https://www.cocoforcannabis.com/community/photons_corner/to-defoliate-or-not-to-defoliate/
Read this... and if you still want to defoliate... go for it, lol. There's no point in a conversation if you want to follow magic and conjecture of bro-science.
Bro science can sound "right," but is really just a poor extrapolation while ignoring existing knowledge and/or not supporting wild hypothesis with any evidence. "Sounds good" is as far as bro science ever gets, and it shouldn't even sound good if you have a bit of education (formal or not) under your belt on the subjects. We can't all learn everything. Sometimes we rely on those that learn about cars or plants etc... no one person has time to learn it all and this should not cause any feelings of insecurity, lol.
If you don't crowd the canopy, there's never a reason to remove leaves. If you have a ton of congestion and physically overlapping leaves, this is the fault of training or over-growing. You may need to remove a leaf or two in this instance, but the real fix is simply not putting yourself into that position in the future.
Even shielded leaves are value-added to the plant. They are not "sinks." If the plant doesn't shed them, keep those lower leaves, too. Leaves are 'lungs' and storage facilities. Removing shielded leaves is not value-added, either.