Enough defoliation?

you probably would have removed vast majority of that at some point, but stripping it back this much is not a net-positve. i know some "methods" call for it, but that's some inductive reasoning. how much light is now passing through the canopy totally unused compared to before? how much less surface area is being struck by photons. the plant gets energy to build molecules from photosynthesis. It gets the building blocks from the atmospher (carbon) and the nutrients from roots. the same mass that goes in has to come out. the same energy needed for that growth to occur is directly proportional and must balance out on both ends too. Reducing energy reduces received potential growth. plus, leaves perform other functions like storage and transpiration. Let it grow out and slowly remove the most shielded leaves.. maybe some early lollipop with scrog, but only if you maintain a full canopy too. if not, wait 2-3 days, it doesn't take long. To put things in perspective, this too is not a huge net-loss. This plany will fill in those gaps within a week. you may even need to remove a few leaves here and there later on for airflow reasons - less is more still applies. doing things a bit more piecemeal also reduces stress on plants... if healthy and happy this also usually does not cause a problem. i've broken the "1/3rd" rule several times with no repercussions, lol. (never take off more than 1/3rd of the plant mass) so, even if you compared clones of photoperiods to try to see the difference i bet it'd be small - but with a big enough sample, you;d see statistically significant difference in yields... life is a chemical equation and it has to balance out.. creating a bottleneck or reducing energy potential is going to be very hard to overcome for a net positive result by improving something else related to the outcome by doing "it" whatver it may be. some of the methods out there are more about making someone feel a bit more involved than they actually are in the end result. A lot of stuff amounts to sophistry... sounds good but not quite true or 'best' to do.