So, I have something that I want to try, and was wondering if you have tried this yourself, or know someone who has. Because neuro adaptations take place through movement practice, and because my goal is size and strength, I thought about a new program that I will try and report on. The idea is to work every muscle group with 1 set of 12-15 reps to failure every day. The weight used is a typical warm-up weight, so it’s just that 1 set and done. Each day would be a different exercise. The thing that would seem to dampen the goal is low volume. 7 sets per week does seem low to me. So, to make up for this, once per week will have 2 opposing muscle groups taken to 8-10 sets. Each group would have its own day for this, such as Monday for thighs, Tuesday for chest and back, etc… So, please give me some feedback if possible, and thank you.
What stack you gonna be running
I have not done it “directlu” in that I never tried it the way you want to: one exercise per muscle group. But I did two things that can help me comment:
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I competed in olympic lifting for 6 years, the olympics do involve the whole body and my workouts were, in a sense, whole body workouts because I used one upper body strength lift per session (normally push press or military press). Along with squatting pretty much every day and doing clean or snatch (or both) daily. And I recovered. Most olympic lifters train that way… maybe not 6-7x a week but a good 4 or 5 x a week.
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When I want to correct a weakness rapidly, I train it every day. And I do see faster growth.
And I personally believe that a higher training frequency is better for hypertorphy in the natural trainee provided that you reach the training threshold that will force adaptation. When you train a muscle often, yoiu must reduce volume accordingly. So you need to increase the intensity to reach the threshold at which you force adaptation and simply doing one set of 12-15 reps might not be enough (that’s why in my "Best Damn…"series I use intensity techniques).
If you want to experiment, go for it. I personally would not 'like" training like you described and it would kill my motivation and focus. But if you can do it, let us know how it worked.
I have gone with a HFT approach for a while now and have doubts whether such low volume would be optimal, and also whether training to true failure so often would result in neural fatigue. For the former, you want a program that equates to your normal weekly volume. For the latter, HIT stalwarts like Arthur Jones would not advocate training to failure so frequently. It sounds like you have a foot in both camps. If it works, do report back.
Oh yes, I do have a foot in both camps. I’ve bought into failure training so much, I feel dampened by it. When I was making the most gains, I was doing 8 sets for 1 exercise for each muscle group every other day. I trained with my 10 rep max for every set.