Developing Full Body Workout Programs

Full Body Workouts (FBW) is the best option for most of us. Why?

1 – They provide more overall muscle stimulation per workout

2 – They burn more overall calories per workout

3 – They are more time efficient then body part splits

4 – They are easier to stick to as less exercises per workout are required

5 – More importantly, if we are doing them properly, we shouldn’t be stuffing around with low muscle stimulating, low energy expending and less efficient exercises such as wrist curls, concentration curls and leg extensions

6 – They allow for a higher quality amount of work to be done. With body part splits you may do 3 chest exercises in the same session with each successive exercise being affected by the accumulated fatigue of the previous exercise. This means that the second exercise won’t be as effective as you if you did it first and you get an even less effective response from the third exercise. Now if we split these 3 exercises up over 3 days, performing one each day then the second exercise will be performed without the accumulated fatigue so therefore a heavier weight will be able to used, increasing the quality of your training.

Train Movements Over Muscles

This mantra has been around for years now but is still rare to find in the regular gym goers program. There are 6 basic movements the body can perform:

1 – Lower Body Dominant (deadlift variations)

2 – Lower Body Quad Dominant (squat variations)

3 – Upper Body Horizontal Pull (row variations)

4 – Upper Body Horizontal Push (bench press and push up variations)

5 – Upper Body Vertical Pull (pull up, chin up and pulldown variations)

6 – Upper Body Vertical Push (shoulder press variations)

On top of that 6, we can also add in accessory but just as important movements such as :

7 – Single Leg Exercises

8 – Upper / Mid Back Exercises

9 – Core Exercises

The 9th movement, core exercises, can be broken down into 2 categories:

1 – Stabilisation (prone plank variations, roll out variations)

2 – Anti Rotation (pallof press variations, side bridge variations)

They can further broken up but for this article we’ll keep it as simple as we can.

Schedule

From reading Flex and all of those other ordinary bodybuilding magazines apparently it is imbedded into our brains that we must train 4 - 6 days a week. As noted above, FBW are more time efficient so we only need 3  or 4 days a week depending on the your commitment to training.

Normally we would simply go for a 1 on, 1 off, 1 on, 1 off, 1 on, 2 off situation using 2 or 3 of the off days as energy systems training days. This is what most of you will follow but if you are really keen and can swing it with outside interests then you can go to a 1 on, 1 off schedule where you’ll train 7 times in 2 weeks (3 sessions the first week and 4 the next).

For a daily template there’s really 2 options we can go with.

Option 1 – Conjugate Method

Here we can do a variety of rep ranges each day to cover most, if not all of the main strength qualities to improve our weakness and at least maintain our strengths.

A sample day might have us start with a strength focused single exercise or pairing then we can put the focus on the rest of the day. As a general rule, your strength should never decrease from one program to the next. As soon as strength decreases, all of the other strength qualities (hypertrophy, endurance) decrease too.

Option 2 – Do the same sets and reps for each exercise on a particular day.

Both methods fluctuate stress throughout the week so it may be a case of what works best for you, your schedule, your abilities and training experience. For this option you may have one day focusing on strength (4 x 6), one day focusing on hypertrophy (3 x 12) and another focusing on endurance (2 x 20).

Either way both options cover a wide range of training variables and fluctuate training stress so you can get the most put of your training.

Sets and Reps

For any type of program, once your goals have been set then use this progression to further your plan:

1 – decide on the goal of your program (strength, hypertrophy, fat loss). You might have 2 goals such as decreasing body fat by 2% while maintaining deadlifts. Too many of us focus on one training component at a time, making our hard earned gains from the previous phase obsolete as they will decrease back to their normal state if not utilised once achieved.

2 – decide the reps per set that best fit your goal (1 – 5 reps for strength, 8 – 15 reps for hypertrophy and generally 8 – 15 for fat loss)

3 – now that the reps per set have been decided then you can now decide how many sets you’ll perform for each exercise. Remember the more reps per movement you perform, the less overall sets you’ll need for it as well.

