As a representative of the general population I'd just like to say:
I feel like training hard and long SOMETIMES. Most of the time I just train on the level which is considered to help my cause (weight-loss, muscle maintaining).
I neither want to be told NOT to train hard EVER, nor TO TRAIN EXTRA HARD&LONG if I can get the same/healthy/sufficient results for less time and effort.
To me weight-loss cannot be a temporary diet&exercise regimen, it needs to be a permanent life style change. The thing is, I don't see extra hard/long training as something I would be motivated or able to keep up for the rest of my life, whereas moderate training I can and want to maintain.
I feel I need to find the kind of training level where both the physical and the psychological strain on me is such that I keep on wanting to train regularly. If I kill myself training today, it'll take both my body and mind a week or two to be willing and able to train again. I'm guessing one of the biggest rookie mistakes on weight-loss related exercise is overdoing it in the beginners enthousiasm and not ever wanting to exercise again! There I think is the trainers place to give the trainee limits to what, how much and how often.
I'm a classical musician, so believe me, I've encountered most of the problems of regularly training your body and mind hours and hours daily through my work. I don't want another job, so I need my exercise to be compact and as efficient as it can be timewise. I have no doubt I could be some kind of an athlete if I wanted to, I just don't want to.
At least to me it's uncalled for to compare us here on WLF to world class athletes. Let us be the competitors and winners in our own lives.
Juliette

PS. To answer the original question on this thread on my part, I'd say cardio becomes sub-optimal, when you find yourself doing it less and less regularly. It might not be optimal always, but if you want to keep on doing it, you must be doing something right.

Hey, have you ever heard of Valjik in D flat? I used to be able to play that perfectly. I stress "used to".

Oh my goodness, 3 pages in only a few hours!

I don't understand all this talk of long distance running. At this stage in my development the thought of something like that is pretty scary.

Lace mayhem, I wouldn't say you're not taking it seriously enough. You're just doing what's good for you and that's the way it should be, I think. My goal is weight loss and muscle tone, so I'm approaching it slightly differently. I wish I was at that ideal weight where my focus was on just being healthy and fit...

Steve, thank heavens for that! I also believed you were the HIIT guy (you're touted as quite a lot of things, aren't you - the responsibility must be gargantuan). It's nice to know I'm doing okay with my steady state cardio. Hell, my sessions are twice as long as yours so I should see the results pretty soon!

Thanks Juliette, you captured the point perfectly. I may not want to do 60 minute cardio sessions ALL of the time, but it's good to know that I can up it and down it so I can kep my enthusiasm up.

If I'm to be perfectly honest, I like the idea of reading while working out, but I use the X-trainer quite a lot and the constant up and down isn't great for reading.. As Juliette said, to each one his/her own...

Let me just add 2 things:

Corn, again, I hope you know we weren't butting heads IMO. I like discussing/debating stuff about fitness. Sheds light for others, and even myself at times.

Secondly, people who actually ENJOY long duration activity such as cycling and running for multi-hour bouts usually like those things b/c they are preset naturally to do so via the various physiological mechanisms (e.g. slow twitch muscle fibers).

People with predominantly slow twitch fibers naturally won't be your big and strong individuals. They are built more for endurance.

So while I like power activities such as explosive weight training, sprinting, fast paced sports, you have to remember that I am built for that naturally.

I would fail miserably in long distance type of training. Could I get better at it from where I stand currently? Certainly. Could I become elite? Most likely not. Naturally anyhow.

So as I said before, genetics play a huge role here.

Oh I know, I don't care, I've had a big grin on my face the whole time. Might not look that way to others though.