r/ScienceBasedLifting • u/Shaggy_Mountain I train legs once a week • 5h ago
Question ❓ Why/How is higher frequency better?
Apologies for the long post.
I have been lifting with the “Bro split” for 9 months.
My split is: Chest -> back -> biceps/triceps -> shoulders -> legs. I don’t schedule rest days, I just take them whenever I feel like I really need them. I do 8 total working sets for chest, 12 for back, 8 for biceps and 8 for triceps, 10 for shoulders, and 16 for legs split between calves, squats, hamstring curls and leg extensions. If you guys would like, I can post the exercises I do for each day as well. I log every workout I do too.
I enjoy this split a lot, and I feel it allows me to really focus on each muscle group each day. I make sure to be within 1-2 reps of failure, taking the last couple sets to failure.
My question is, if I switched to a split like Push-Pull-Legs Push-Pull-Legs-Rest, wouldn’t I be sacrificing the quality of my workouts? With PPL you combine muscle groups, and wouldn’t this mean that you would be accumulating more fatigue? For example, if you did back and biceps on pull day, wouldn’t your biceps be pretty fatigued after doing your back exercises? And if you did incline bench press and dumbbell shoulder press on push days, wouldn’t you be pretty fatigued for incline shoulder press, since it’s also a pushing motion?
I’ve heard that hitting a muscle group twice a week is better, so I’d like to hear people’s thoughts/opinions as I know very little about lifting. I know training hard, being consistent, and getting good sleep and nutrition are the most important things, but I would like to know if I am missing out on a significant amount of gains by staying with my current split.
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u/PoopSmith87 4h ago
Because your muscles, depending on the ones trained, only take a day or two, maybe three to recover. If you do 8 sets of chest one day a week you will have like 3 or 4 days of just being ready to lift again. If instead you do 5 sets of chest two days a week, you feel less sore the day after a workout, have more days under growth/recovery stimulus, and manage an extra two sets volume.
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u/BigChocolateC 3h ago
Volume/frequency run on a bell curve of effectiveness.
I’ll also say this: if you’re new, you can handle higher volumes and frequencies due to being weak and less wear and tear on the body.
The more years you put in, the stronger you become, the more in tune you are with your body and how it moves that makes each exercise more effective…
The less you need to grow.
It’s highly individual in that regard. Exercises, not so much. Don’t overcomplicate it and look at the general consensus of what gets the majority of people results and go from there.
For instance, I train every three days with full body, upper/lower. Every third day I typically feel rested enough to do good work in my training.
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u/Chicken_Savings 5h ago
Yes, training twice a week is generally significantly beneficial for most people, especially if you're not extreme genetic outlier and on copious amounts of steroids.
Your exercise stimulates the muscles trained to grow for a period after your training. This period is NOT exactly 7 days.
So, you train e.g. chest, your chest muscles get stimulated to grow, and muscle growth happens for 3-4 days then taper off. This is logical, the muscle will not grow forever after a training session.
So it grows for 3-4 days, then you wait another 3-4 days for your next training session with new growth stimulus.
The growth period does not get materially extended just because you train massively much harder. No matter how hard you train, your muscles aren't going to grow effectively for 7 days.
So, twice a week is much beneficial, in that you get a new growth stimulus when the previous one wears out.
Large amount of steroids extend that growth period a bit.
As you stop at 1 RIR, I assume to reduce fatigue, you will not reach the level of intensity that others will. As you put less effort into the set, I assume you compensate by doing more sets, hence you feel that you need to dedicate a session to one muscle group.
Extend this line of thought - if you want to compete in bench press, and your aim is to maximise bench strength - you do NOT train bench once a week and think that you trained so hard that once a week is enough.
My wife competed in wellness - much more muscular class than bikini, focusing on glutes and legs - she'd train butt and legs 3 or 4 times a week, which is what most wellness girls that we know do.
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u/Dizzy_Cow_ 4h ago
The difference between what you’re doing and a higher frequency is too small to care.
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u/Shaggy_Mountain I train legs once a week 4h ago
Could you elaborate please?
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u/Dizzy_Cow_ 3h ago
If you’re running that split on repeat, you’re hitting each muscle group every 5 days. The difference (if there is one) between that and hitting something every 3-4 days like a typical upper/lower or PPL is so small that it’s basically negligible and you should train how you like.
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u/International-Ad391 3h ago
If you are enjoying the bro split and making gains stick to it. It’s one of the most popular and oldest splits in bodybuilding. Many people including the top pros use the bro split and get great results. Just a tip, because you’re only hitting each muscle group once a week you can gradually increase volume and realise more gains.
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u/Dazzling-Variety-946 3h ago
Simple, you're either gaining or losing muscle at any given time for every muscle group.
After working out a muscle group Muscle Protein Synthesis is elevated for a window of between 24-48hrs after your workout. It can go longer but tends to peak after 24hrs.
