Ep. #227: The Definitive Guide to Full-Body Workouts

[00:00:00] When you try to string together a lot of heavy compound weightlifting in one workout, you just lose steam quickly and the quality of your workout just gets worse and worse with every set.

If you want to know the pros and cons of full body workouts and also how to get the most out of these workouts, then you want to listen to this podcast. Now, choosing a workout routine can be a daunting task. I do understand this. You have to decide how many days you want to train. You have to decide which muscle groups you want to work on, which days.

And you have to decide which muscle groups you want to emphasize over others, which exercises you’re going to be doing in each workout, how many sets and reps you’re going to be doing and how to program your progressive overload and on. So it’s really no wonder that so many people find weightlifting overwhelming and confusing and why [00:01:00] they often go with the simplest option, which is full body training.

Now, most. Full body workouts entail just a handful of exercises. They don’t take very much time and they can get a little bit long, but usually looking at an hour to an hour and a half. And they also hit every major muscle group in the body and also they work the most popular ones like starting strength or strong lifts, five by five, or the Texas method produce great results.

There’s no question. And so when you look at it like that, it sounds like full body workouts are a 360 degree win, right? Not necessarily. The long story short here is yes, you can build a great physique with full body workouts, but you’re probably going to get there faster and you’re probably going to get better results with a different approach.

And this is especially true if you’ve already been lifting weights for quite a bit. And if your [00:02:00] primary focus is not maximizing lower body And in this podcast, you are going to learn why by the end of this podcast, you’re going to know what full body workouts are, you’re going to know who they do and do not work well for and how to get the most out of a full body workout routine.

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All righty. That is enough shameless plugging for now. At least let’s get to the show. All right. So let’s start at the top here. What is a full body workout? A full body workout is one that trains all of the major muscle groups in your body in just one workout. So instead of organizing your workouts by major muscle group, for example, you might have an upper body day or a push day or a chest and triceps day.

You just train all the major muscle groups in every workout. Now to accomplish this, most full body workouts are built around a handful of compound exercises like the squat, bench press, deadlift, and overhead press. [00:05:00] And that’s a big part of why they’re so popular. They keep it simple and they focus on exercises that provide the most bang for your buck, so to speak.

Two other reasons that these workouts are popular is they don’t place great demands on your time and they are very simple to program and they are very simple to use. To follow most of these types of workout routines entail just three 60 to 90 minute workouts per week, usually on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday type of schedule.

And some programs repeat the same workout every session, which is of course dead simple while others have you alternate between two or three different workouts in a set fashion. Hey, quickly before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth.

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Okay. So let’s take our medicine early here. Let’s get the negative gets the bad out of the way. So what are the problems with full body workouts? Because so far, obviously these types of workouts are looking pretty appealing and rightfully they are simple. They are easy to understand and they do work.

That said, they are not the end all be all for everyone. And for two specific reasons, one, they don’t lend themselves well to heavy compound weightlifting, at least not across the board. And two, they don’t allow for much flexibility in your volume and your frequency for [00:07:00] your individual muscle groups. So they’re hard to really customize for your physique and for what you want to achieve.

Now, the first point, the heavy compound weightlifting point is pretty simple. If you’re familiar with my work, where I stand on both exercise choices and preferred rep ranges. In case you don’t know, I believe that natural weightlifters who are looking to gain muscle and strength as quickly as possible should focus on compound exercises.

So exercises that involve multiple Joints, multiple muscle groups, and they should also be focusing on moving heavy weights. They should be focusing on using heavy loads. So let’s say anywhere from 75 to 90 percent of your one rep max. And it took me a while to learn this. I spun my wheels for many years, about seven years or so before I really got serious about educating myself as to the science of muscle building and the.

Science of strength [00:08:00] progression. And one of the key lessons I learned and something that I’ve not looked back from since is this point that as a natural weightlifter, your number one goal is increasing whole body strength over time. And the absolute best way to do that is to work on your compound lifts and to lift heavy weights.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t work in higher rep work, and you actually should, especially as you become an intermediate and advanced weightlifter. But if you want to continue progressing, regardless of where you’re at in your overall progression in your journey, then you really want to be focusing on the heavy compound weightlifting.

Now if we are to apply that philosophy to full body workouts, then that means we are going to have some grueling work ahead of us. That means that we are going to be doing some heavy squats, some heavy deadlifts, some heavy presses back to back in each workout several times a week. And while that might sound reasonable on paper.

[00:09:00] And while you might have the willpower to give it a go, you will quickly realize that you have committed to essentially the hardest workouts you could ever imagine. And not in the good way, but in the this shit is seriously going to kill me kind of way. The bottom line is when you try to string together a lot of heavy compound weightlifting in one workout, you just lose steam quickly and the quality of your workout just gets worse and worse with every set.

