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This is indeed a massive question, but I'll venture a response:
I'll try to attack this in reverse, by first looking at high-volume programming and delineating the attributes that are most useful for a lifter in being successful with this approach. If you're going to run high-volume programming indefinitely--i.e. for longer than a single three-week cycle--the following may or may not be useful:
- Ability to recover. This goes without saying, and it includes 1.) uncommon commitment to recovery and 2.) work capacity. This is only possible psychologically for most people once there is something "at stake" in their training. Most casual trainees will not willingly eat a particular diet, be in early every night for a full night's sleep, and do all of the necessary preventative/recovery work to maximize their training, because such things require a strong commitment.
Work capacity takes years to develop, which is why most lifters on high-volume programs have considerable experience. Surviving the myriad potential overuse hiccups of such programming is made easier through lots of experience. This is I suppose true at a physiological level when you start to talk about tendon and ligament strength, bone density, etc.
- Technical proficiency. If a lifter's technique regularly breaks down in a fatigued state, one of two things will likely happen when training with high volume: the lifter will either work through and develop their technical weakness until it is no longer apparent, or (more likely), the lifter will get hurt.
- Technical efficiency. Efficiency could refer both to motor-pattern efficiency and rate of force development. Advanced lifters perform movements in a fast and efficient manner, and I believe that this in turn makes recovery easier for them because they don't accumulate the same level of fatigue, and that fatigue is evenly proportioned throughout major muscle groups. Take a slow-ish squatter who GMs out of the hole: run a high-volume squatting program and that lifter's lumbar will likely be fried early on. Fatigue accumulates, which causes the GMing to become more severe, which leads to more disproportionate fatigue, which leads to even slower, grinded reps, and so on. Lifters like this usually, from the logs I've read, either magically catch their second wind towards the end of the program and see the results of the training, or they get hurt.
Most intermediate lifters have obvious weaknesses in their strength curve, or become good at grinding out weights. I'm not the most experienced lifter, but my RPE@9 sets on the squat, bench press, and deadlift look very different from other intermediates in that I don't suffer the same level of slowdown or technical breakdown. That's not to say that my technique is perfect on these lifts, but I'm at least consistently bad in certain respects, and my technique does not deteriorate much as I fatigue.
So, if these are the qualities that one needs to take full advantage of high-volume training, then I would say that this is indeed the right time and the right occasion for me to start. Earlier in my lifting career, I didn't possess these qualities. Going through wave periodization and conjugate training helped me shore up weaknesses and improve rate of force development. And those years of training certainly benefited my work capacity. So I can't say for sure, but I feel like this is the right time for me to be turning to higher-volume training. In previous years, I'd probably be able to run a three-week cycle just fine, but I doubt I'd be able to repeat it, with success.
