If muscle damage were causal of hypertrophy we would expect to see high levels of hypertrophy in runners which isn’t true. There is the fact that anti-inflammatory drugs across 4 studies have been shown to likely have no effect on hypertrophy as well as the existence of BFR training which in itself is evidence that muscle damage is not required to gain muscle. In fact, highly damaging sessions such as those focused on going beyond failure and doing a lot of eccentric work (which is more damaging than concentric work) are not better, and may be worse, for hypertrophy.

Carl Juneau argues that peak tension is a more important factor for increasing muscle mass. A take away from this is that going through periods of strength training is likely beneficial because it allows the trainee to increase the load and therefore increase peak tension in a movement.