Table 1.

Summary of adaptations related to cardiorespiratory fitness, insulin sensitivity, glycemic control, and mitochondrial content following common low-volume interval training protocols in women

Protocol	Training duration
	2–4 weeks	5–11 weeks	12–16 weeks
Repeated Wingate SIT (3–8 × 30 s)	↑ ${\dot{\text{V}}\text{O}}_2$peak [44, 68, 70, 161]	↑ ${\dot{\text{V}}\text{O}}_2$peak [47, 54, 67]	↑ ${\dot{\text{V}}\text{O}}_2$peak [55]
		↓ HbA1c [162]  ↔ HbA1c [55]	↔ HbA1c [55]
	↑ CS protein content† [70] ↔ CS maximal activity† [163] ↔ COXIV protein content† [70]
HIIT (10–12 × 1 min)	↑ ${\dot{\text{V}}\text{O}}_2$peak [46, 49, 64, 79] ↔ ${\dot{\text{V}}\text{O}}_2$peak [164]	↑ ${\dot{\text{V}}\text{O}}_2$peak [49, 50, 165]	↑ ${\dot{\text{V}}\text{O}}_2$peak [49]
		↔ OGTT insulin sensitivity [50] ↓ HOMA-IR [166]	↓ HOMA-IR [110]
		↑ CS maximal activity [50] ↑ COX activity [121]
Repeated sprint SIT (6–20 s efforts)		↑ ${\dot{\text{V}}\text{O}}_2$peak [60, 167]	↑ ${\dot{\text{V}}\text{O}}_2$peak [51, 61, 63, 65, 66, 168]
			↓ HOMA-IR [61] ↔ HOMA-IR [65, 66] ↓ HbA1c [100] ↔ HbA1c [66]
Reduced-volume SIT (≤ 10 min session)	↑ ${\dot{\text{V}}\text{O}}_2$peak [62, 72] ↔ ${\dot{\text{V}}\text{O}}_2$peak [75]	↑ ${\dot{\text{V}}\text{O}}_2$peak [52, 53, 69, 71, 75]	↑ ${\dot{\text{V}}\text{O}}_2$peak [10, 75]
		↔ OGTT insulin sensitivity [69, 71] ↔ 24 h glucose mean or AUC [53] ↓ HOMA-IR† [53]	↔ HOMA-IR† [10]
		↑ CS maximal activity† [53] ↑ COXIV protein content† [53]
Reduced-volume HIIT (5 × 1 min)		↑ ${\dot{\text{V}}\text{O}}_2$peak [73, 76]
		↔ OGTT glucose and insulin AUC [73] ↓ HOMA-IR [76] ↔ HbA1c [73]
		↑ mitochondrial complex I, II, III, IV and V protein content† [138] ↑ CS maximal activity† [138]

Studies were conducted in women who were classified as healthy [10, 46, 47, 49, 52, 54, 65, 69–72, 75, 79, 161], with overweight/obesity [44, 50, 51, 53, 55, 60–63, 66, 67, 73, 76, 100, 110, 121, 138, 162, 164, 167, 168] and/or type 2 diabetes [100, 162]. For transparency, the same cohort of women was examined in the following pairs of references: [50, 121] and [73, 138]. The symbol (†) denotes when a finding has only been documented in a study comparing responses between sexes and is based on a main effect of time for both men and women. Abbreviations: ↑ increase; ↓ decrease; ↔ no change; AUC area under the curve; COXIV cytochrome c oxidase subunit IV; CS citrate synthase; HbA1c glycated hemoglobin; HOMA-IR homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance; OGTT oral glucose tolerance test; ${\dot{\text{V}}\text{O}}_2$peak peak oxygen uptake