John, I repeat again : are you able to give some name of athletes IN TOP 30 IN THE WORLD who achieved their results with LESS than 180 km per week during the Fundamental Period ?
Are you able to give me the name of some athletes IN TOP 30 IN THE WORLD who don't use a periodization including (and starting) with the Fundamental Period, for you useless ?
Don't talk about fried air : coaching is something PRACTICAL, not THEORICAL, and we have to see HOW the best results have been achieved.
And about high volume and high intensity, what you say is completely wrong : statistically the percentage of injuries is very much higher with athletes using high intensity WITHOUT high volume, because the main reasons of injuries are in the CONCENTRATION of the intensity that needs more recovery for producing results without injuries.
We haver to look at the way for building a career. Everybody needs 7-10 years for building his "Aerobic House", and for doing this, during that period has to increase gradually the volume, year after year, till the normal volume used by all the best athletes in the World (150-170 km for specialists of 1500m, 170-200 for 5000/10000m, 180-240 for HM and Marathon runners).
Inside the volume, we have some improvement maintaining the same "internal load" during the Fundamental Period, and a further improvement during the Specific Period when athletes assemble the qualities they have in order to prepare the performance (in this case, looking at the "external load").
Internal load means the level of effort and doesn't depend on factors you can't control : for example, you can use a same level of effort running 10 km in 30' in bad weather conditions (cold, rain, wind) and in 29' in perfect conditions, these two performances are different if we look at the "external" result, but their stimulus on the body is the same.
External load means to use exactly the speed you want to prepare for the performance. If the goal is to run 10000m in 28', this means a speed of 2'48" per km, and this IS MATHEMATIC. Differently from what happens during the Fundamental Period, in this case, if for some reason isn't possible to run at the precise speed, we have to stop the session, because if we don't adapt the body and the mind to run at the speed of our target, we are not able to optimize the training carried out before.
We need to build the performance in precise way, without giving space to any casuality,
If you want to build a house, the first point is to know how much money you can spend, and if you are an athlete, the money is your talent. Some amateur has the talent for a house of one or two floors, Haile, Kenenisa and Cheptegei have talent for a skyscraper ; but, in any case, the first step is to buy the material for building the house. During the Fundamental Period, we buy the material, working for improving all the qualities (stength, general resistance, short speed, ability, mental concentration, rapidity). At the end of the Fundamental Period, we have to analyze how much material we have, and we have to change our training phylosophy : we have to work for assembling all the qualities in the correct way, in order to build THE PERFORMANCE.
This process continues every year, alternating periods for buying new material, and periods for using this material in order to build a new floor.
If you don't grow as volume during the period necessary for building your aerobic house, simply you don't buy new material, and are no more able to improve.
All the athletes who had a long career were athletes using high volume, and achieved great results because, inside and together high volume, step by step were able to raise the intensity.