. Indeed, VO2max has long been considered a strong predictor of endurance performance, but also mortality and morbidity and an overall marker of health, perhaps more so than other traditional risk factors such as smoking, obesity and type 2 diabetes. Fortunately, VO2max is not fixed, and endurance training has consistently been shown to increase VO2max. However, changes in VO2max with endurance training exhibit large inter-individual variability, even when individuals undertake the same training programme. In the first of this series of connecting papers, Williams et al. (2019) investigated whether different approaches to endurance training affected the magnitude of the response in VO2max. The authors analysed data from 18 training interventions and 677 participants, whereby individuals undertook high-intensity interval training, sprint interval training, or moderate-intensity continuous training. The authors reported that high-intensity interval training resulted in the greatest increases in VO2max, as well as the greatest proportion of individuals demonstrating an increase in VO2max beyond a predefined change threshold, comprising the technical error of measurement and the minimal clinically important difference of one metabolic equivalent task (1 MET, 3.5 mL kg-1 min-1).
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