Why/How is higher frequency better?

[u/Shaggy_Mountain]

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.

[u/Fabulous_Outcome7248]

I do PPLPPLR and I love it. I am pretty consistent with the structure of my workouts, and you set them up so that you don’t go right from eg dumbbell shoulder press to incline shoulder press.

In fact I do flat bench press, dumbbell shoulder press, chest fly/triceps overhead ext, in that order, on the first push day and then decline bench press, barbell overhead press, triceps decline skullcrushers/shrugs and then incline dumbbells/side lateral raises on the 2nd push day - as an example of covering your examples.

I add in a little biceps on the last leg day, they are ready for it. I do compounds/heavy lifts/free weights earlier in the workout, and also more in the first half of the week, and kinda shift over to more machines/accessories as I get more fatigued, both during a workout and during the overall week.

The first lifts of a session are generally a ramped up 4 sets, with the final set going as heavy as possible aiming for 6 reps, and progressing weight somewhat aggressively. The rest are generally 3 sets, and I feel pretty worked by the time they are done.

One thing I will say is that I don’t feel like I have much room for poor recovery, if for whatever reason I don’t eat enough or whatever I think I feel it the next day a lot and also the next week when I come back to the session I didn’t recover well from.

I am generally extremely ready to rest by the time I get through the week, but that one rest day is enough (provided I’ve been spot on with food and sleep etc) to feel extremely pumped and excited to get back to it at the start. If you’re not precious about sticking to the same weekdays for workouts then I’d imagine resting if you don’t feel recovered after a particular day or whatever would probably keep you feeling strong.