I wouldn't assume that muscle soreness is necessary to increase strength. Why are you assuming this? Did you read research that indicated this correlation? Let's assume for a moment that muscle soreness is necessary to increase strength. Would you correlate severe post-training soreness with incredible strength gains?
I do not believe that post-training muscle soreness is a "scientific"
measure of effective strength training. For grins, let's assume that you are a professional football player. One of your goals is to increase your strength so that you are stronger than your opponent. Sounds like a reasonable
goal, right? Now, using the belief that post-training muscle soreness
is necessary to increase strength, you may be inclined to get as sore
as possible. Again, I am assuming here that you are correlating
muscle soreness with strength gains. Now let's pick an exercise for
this story. How about squats? Have you ever performed squats in such
a training method that you could not walk for a week afterwards? I
did in my younger days. I would get so sore that I could barely walk. I would get sore that I could see a 100 dollar bill on the ground and keep
walking because I was too sore to bend my legs to snatch it off the
ground!
Now, based on this level of soreness, and using the
soreness-strength correlation, you would assume that the
strength training method was correct. Ah, but now I throw a wrench in
the gears of your logic. How effective do you think you would be on
the football field if you were as sore as I just described? Do you
think you could run? How could you run when you can barely walk?
So what's the point of my story? It's simple: Don't equate
post-training muscle soreness with effective strength training. I
have been active in wrestling, judo, running, powerlifting, etc. I
train in a manner that I believe is scientific. I would never train in
a manner that left me too sore to perform at my peak. Instead, I rely
on my training logs to answer the following questions:
1. How frequently do I need to train to maximize my strength gains?
2. How many sets do I need to perform to maximize my strength gains?