4 – now it’s exercise selection time

Exercise Selection

Different exercises fit rep ranges better then others. For example technical exercises such as power cleans are best performed for low rep sets so if you’ve decided on doing sets of 12 then they won’t probably be a suitable option. Same for pull ups. If you can only do 3 pull ups then again they won’t fit in a 12 reps per set program. Bare in mind you may have 2 goals such as the example above so a variety of rep ranges will work best.

As we are wanting to be as efficient as we can be with FBW, free weight compound, multi joint exercises are the best bang for your buck options.

Here a few options for each movement pattern:

Lower Body Dominant – Deadlifts, Stiff Legged Deadlifts, Snatch Grip Deadlifts, Rack pulls, Sumo Deadlifts, Cable Pull Throughs

Lower Body Quad Dominant – Back Squat, Front Squat, A nderson Squats

Upper Body Horizontal Pull – DB Row, Chest Supported Row, Bent Row, Standing Cable Row, T Bar Row

Upper Body Horizontal Push – Flat Bench Press, Incline Bench Press, Decline Bench Press, Close Grip Bench Press, Floor Press, Board Press, Push Ups

Upper Body Vertical Pull - Pull Ups, Chin Ups, Lat Pulldowns

Upper Body Vertical Push – Single Arm Shoulder Press, Push Press, Seated Shoulder Press

Single Leg Exercises - Split Squats, Reverse Lunges, Step Ups, Dynamic Lunges, Walking Lunges

Upper / Mid Back Exercises – Face Pulls, External Rotations, Rear Delt Raises, Prone YTWLI’s, Cable Scarecrows, Band Pull Aparts

Core Exercises – Prone Plank, 1 Leg Prone Plank, 1 Arm Prone Plank, Roll Outs for stabilisation and Side Bridge, Kneeling Pallof Press, Standing Pallof Press and Side Bridge Cable Rows for anti rotation.

Daily Template

You’ve decided your goal (fat loss with strength maintenance as above), reps, sets and now have a list of exercises to choose from. Now we need to put them together.

Now we won’t do each of the 9 movements each session simply because we don’t to do them each every session although are some more important, and therefore will be need to be trained more often.

I’ll break them into categories of importance.

Level 1 – lower body hip dominant*, lower body quad dominant*

Level 2 - upper body horizontal pull, single leg exercise and core

A variation of these are to be performed each workout.

* Depending on how you structure your strength component, you might concentrate on a deadlift for 4 weeks then a squat for 4 weeks and simply alternate them through. Either way you should steer clear of doing a heavy hip dominant and a heavy quad dominant in the same cycle. Choose on for strength and another for hypertrophy is the best way to go.

Level 3 – upper body vertical pull, upper body horizontal push, upper horizontal push, upper vertical pull, upper and mid back exercises

A variation of these are to be performed in 1 or 2 out of 3 workouts performed each week.

Level 4 - bicep, tricep and other accessory exercises which are to be done if you have time to do them or need to do them specifically.

A sample week might look like this:

Day 1 – Deadlifts 6 x 3, DB Chest Supported Row paired with DB Incline Bench Press 3 x 12, Split Squat paired with Band Pull Aparts paired with Prone Plank 3 x 12 / 45secs / 20

Day 2 – Weighted Chin Ups 6 x 3, Front Squat paired with Side Bridge Cable Row 3 x 12, Single Arm Shoulder Press paired with Cable Pull Through paired with Bosu Push Ups 3 x 12

Day 3 – BB Bench Press 6 x 3, Stiff Legged Deadlift paired with Prone Plank with abduction toe tap 3 x 8 / 12 each leg, DB Row paired with db Push Press paired with Step Up with hip flexion 3 x 12

This is just the tip of the iceberg of how you can develop FBW’s but is hopefully a simple way to get you started with them. I bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the effectiveness and results.

Any feedback or discussion of this article is welcomed by contacting me here which will be answered in a future post.