1.) No comment.
2.) True in a way, there is no reason to increase muscular size....rather, building efficient recruitment and rate of force development is what is important....and of course contractile protein strength.....which, for the most part, does not require that the body increase mass much.
3.) If increasing work was all that was important, than one could simply continue to add repetitions to his exercises and thus increase the amount of mechanical work per session. This theory breaks down as the training load intensity is reduced through acclimation, increased strength endurance, etc. For example, if you can curl a 50# barbell 10X today and curl it 50X at some point in the future, it does not necessarily mean that your arms will be as large as that of someone who can curl 250# 10X....and indeed, the amount of mechanical work is equal. In the preceding case, such high repetition training contributes to strength endurance....how far can you go with sarcoplasmic hypertrophy on 20 reps vs. 30? 30 vs 40? 40 vs 50? You see.....at some point, you cannot swell the bag up any further, it becomes necessary to thicken the contractile elements themselves in order to gain mass.
4.) Machines are less efficient in training. Not one machine that I can think of, aside from perhaps a high pulley, can duplicate a natural movement with load placed on the body. All machines either have a fulcrum, or a linear bearing or a fixed arc and are thus not natural movements. Its not simply a case where the meso-ites say "Machines suck", there are plenty of published works by very well respected authors regarding these very issues.....Bompa, Siff, et al.
5.) This topic warrants a very in-depth discussion but unfortunately, I do not have a couple of hours to rattle off on the keyboard. If you subscribe to the fitness/fatigue method of training, there is a training effect after each session (consider it a positive) with a corresponding debit in fatigue. After a relatively short period of time, this fatigue is reduced and the training effect is still positive. By training again, you build upon the training effect while simultaneously making another debit in the fatigue account. If this scenario is managed properly, through periodization methods, it is the most efficient method of training and I assure you that the method is used extensively in the training of world-class athletes. Bodybuilding suffers from a number of sociological issues....perhaps the mundane act of following a calendar week schedule is the greatest culprit, perhaps the lack of precise measurability is another factor (you cannot measure physique as easily as tonnage lifted, etc) . ....all told, recreational bodybuilding and fitness geekdom has acquired the belief that training 1x per week is all that is necessary....and it works for a good number of people, however, it is not the most efficient method of training. Barring use of dangerous anabolic steroids, many lose the majority of the training effect as a result of cortisol and inactivity between training sessions on certain muscle groups. It could be argued that the lumbar region and thighs warrant 5-7 days of recuperation between sessions and I certainly would not argue in that regard. However, I would argue that training the chest, shoulders, lats, calves, and arms once a week is less than optimum. Mind you, the president's council on physical fitness recommends 2 days of weight training for the whole body per week as a means of maintaining fitness. .....we know the government is stupid but even they caught on.