For example, if you started your full body workout with heavy deadlifts and then you moved on to some heavy bench pressing, you would likely find that you can’t press as much weight as you could if you started the workout. On the bench. And if you did that on the next workout, then you’d likely find that you couldn’t pull as much on the deadlift in the second slot as you could in the first slot in the first workout.

And then you’d realize that those are the first two exercises in your workout. You realize that you have more work to do, and it might include some [00:10:00] squatting. It might include some overhead pressing or some barbell rowing. And ultimately, you’re What you would learn is that it just gets harder and harder to progress on these exercises that come later in your workouts because of how fatigued you are from what you did earlier in your workouts.

And this is true of any workout, of course, but the later stuff in other workout splits, like an upper lower split or a push pull legs or a body part split is. Usually less taxing because, they are isolation exercises. They are assistance work as it’s called, not major compound movements for other primary muscle groups.

And that mounting progressive fatigue that you experience, particularly in full body workouts is problematic because ultimately it does hinder your ability. To maximally overload your major muscle groups, which ultimately makes it harder to gain muscle and strength. And it also makes for some pretty grueling workouts that you might dread.

And when you are showing up to the [00:11:00] gym, really not looking forward to your workouts. Chances are you’re going to give them less than a hundred percent, or you’re going to start looking for reasons to skip, or maybe you’re just going to stop going altogether. Now you might be thinking that you could get around this limitation by simply reducing the amount of heavy compound reps that you do in each of your workouts.

And you could just use lighter loads for some of the stuff toward the end. And while this does work to a point, And I think it’s actually necessary if you’re going to be doing full body workouts. In the end, I would still argue that it produces inferior results to other splits that allow for more flexibility and more specificity in terms of how often you’re training each of the major muscle groups, how intensely you’re training them.

So how heavy the weights are and how many reps you’re doing the volume for each major muscle group per week. And that brings me to the second limitation. of full body training that I mentioned earlier, which is that it doesn’t [00:12:00] allow for much flexibility and volume and frequency by muscle group. The reality is that we can only push, pull and squat heavy weights several times per week by keeping our volume relatively low, which isn’t optimal for maximizing muscle growth.

Unfortunately for us, natural weightlifters, we can’t have the best of everything. We can’t have All of the cakes and eat them too. We can’t program for high intensity, high volume and high frequency without eventually running into problems related to overtraining or simply getting hurt. And this is why a well designed workout program not only emphasizes heavy compound weightlifting for each of the major muscle groups, it also puts you in a.

Sweet spot. So to speak in terms of total weekly volume. Now, how you reach that volume in terms of the number of workouts. In terms of workout frequency, whether you’re training muscle groups once, twice, three times, whatever per week is of secondary importance. The primary importance [00:13:00] is getting in that volume at the right intensity.

Now, in terms of what that sweet spot is. I don’t know of any studies that just give a definitive one size fits all answer as to just how hard and how much you can train every week to maximize your results. And there, there may never be, but we do know that optimal volume is modified by intensity, which means that the heavy, the weights are the lower the volume needs to be.

But there are other factors that come into play. In terms of volume, including diet, training, experience, sleep, hygiene, genetics, and more. So all of these things mean that some people can handle more volume than less, given a specific level of intensity, given a specific load in terms of one rep max. Now, with all that said, there is enough clinical and anecdotal evidence available to give some sensible guidelines on all of this.

For example, if we look [00:14:00] at a rather large and extensive review of weightlifting studies that was conducted by scientists at Goetheburg University, I think it’s Goetheburg or Goetheburg, probably Goetheburg. Anyways, their research found that when you’re using weights in the range of 60 to 85 percent of your one rep max, optimal volume appears to be in the range of about 30 to 60 reps per major muscle group.

per workout when two to three workouts are performed each week. So if we boil that down, what we get is a total weekly volume, somewhere between 60 and 180 reps per major muscle group per week. And as you can guess, the heavier you’re training, The fewer reps you can and should be doing every week. So the closer you would be toward the 60, if you’re doing, 60 reps a week, if you’re doing a lot of heavy training and if you’re doing a lighter training, so something, about 70 to 75 percent of one rep max, just to put it in perspective is let’s say eight to 12 reps [00:15:00] and 80 to 85 percent of one rep max is let’s say four to six reps.

reps. And that’s assuming that you are ending those sets one to two reps short of failure. So an RP of eight to nine, that’s why, for example, my bigger, leaner, stronger program has guys doing about 60 to 80 total reps per major muscle group per week, because of that training is done in the 80 to 85 percent of one rep max range.

You’re working with heavy weights. Whereas my program for women thinner, leaner, stronger has you working with a bit lighter weights and therefore involves more weekly volume. So the weekly reps per major muscle group is up in the low 100s, probably about 130. And it differs between the lower body and the upper body.

