Intervention | Details |
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Con | Standard care consisting of basic exercise advice (150 min/week) with no supervised or structured exercise. We do not anticipate the control group will engage in a significant amount of exercise compared to their baseline physical activity levels without the addition of a structured exercise program [11] |
SSE group | Minimum physical activity recommendations (150 min per week) [40], in three supervised 50-min sessions/week of continuous moderate intensity exercise sessions of cycling at 50–60% HRR (~ 3.5 METs) |
HIIT group | Minimum vigorous physical activity recommendations (~ 75 min per week) [40], in three supervised sessions/week of HIIT exercise (cycling/running). Based on existing literature, pilot data [43] and patient consultation, we will use a practical weekly training program encompassing two successful HIIT protocols [16, 17, 55]: two sessions/week of short constant load cycling of 12 × 1 min at > 85% HRR (> 9 METs; [1 min HIIT]) with 1 min active recovery; one session/week of cycling 6–8 × 4 min at > 85% HRR (> 9 METS; [4 min HIIT]) with 2 min active recovery |