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Thank you for revising your manuscript to address the concerns of the reviewers. Reviewer 2 now recommends acceptance and I am satisfied that the comments of reviewer 1 have been addressed. The manuscript is now ready for publication.
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Jeremy Loenneke, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
Thank you for addressing my comments.
Thank you for addressing my comments.
Thank you for addressing my comments.
Thank you for addressing my comments.
**PeerJ Staff Note:** Please ensure that all review, editorial, and staff comments are addressed in a response letter and that any edits or clarifications mentioned in the letter are also inserted into the revised manuscript where appropriate.
Thank you for addressing my comments. The overall tone and content of your discussion and conclusion now match your results. Thus, the manuscript has improved considerably. There are only a few points left to address.
Firstly, please revise your conclusion for subtle grammatical mistakes.
Secondly, to my comment regarding the introduction, you have replied: “…CSRT is known to induce lower acute fatigue, thereby mitigating physiological and psychological strain, which is particularly beneficial for novices or individuals returning to training. This lower-fatigue characteristic is conducive to long-term adherence, positioning CSRT-HIIT as an effective and practical training model for untrained young men.” I agree with you. However, in my opinion, this point is underdeveloped in the introduction. Including a section similar to this would put more emphasis on the actual research gap and necessity of the study, rather than reiterating already established concepts that are not the main focus of your investigation.
Thirdly, I see you have now included the a priori power analysis conducted before recruiting participants. I am assuming your sample size estimation resulted in 8 participants per group, rather than 8 in total (which is what I calculate with your provided variables). Please clarify this in the manuscript. Furthermore, you have not provided any source or preliminary data to justify the chosen effect size of 0.4. If you are referring to Cohen’s f, this corresponds to a large effect. I do not agree with the assumption that such a large effect would have been expected between the groups. Please explain your rationale behind this choice.
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The reviewers have identified serious flaws that must be addressed in full if the manuscript is to be considered any further.
**PeerJ Staff Note:** Please ensure that all review and editorial comments are addressed in a response letter and that any edits or clarifications mentioned in the letter are also inserted into the revised manuscript where appropriate.
**Language Note:** The review process has identified that the English language must be improved. PeerJ can provide language editing services - please contact us at [email protected] for pricing (be sure to provide your manuscript number and title). Alternatively, you should make your own arrangements to improve the language quality and provide details in your response letter. – PeerJ Staff
the introduction is not structured well enough. Be sure to include a paragraph on why Cardiorespiratory and Muscular Fitness is important for health (since the research was conducted in untrained individuals, it would make more sense to emphasize the effects on health rather than performance.
limitations should be added in the last paragraph of the discussion.
Write a paragraph with a very weak concluding section
In the method, you mentioned that the groups were randomly divided into two, how was the randomization done?
Please specify how you calculated the number of samples and power analysis was performed. Also, please write in more detail how the Regional Muscle thickness measurement was performed. In order to take measurements from the same point in the baseline measurement and the last measurement, was the point where the measurement was made in the relevant muscle determined by means of a tape measure?
https://e-jespar.com/index.php/jespar/article/view/27
https://e-jespar.com/index.php/jespar/article/view/17
In addition to training, the food consumed is a very important factor in strength gains. How dietary factors such as protein intake were taken under control. daily food intake was recorded and analyzed. be sure to add it to the article as a table.
https://journals.lww.com/md-journal/fulltext/2024/11010/dose_response_effects_of_8_week_resistance.76.aspx
**PeerJ Staff Note:** It is PeerJ policy that additional references suggested during the peer-review process should only be included if the authors are in agreement that they are relevant and useful.
effect sizes should be calculated and added.
I think that clustur set HIIT is not very suitable for untrained beginners. After a 30-second rest between sets, the efficiency will decrease as the recovery will not be fully achieved when moving to the next new set. It will also take time for beginners without a strength training background to perform the basic movement patterns in the correct form. In addition, does it not pose a risk of injury? How was this situation taken under control?
Language:
While the used language is mainly characterized by a high quality, occasional errors can be found. I point some of them out in the “General Comments” section. However, I urge you to carefully revise and correct similar mistakes throughout the entire manuscript.
Figures & Tables:
In the document I received, figure 1 is distorted and of poor quality. In its current state it cannot be included. Please improve its quality.
Relevance:
While the research question is rather well defined, the manuscript unfortunately fails to identify and explain an actual research gap. Although it is certainly accurate that inactivity is a substantial problem and that it can be countered effectively by resistance training and endurance training such as HIIT training - these are all established concepts. Thus, a meaningful contribution of this current research is not apparent. I strongly recommend that you address following questions within your introduction: Why would a combined cluster training - as it is presented in your manuscript - be beneficial beyond a regular combined training that is your control group? If your results were practically relevant or not what should actually change for guidelines and exercise prescription?
Design:
To my knowledge, it is not stated in your manuscript whether the medical personnel that assessed muscle thickness was blinded or whether the untrained participants were familiarized with the strength tests and standing long jump assessments. If they were not, these are limitations that have to be discussed in your manuscript. Especially a missing familiarization would be a major limitation as I would argue that a standing long jump is a difficult task to perform for untrained participants. Furthermore, you did not conduct a sample size justification or power analysis. This further complicates interpreting the results and should also be discussed.
Unfortunately, almost none of your conclusions can be derived from the results of your research. You repeatedly argue that CSRT-HIIT is superior to TRT-HIIT, when none of the statistical tests display significant group or interaction effects. In some cases (maximal strength measures; body-fat) the group differences could perhaps point towards tendencies favoring the CRST-HIIT group while in other cases (VO2max; long jump) the differences are without a doubt within noise and measurement error. This is especially relevant, if participants were in fact not familiarized with the assessments. I strongly believe your results regarding the group differences are statistically uncertain in the best cases and should be presented that way.
I acknowledge that this review may come across as very critical. However, in my opinion, your current manuscripts contains fundamental mistakes and flaws that would have to be adrssed before its publication. I outlined these mistakes outlined in the previous sections.
In this following section I would like to point out some minor mistakes that should also be addressed in a revision.
Introduction:
l.56: It its current form, this sentence conveys that power output was also effectively reduced. I do not think this is what you are trying to convey. Please revise this section.
Methods:
l.116 & 117: the statement “… until the subject could complete one repetition to determine the 1RM” is slightly misleading in its current form. While this may only be a small, adding “no more than one repetition” or similar will improve this sentence.
l.134: I am not familiar with the concept of sensory fatigue or do not fully understand what you are trying to convey. Please explain in to me and/or in the manuscript, if necessary.
l.136: You write “…based on two of the following three conditions.” before proceeding to list four conditions. Please revise this section.
Discussion:
l.258 & 260: “This may be due to the higher power output per exercise […] , which triggered a more significant post-exercise excess oxygen consumption, leading to increased lipolysis.” To my knowledge, you did not assess any of these variables in your study. Thus, this a speculation based on multiple levels of assumptions. Please label it as such and be more defensive when discussing your results.
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