You've mentioned how training aerobic and anaerobic are opposing, I was wondering to what extent would this apply? would that only apply once a beginner who's trained everything together hits a point were depending on what their goal is, they would have too put more time into one area in order to excel?
What about boxers and muay thai figthers that concurrently train both during camp? High volume of LISS (jogs, long runs) followed by Anerobic work.
I think we have to differentiate LISS and long runs.
LISS when used in the context of base building has an upper HR limit, usually 120-150bpm or using Maffetone Max aerobic HR. Usually with the goal of focusing on ventricular hypertrophy and a few other adaptations (increased use of fat as fuel source, more efficient mitochondria etc).
Long runs outside of a base building context don't need to adhere to a HR limit. You can go as fast as you want. They might not be the most efficient way to obtain that ventricular hypertrophy, but they provide a host of other benefits (speed, improved threshold, etc) that BB style LISS doesn't.
So with LISS for Base purposes, adding in sprint intervals (or anaerobic work) and such isn't efficient. For long runs after Base training, they're fine and probably provide benefits (fartleks, fun-runs etc).
So if you're training MT in Thailand for example and doing the morning hour long run, you're still getting a ton of aerobic benefit. In addition to the cardio you get during the afternoon pad sessions/bag work/sparring and whatnot. But it's not necessarily base building in the strictest sense if you're not adhering to a max HR.
Using the Thailand example, if you wanted to get serious, a more appropriate approach would be to spend a month or two doing doing a LISS Base training block, and then heading to Thailand. You'd be able to get the benefits of Base in isolation, and then switch over to faster long runs, speed work, pads, sparring etc.
All this is relative, if you've got a crappy aerobic system/shitty gas tank you might spend more time Base training before transitioning to speed/tempo work, if it's already decent or not an issue you might do very little (ie 4-6 weeks vs say 3 months).
Edit: to clarify when I use the term "Base Training" I'm referring to a period of isolated aerobic training with a Max Heartrate limit and a minimum number of sessions per week. The dose for the desired adaptation seems to be 3-7 sessions per week/minimum 30 minutes per session, for 5-8 weeks+. These runs wouldn't contain intervals or hills etc. just steady state/low intensity/without going over max HR.
