How true is this article?

[Jim Mills]

In an earlier article we concluded that muscles must be worked to failure if an adequate hypertrophic response is to occur. Whether this involves one or more sets is irrelevant as in either scenario the muscles must be worked to failure and beyond. This causes significant microscopic damage to the muscle tissues and it is during the period of recovery that protein synthesis undertakes the repair process that results in bigger muscle fibers.

But how long does this process take and when is it safe to expose those same muscles to further intensive exercise? Scientific studies suggest that muscle fiber degradation takes approximately five to seven days to repair and recover. Any further exposure of the affected muscle to intensive activity will interfere with the recovery process and actually prevent it from achieving maximum growth. However, using the muscle to assist in exercising other body parts or even taking part in low intensity aerobic exercise will not prevent recovery.

It follows therefore that each muscle group should be trained intensively only once each week in order to allow full recovery. This can be achieved by incorportating a split training regime that allows you to work out several times each week but still exercise each muscle group intensively only once every seven days.

[exnihilo]

Heh, that sounds like a HIT advocate trying to cherry pick scientific studies to support his (wrong) argument.

Empirical evidence alone disproves hit, not to mention that the scientific literature is also fairly firmly against most of the claims it makes.

[Dwight Schrute]

In an earlier article we concluded that muscles must be worked to failure if an adequate hypertrophic response is to occur. .

Wrong. I didn't bother to read the rest when the first sentence is completely false.

[CDB]

It is not necessary to work until failure to cause hypertrophy. Nor is it necessary to wait 7 days until training the same muscle again. The primary factors in hypertrophy are time under tension and the load used on the muscle. Going to failure has more to do with exhausting your central nervous system than damaging your muscles. However, if someone wants to train until failure they'd better only train each muscle group once a week, because if they try to do it more often they'll start overtraining real soon and hurt themselves, which isn't conducive to gaining muscle. Nor is the less than optimal condition your their is in from training frequently along those lines conducive to hypertrophy.

[Magickk]

I hear a lot of people who have great results training each body part once a week... There has to be something about that philosophy that works at least a little bit.

[Dwight Schrute]

It does work for certain muscle groups (larger ones) but it also depends on what type of training you do. I have had great success with training certain bodyparts once per week.

[bighawk]

so some of you train a bodypart more than once a week? which ones?

[Jim Mills]

so some of you train a bodypart more than once a week? which ones?

I have been doing a full body workout for the past 4 months 3 days a week until my gains seem to stop... I just started doing a 3 day split, Tue: Chest/biceps... Thu: Back/Tri... Sat: Legs/shoulders.... Off Sunday and Monday... Doing abs on Wed & Fridays..... I was doing 2 Excersises per muscle group on the full body workout and never really got sore, 3 sets 12/10/8 reps..... With this new program, I did my Chest & Biceps Tuesday and was sore as hell for a day and a half. 4 different Excersises for my Chest and 3 for my Biceps. 4 sets 10/8/6/4 reps, with the first one being my warm up rep. I'm also adding weight to each rep. I think I may see great gains with this new approach.... More muscle tear and more time to heal.

[Lean One]

so some of you train a bodypart more than once a week? which ones?

My split is aranged so Maijor groups like chest, back and legs get hit once/ wk. Bis and tris get hit twice. Once directly once through compound movements. Shoulders have a day to themselves, but also get indirect work throughout the week.