On the women’s program, the women’s program is more focused on the lower body because that’s what women care more about. And women are going to be happy with their upper bodies. Most women are going to be happy with their upper [00:16:00] body development sooner than their lower body. And then the men’s program has this flipped around.

It has a bit more weekly volume. For the upper body, because that is most guys primary focus and most guys are going to have the legs that they want quite a bit sooner than let’s say the the chest and the biceps that they want. That’s just the truth of the matter. And it takes quite a bit more work for most guys to get what they consider a great chest and great shoulders and great arms than it takes for them to get great legs.

If we take this rule of thumb of 60 to 180 reps per major muscle group per week, and we try to fit that into whole body training, problem becomes pretty obvious. Achieving an optimal workout volume for each muscle group. major muscle group would mean that we would have to get in the gym and do three plus hour workouts.

And it would mean that we would have to work out probably just once or twice per week. And [00:17:00] all of these things that I’ve discussed are why full body workouts just aren’t for everyone. And why. I think that they are best suited to people who are new to weightlifting and whose bodies are hyper responsive to training people who can get away with 30 to maybe 50 reps per major muscle group per week and see good results.

I also like whole body workouts for intermediate or advanced weightlifters who are very limited on time and who want to at least maintain their muscle and strength. It’s going to be hard for them to progress across the board at least with full body workouts, but they’ll have no trouble maintaining muscle and strength with them.

Now, if you’re not one of these people if your newbie gains are long gone and you have at least a few hours to spend in the gym every week, then. Again, you’re just going to do better with a different workout split. One of my preferred splits is the push pull leg split, which is again, why I have built my bigger, leaner, stronger and thinner, leaner, stronger programs around [00:18:00] them.

And if you want to learn more about that, I actually recorded a podcast on push pull legs, which you can find, I think went up about a month or a month and a half ago. And if you’d rather read about it, just head over to and search for push pull legs. Now, if you are one of those people and you do want to do full body workouts and the rest of this podcast is for you.

So let’s first talk about the best exercises for full body workouts. Now, as one of the advantages of these types of workouts is that they revolve around just a handful of exercises, which makes them simple to understand and do and also allows you to quickly improve your ability. To do each of these workouts, which of course then aids in your progression, the better you are at squatting, the faster you are going to progress at it.

So here are the primary exercises that I recommend you focus on in your full body workouts. One is the barbell back squat. Or barbell front squat. If you prefer two is the barbell deadlift or hex bar deadlift. If [00:19:00] you prefer three is the flat barbell bench press for is the seated or standing military press otherwise known as the overhead press.

And if you’re going to be doing full body training, I would recommend the standing version. Five is the barbell lunge. Six is the barbell row. Seven is the chin up or pull up if you prefer. And eight is the lat pull down. So if you work at getting as strong as possible on those exercises, I promise that you will get results.

You will see changes in your body. Now let’s look at how to turn these exercises into workouts. So let’s start with a one day per week, full body workout routine. So if you can only train once per week, don’t despair. You can at least maintain your muscle and strength. And if you’re new to weightlifting, you will make gains with just one workout per week.

It’s a tough workout, but it’s one workout. And here it is. I recommend that you start. [00:20:00] With the barbell back squat and that you warm up and then perform three sets in the four to six rep range. So around 85 percent of your one rep max, then I recommend you move to the flat barbell bench press and you warm up there and do three sets of four to six reps again.

And then you move to the barbell deadlift. You warm up and you do three sets of four to six reps. reps. And then you move to the barbell row, three sets of four to six reps. You don’t need to warm up here. Your back should be plenty warm from the dead lifting. And last but not least, you do your overhead press three sets of four to six reps, simple workout effective.

Okay. Two day per week, full body workout routine. Day one, start with your barbell back squat, warm up, and then do three sets of four to six reps. And then move to the flat barbell bench press, warm up three sets of four to six reps. And then your military press seated or standing I think is preferential when you are doing whole body training, three sets of four to six reps, and then your barbell row warm up.

Warm up [00:21:00] and do three sets of four to six reps. Day two, start with the barbell deadlift. Warm up and do three sets of four to six reps, and then flat barbell bench. Press warm up and do three sets of four to six reps, and then barbell row. Warm up and do three sets of four to six reps. And finally, chins.

You got it three sets of four to six reps. And last let’s look at a three day per week full body workout routine. So day one starts with the flat barbell bench press warm up three sets, four to six reps, and then you move to the barbell back squat warmup and three sets of four to six reps. And then you do three sets of a barbell row after warming up four, two, six, Reps.

