From my reading I've come to the opposite conclusion. HIIT is counterintuitively MORE effective at aerobic development than aerobic exercise itself.
- https://www.wikiwand.com/en/High-intensity_interval_training...
wikipedia saying that HIIT increases VO2 max over effectively over long term moderate level training.
- https://research.tees.ac.uk/en/publications/effectiveness-of...
the associated source to the wiki section.
- https://greatist.com/fitness/whats-best-way-build-endurance#...
An article about the "best" way to improve VO2 max.
- https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/1/10/18148463/hi...
This one hits the nail in the head with cited sources. Quote: "Reviews of the research have come to similar conclusions: Interval routines lead to greater gains in VO2 max compared with other forms of training in a shorter period of time."
- https://time.com/4893161/hiit-high-intensity-interval-traini...
another one with cited sources and quotations. Quote: "We now have more than 10 years of data showing HIIT yields pretty much the exact same health and fitness benefits as long-term aerobic exercise, and in some groups or populations, it works better than traditional aerobic exercise."
The whole "dead end" thing is admittedly something I did not know about. If you have sources on that I would be interested in reading it. Admittedly science is about observing things from different angles, and many angles of observations tell different aspects of the truth that can be conflicting, so I won't discount any conflicting scientific experiments you send me.
Anecdotally I've tried long distance running alone (5 miles 5x a week) before I started the current regime I've been doing for a decade. The results were night and day. 6 months of long distance training from a sedentary lifestyle yielded minimal results when compared to people younger than me (I was 26 at the time and comparing myself to people that were 20). When I started interval training, in 3 months I was outpacing them.
The metric for comparison was an exercise completely unrelated to sprinting or jogging. It was alpine hiking. In 3 months I went from unable to beat my friend hiking up mount baldy in LA county to leaving him in the dust going up Mt. Whitney.
>there's no way HIIT is better in the long term or we'd see athletes training that way.
Both from what I read and from some professional athletes and coaches, I hear that HIIT is the primary form of effective development of VO2 max. Professional athletes do train this way. I'm definitely interested in your sources though.