I think this article omits the most important part of this subject, which is how to train for endurance whilst simultaneously training for strength in the most productive way.
I think today most of the people you're 'narrowcasting' to have accepted that diet controls bodyweight, and that a conditioning adaptation competes with a strength adaptation because recovery resources are finite and will serve one or the other. Of course there's value in re-stating these truths, but I think there's much more value in saying other things about conditioning. Starting Strength in general should address the topic of conditioning more often and in more detail - Jonathan Sullivan's lecture on conditioning and energy systems from 2017 is a good example of the kind of content which we could do with more of.
The reason for this is that a lot of people who come across the programme (including me) are already playing a sport and aren't going to abandon it completely for six months or more to do a novice linear progression by the book with no conditioning whatsoever. Here we're not talking about people who just need to be stronger and healthier in everyday life, for whom their ability to run a seven-minute mile with no training means they should ignore conditioning altogether, at least temporarily. Instead we're talking about people who are competitive athletes in some sense (perhaps even in the most restricted sense that they just want to go out and compete every now and then in local amateur events and do reasonably well).
The key questions here - which I have never seen addressed by SS in any form - are these: what kind of conditioning is least disruptive for strength training? And how can you schedule a conditioning and strength training programme so that they interfere with each other as little as possible?
Sullivan's lecture mentioned above makes the case that HIIT is a more comprehensive form of conditioning because more of the body's energy systems are taxed and to a greater extent, so you get more bang for your buck than doing long, slow distance (LSD). Applying that to my sport, rowing, suggests that the average amateur club rower spends far too much time doing LSD, which is a very popular training modality on the rowing machine, and not enough time doing HIIT (particularly early in the season), given that the races they aim to compete in tend to be 6-7-minute regatta sprints, or 15-20-minute time trials at most. But, of course, HIIT is highly productive because it's highly stressful, and at some point that stress is going to interfere with your progress in strength training regardless of how well you try to recover.
If I am rowing whilst strength training, then I am going to be doing some conditioning. Even if I am young, male, genetically gifted, sleeping 8 hours each night, and eating 8,000 calories and 200g of protein a day, optimising my training is still an important thing to do, and this is something I think you or SS in general should weigh in on because there is clearly some expertise amongst you (at least in Dr Sullivan if not in others) in this field. You have already told us in great detail how to optimise recovery for strength training. Now, how do we optimise our conditioning such that we minimise its impact on our strength training whilst still getting the benefits? I know that strength training will make me a faster rower. I also know that I need to condition myself on the rowing machine or in the boat, because rowing is an endurance sport and ultimately it takes more than the strength adaptation alone to be successful. And the reality of the situation is that, whether for a novice or an elite athlete, both the conditioning and the strength training are going to happen together
So, is intensive HIIT (e.g. 500m/1m:30-45s sprints) great rowing conditioning, but a substantially worse interference with strength training than LSD (e.g. 3x30 minutes continuous paddling with 30-60s breaks to drink water)? If you're going to 'do cardio on your off days,' should you move to advanced novice programming earlier to avoid getting stuck with your lifts? How quickly can you recover from HIIT compared with a Squat/Bench/Deadlift NLP workout if you're a novice with both? If you've been rowing for years and are well-conditioned but have never strength trained, how different should your training look when compared with someone who is going to take up rowing and strength training for the first time simultaneously? Furthermore, since increasing your bodyweight affects your power-to-weight ratio in the boat, how should you strike the balance between eating enough to recover and adapt from all this training whilst not gaining so much bodyfat that your weight-adjusted scores on the rowing machine start falling behind your weaker but lighter squadmates?
I think a discussion about this is worth podcast episode dedicated to it, because it's extremely important to anyone who wants to seriously integrate effective strength training into his sport, particularly an endurance sport which requires serious conditioning, and because it's a complex topic about combining two very different kinds of training modalities which I think almost no one properly understands.