Then on your second day, barbell deadlift is your first exercise. Warm up and do three sets of four to six reps and then move to the military press warm up and do three sets of four to six reps and then finish with chin ups three sets of four to six reps. That means that you’re probably going to have to add weight.

By either squeezing a dumbbell in between your thighs or using a dip belt. Then day 3, start with the barbell back [00:22:00] squat, warm up and do 3 sets of 4 6 reps. Then move to the flat barbell bench press, warm up and do 3 sets of 4 6 reps. And finish with lat pulldowns. Warming up. First, and then doing three sets of four to six reps.

And then just a few odds and ends that you should keep in mind when doing these workouts. First is rest three to four minutes in between each set. And yes, that is going to feel like you are standing around a lot, but this is going to give your muscles enough time to fully recoup their strength and allow you to fully recoup your energy.

So you can really push yourself to your limit on each set. Another point of note is that you don’t have to push yourself to absolute muscular failure on every set. But you do need to come close. Now, the subject of whether you should train to failure or not, or how often you should is controversial and is something I discuss more thoroughly in an episode with Dr.

Michael Zordos that got posted a couple of weeks ago. So if you really want to dive into training to failure, go listen to that. But the long story short here is we should be training [00:23:00] close to failure. on most of the sets in our workouts, but not so much that we risk injury or symptoms or problems related to overtraining.

So personally, I never trained a failure more than two or three sets per workout. And those failure sets are usually later in my workout on accessory exercises. It’s never on the big heavy compounds. I don’t train a failure on my heavy squats or deadlifts or bench presses or overhead presses because it can be dangerous.

However, I will often train to failure on stuff like side raises, rear raises, bicep curls, triceps push downs and so forth. So instead of pushing yourself to failure as often as you can, what you want to do is you want the majority of your sets to be taken to the point where you have one or two reps left.

You’re one or two reps shy of failure. Failure. And just to understand what I mean by failure is the point where you simply cannot keep the bar moving without assistance. You have to abandon the set. That’s failure. Now you might be [00:24:00] wondering, how do you know when you’re just one or two reps shy of failure?

How can you know that? And fortunately, that’s something you actually just learn intuitively. As you lift weights and as you push yourself and as you progress your estimation actually becomes fairly accurate. There’s research on this actually, and particularly when you’re dealing with heavier weights, as you move into lighter weights and higher rep ranges, your estimation of how close you are to failure is going to get worse, but.

If you are training with heavier loads, so let’s say anywhere in the four to eight rep range, your estimation of how many reps you have left is generally going to be pretty accurate. Okay. So the last tip to keep in mind when doing any sort of strength training workout is progression. And a very simple progression model that I like is once you hit the top of your rep range for one set, you move up in weight.

So for example, if you’re squatting. And you’re supposed to be working in the four to six rep range. Once you get a set of six reps, you add weight to the [00:25:00] bar and then you work with that new weight until you can squat it for six reps and move up and so forth. Now, if you do that and you add, let’s say 10 pounds to the bar, five pounds on either side and you only get two or three reps, then.

Drop that to adding five pounds. Use the little micro plates, the two and a half pound plates. And if that doesn’t cut it, then work with your previous weight until you can squat it for two sets of six reps and then progress. And if for whatever reason you still Can’t get there, work up to three sets of six reps and then progress.

And you will be able to get your four reps with the new higher weight, which you can then work with again, until you can squat it for six reps. And for however many sets it takes, it could be one set, two sets, three sets. So it depends on your body. But you’ll learn what works best for you.

And that’s it. That’s really everything I wanted to discuss on full body workouts. And the key takeaways here are that full body workouts can work for building muscle and strength. Absolutely. So can bro [00:26:00] splits. So can upper lower routines, push pull legs routines. They can all work. And if you’re a beginner, then full body workouts can work particularly well for you because they are easy to understand.

They don’t require too much time and they quickly bring you up to speed on the key barbell movements, which are going to be the most important exercises in your quest for the ultimate physique. Those are the exercises that are going to most get you to where you want to be. That said, once you’ve put in, let’s say six to 12 months of high quality work in the gym, you’re going to find that it is quite hard to continue progressing.

In size and strength for each of your major muscle groups with full body workouts. And in this case, I would recommend that you look at a more compartmentalized type of routine. Again, a routine that is broken down by upper lower or push pull legs, or even body part because those routines allow you to better [00:27:00] optimize both the weekly volume and frequency for Your body for what you are trying to do.

And lastly, remember that full body workouts are also great for maintaining strength and size. If you simply don’t have that much time to train. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don’t mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you’re listening from.

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Lastly, If you didn’t like [00:28:00] something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at Mike at MuscleForLife. com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I’m always looking for constructive feedback, so please do reach out. Alright, that’s it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.

And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in. So instead, I’m going to just quickly tell you about something of [00:29:00] [00:30:00] mine.