Learning your tool, keeping it sharp, and reading the wood is more important than tool selection. It's like chainsaws, a guy who knows how to fell and buck and keep a sharp chain will get more done at the end of the day running some homerenter class saw than a noobie with the newest fancy pro saw.
all axes and mauls swing different, they just do. there is no single technique that works with all those tools.
If you can swing fast and have good aim, you can get by with a lighter splitting axe. Same kinetic energy to the wood as a heavier one, swung slower.
Personally, I have better aim with lighter splitting axes, mostly because I learned, and learned fast, how to split wood with a lightweight limbing axe.. I own a small variety of splitting tools and usually use all of them processing wood, and then there's noodling once it really gets hard going.
Wayyy back in the day when I worked for some firewood guys, they wanted me to use a monster maul..it busts wood, but shazam, I could only swing it for a little while, went back to my light axe and developed technique, and kept up with the big guys splitting with the monster maul.
When you are a little guy competing against big guys in a physical labor world, you have to learn finesse and technique over brute grunt power.
I own and use an original fiskars supersplitter, which is my fav I have ever used, a TSC generic maul, a husky/wetterlings splitting axe, then sledge and wedges. I use them all. Zombie apocalypse hits, I am grabbing the fiskars and doing my mini HO scale annoyed Conan routine...
