@ovrclockd I mentioned the extreme because it’s the most obvious example of the general trend.
If you say “more volume is better” that means you should use lower weight and higher reps, because on every single exercise if you divide the weight by X you’re going to be able to do way more than X times the reps; half the weight (divide by 2) you’re going to do way more than twice the reps, if 100 is your 1RM just going down to 80 (divide by 1.25) you’re gonna do way more than 1.25 reps, probably somewhere around 10. These are not extreme examples, but they still point to the exact same thing I stated in my original comment.
Using this definition of volume makes it completely useless because if you then say “maximize volume”, even if you add all these restrictions “only within this rep range” “only this number of sets” no matter how you’re narrowing it down what it will always boil down to is “do as little weight
as you’re allowed by the other rules for
as many reps as you’re allowed by the other rules for
as many sets as you’re allowed by the other rules and go as far away from failure
as you’re allowed by the other rules so you can get as many reps in on the next set. Who is that helping? The only thing it’s doing is telling people to train at the top of the recommended rep ranges with as little intensity as is recommended, now you’ve just removed the rep/intensity ranges and just have one flat number. That’s the one thing you’ve accomplished, and it’s not a good thing.
The only somewhat useful definition of volume I’ve heard is simply “number of working sets”, it’s barely useful as it’s really just shorthand for “number of working sets” but at least it isn’t counterproductive like weight x reps x sets