This can almost be a philosophical discussion, so maybe an example will help to set the stage.
At one time (I believe the correlation has decreased), there was a correlation between probability of rain and day of week. Mondays had a higher probability of being dry than Fridays (or Saturdays). So, should we have adjusted the work week so that Sunday was now the last day of work, and Monday and Tuesday were the weekend? It would have helped produce dry weekends for a little while, but you would have soon found out that the drier days would slip to become Wednesday and Thursday. Well, how about inventing some kind of schedule that rotates the weekends so that they better line up with the 2 drier days of the week. I don't think that would help. The weekend is/was a time when industrial activities that produced dust operated at a much reduced rate, hence decreasing the amount of dust (and other nucleating particles) were in the atmosphere. With fewer nucleating sites, there was less rain produced. The weekend just happened to be the time over which this dust settled out from the atmosphere, and hence Mondays and Tuesday had less dust in the atmosphere. So, the length of the work week wasn't involved, it was the length of the weekend. As society moves towards a situation where all days have about the same amount of industrial activity, all week days should have about the same probability of rain.
This confusion between correlation and cause-and-effect has been happening for a long time. I suppose a person could blame the media for at least part of this, but I really don't think it is their fault either. For the most part, they don't have the background to understand the difference either. And they might claim that they are trying to present information in a way that the general population understands (regardless of whether this is the best way or not).
The confusion between correlation, and cause-and-effect, is also exploited by marketing. It's up to you as to whether this is good or bad, but markets have been opened or developed by taking advantage of our confusion over correlation and cause-and-effect.
There are many correlations that show up in fitness, that have little or no basis for consideration or concern.
As pointed out on my sweating page, sweating is strictly the body's response to a need to reduce internal core temperature. Ideally, the body would like to get rid of heat without using any resources. Radiating heat is the preferred mechanism. But, if we cannot radiate away enough heat, our body will make use of the latent heat of evaporation of water via sweating to get rid of heat.
The correlation that I want to point out, is that there is no reason to associate any amount of sweating with work rate. It is easy to find examples of cases where two (or more) people are working out at the same rate in the same environment, and have vastly different sweating rates.
Differring internal thermostat settings may be part of the reason, but I believe the largest difference is differing amounts of subcutaneous fat blocking the transmission of heat from blood vessels and muscle tissue.
Fitness is basically a measure of performance, and the performance needs to be placed in context. Most people know that Lance Armstrong is an extremely fit distance cyclist. But his fitness is not appropriate for many kinds of athletic endeavors: sumo and world's strongest man competitions would be extreme examples of sports he is not fit for.
The envelope of our body can tell people about how much fat we are carrying, or at least it can tell something about subcutaneous fat (the fat that is just under our skin). While it is generally true that we will have less subcutaneous fat the fitter we become (fitness is in a context, remember), there are counter-examples. Sumo is the best counter-example I have, where the best sumo-wrestlers have a considerable amount of subcutaneous fat. It is also possible to find cases where two people of equal fractions of body fat have quite differring fitness levels, or two people of nominally the same fitness level having quite different levels of fat within their body's.
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