I think you're overestimating how hard athletes push the boundary of what they're capable of during training: professional athletes are very careful not to overtrain, as that inevitably leads to injury.
That said, I'm not sure we're completely disagreeing, perhaps it's more semantics than anything else... but my definition of intensity also includes a time factor - and a professional athlete has loads of rest time available, something a lot of (most?) tech workers don't seem to have.
There are some sample times here (no guarantees of accuracy, but they seem in line with what I've read previously in interviews), the highest seems to be about 40hrs/week:
That said, I'm not sure we're completely disagreeing, perhaps it's more semantics than anything else... but my definition of intensity also includes a time factor - and a professional athlete has loads of rest time available, something a lot of (most?) tech workers don't seem to have.
There are some sample times here (no guarantees of accuracy, but they seem in line with what I've read previously in interviews), the highest seems to be about 40hrs/week:
http://www.timeout.com/london/events/fitness-tips-from-olymp...
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080908091244AA...
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130115143443AA...