all you have to do is look at olympic athletes to see what does and doesnt work.
they never train sub maximal except for warmups, and dont engage in long, drawnout sessions.
I liked a lot of what you wrote, but I must pick at this:
1) It really depends on how you define volume. The Russian, Greek, Bulgarian, Cuban weightlifting programs were quite voluminous- They weren't high rep, but high set and varying intensity. A lot of these programs were split sessions also.
2) It depended on the age and training experience of the athlete. General training volume goes up as the athlete ages.
Also lots of work is still done in the 70-80% of 1rm range which I'd consider submaximal.
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The Chinese probably have the best weightlifting program in that they don't get wrapped up in such things. They simply take what's useful.