To each his own bro. I'm not a small guy and I've been training a body part once per week for over 20 years. As far as legs go, again they are not small and I rarley go below 15 reps on anything. Now, the two quotes by you below are just dead wrong.
"once per week isnt often enough" "if you never do low reps you wont gain strength optimally and thus wont grow optimally" (pure balogna)
once per week just isnt optimal, thats all. your muscle only grows for 2-3 days after you train it.
and not doing low reps isnt optimal either. you will get bigger faster by incorporating low reps. now, drug intake and genetics determine your maximum muscular potential.. and one could reach their full potential by only dong high reps and only training once a week. but it will take longer than if they were to train more optimally. same end result just get there quicker by doing things better.
It is my belief, and I got this from A. Jones, that as long as you are doing something that is already easy it will do very little or nothing to stimulate and adaptive response. To me that makes intuitive sense. As long as you do 8 reps at 205lbs never trying for the 9th rep what reason does your body have to adapt and get stronger and therefore bigger.
Tbombz doesn't even believes this as he believes in progressive over load. It doesn't matter if that over load is an additional rep at the same weight or the same reps at a heavier weight.
there is nothing special about reaching failure. what makes a muscle grow is time under tension and progressive overload. over working a muscle by pushing it to failue repeatedly only inhibits your bodies ability to grow as it has to deal with the damage caused by those sets. one set to failure is ok and can work but the idea is to get your muscle able to lift heavy weight for a bunch of sets in multiple rep ranges. whats going to be bigger, a muscle that can do one set to failure at 10 reps with 300lbs or a muscle that can do 10 easy sets of 6 with 300lbs. the muscle capable of doing multiple sets will be bigger than the one which can only do one set.
also, and this is a key point, just because your not pushing your muscle to the point of failure, does not mean the weight was easy to lift or that your muscle hasnt been taxed/stimulated. every single time you rep a weight you are stimulating growth. more reps without over training= more growth. the idea is to push yourself, lift heavy, do a mixture of rep ranges, keep good form, but not to tax your cns and muscle fibers to the point where they have to focus on repairing damage instead of growing.