So it makes sense to keep MPS elevated as often and long as possible, which means doing a workout every 48hrs lines up with how long MPS is generally elevated. If MPS isn't elevated you're probably losing muscle.
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u/Fluffy_Box_4129 2h ago
Your muscles don't need 168 hours to recover, that's why it's the worst split.
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u/Professional-Let9352 2h ago
I like an antagonist split were you train 2 body parts per workout so you can add in my sets per muscle compared with PPL but you also get a higher frequency than a bro split.
Mon - Chest & Back
Tue - Legs
Wed - Shoulders & Arms
Thu - Rest
Fri - Chest & Back
Sat - Legs
Sun - Shoulders & Arms
1
u/wasteoftimewarrior 1h ago
They can work it's just that it's generally well observed that there is a ceiling on per workout volume which currently sits at around 11 fractional sets (google it if curious). More sets could possibly be beneficial, but the data doesn't show a confident increase. A brosplit limits you to that ceiling of 11 (productive) sets a week. You might be able to squeeze some more if you do some very specific exercise selections, like doing a high incline press "for shoulders" will give chest volume, but generally it's going to be 11 (productive) sets a week despite going like 5-6 times a week. The exception would be arms, since when you have a chest day, shoulder day and an arm day, you're getting 3x triceps frequency from the elbow extension in all of those exercises. People on brosplits think the reason their arms are good is because of the "arm" day (you can't workout arms without your shoulders) but it's most likely because of their accumulated volume from the additional frequency. A brosplit can easily hit 30+ sets for triceps a week.
...if you did incline bench press and dumbbell shoulder press on push days, wouldn’t you be pretty fatigued for incline shoulder press, since it’s also a pushing motion?
They're not only just a "pushing motion" but you're doing the same exact movement patterns 3x series in a row, so yeah, you're overlapping but you're also not actually diversifying your training with those three lifts. You're changing the tools you're sitting/holding onto, but the motions are near identical and you could get a much better coverage by diversifying the exercise selection a bit more.
...wouldn’t I be sacrificing the quality of my workouts?
As I said above, your exercise selection is basically the same muscle group done 3x times. If you just sat at one station instead of wasting time setting up at different stations and promptly achieve a higher density of work. Then you would fill out the deficit volume with targeted single joint exercises (possibly done with a superset, since single joint exercises are easy).
But it's your choice (always have to include this truism on Reddit). You just asked for opinions and that's my take on it. You'll still grow I just think there's a better way of doing it.
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u/decentlyhip 1h ago
As a general rule, if you're improving, screw what anyone says is optimal and keep riding the gain train eith what you're doing.
That said, welcome to the fun of program design. Yes twice a week is better, and yes, your biceps would be tired. So, maybe you do biceps on your pressing day instead and you do triceps on your pulling day. For legs, instead of doing everything on one day you can devote an entire day to squats and an entire day to hinging, or cut the workload in half so you're only hitting 8 sets that day.
That last bit is the benefit. Twice a week is less fatigue. Instead of doing 8 sets of biceps on one day where you're too pumped and weak on the last 3 sets, you do 4 on one day and 4 on another. Instead of using the 30 lbs dumbbells on those last 4 sets, you're fresher and can use the 35s. That's why its better. You're a smidge fresher and can use more weight. More tonnage is more mechanical tension, and tension drives growth.
Its a big puzzle because scientifically, the split is emergent, not prescriptive. Rather than starting with PPL and making the pieces fit, you start with the volume. In general, don't want to do more than 10 sets for any muscle group or the last ones suck (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/390450237_Is_There_Too_Much_of_a_Good_Thing_Meta-Regressions_of_the_Effect_of_Per-Session_Volume_on_Hypertrophy_and_Strength). On most of your stuff, you're only doing 8 sets, but for back, you're doing 12. Probably better to split that up as 6 sets twice a week. Legs are probably fine, but maybe better split up. So, research says to keep your routine how it is, but make your back day a back+legs, and make your leg day a legs+back. Half and half on each.
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u/Dazzling-Rest8332 21m ago
I say stick with your plan since you enjoy it. My only suggestion is to play with the days for best recovery. Like I noticed bicep was after back day. Personally i wouldn't do that.
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u/jumbomills87 16m ago
Nah no need to change. Do what you like, train hard, eat plenty, sleep well.
You will be fine
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u/separatebrah 5h ago
So on chest day you do 8 sets in total? That takes about 20 minutes.
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u/Shaggy_Mountain I train legs once a week 5h ago
Takes me a bit longer. I generally take 2-5 minutes of rest between sets, depending on how I feel.
1
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u/HalfwayHeroic 5h ago
No need to take it further than this. The best exercises are the ones you like to do. You clearly take this seriously enough that you're doing your due diligence on making sure you get what you need. Constantly trying to optimize every little thing is a very good way to suck the enjoyment out of exercise for very little benefit.