I'm a firm believer that really effective aerobic training has to be done at a pretty specific level of exertion. That working out lower than that just juices your appetite without much training effect, and working out higher than that leaves you prone to injury. However, I'm trying to reconcile this with a shift towards interleaving workouts at various points through the day, rather than doing it all in one shot at the gym at 8 am.
I mean -- if you had the option: a stationary bike or treadmill, or park easily and safely available, would you do 45 minutes of sedentary desk work followed by 15 minutes of something that requires a higher heart rate?
I don't want to have to faff with my heart rate monitor to do this, and I know I'm not really working out at exactly my MAF pace or Zone 2, or whatever your target is. I just think that sitting literally all day, isn't effectively countered by 30 or 45 minutes of aerobic work at the gym. You just can't sit that much without movement and be healthy.
I'm well aware that a lot of people, particularly in my field (software engineering) don't have private offices, don't work at Google's campus with omnipresent nap, workout, meditation, and culinary spaces. When I did that work I was in a cube in a cube farm, and it would not have been looked at too kindly to escape for that 15 minute movement break with that frequency.
It makes me think of the Pomodoro method, where you set a timer for some period of focus, with a programmed-in break, in order to break through procrastination, and spur creative work. This is kind of the same thing, but maybe the period is a bit longer, and the break isn't spent looking at your phone, it is spent moving.
