Understanding Your Full Body Strength Training Workout

By Yuri Elkaim, BPHE, CK, RHN

Ask anyone about the venture into a new workout routine why they are doing so, and you are guaranteed the answer “I want to add muscle and loss fat.” Most people fail at this concept for one reason: the wrong approach. Approach your fitness holistically by performing a full body strength-training workout 3 times per week and watch your body shed excess fat while packing on lean mass in no time.

Designing a full body strength training routine
Focus compound movements rather than ones that isolate your muscle groups. Try to work at least one muscle per large muscle group with each performance. Adding in super sets, triads, and giants sets will keep your heart rate elevated and boost your metabolism.

Mix up your workouts each day. If you train 3 times per week, add different movements or rotate exercises so you perform them at different times during your workout. Once you become familiar with all the exercises, you can perform a different strength training workout each day and never grow bored.

Understanding compound movements
Compound exercises need to be the main focus of your routine if you want to make great gains. Isolation movements have their benefits, too. However, compound exercises require the movement of two or more major joints at one time, maximizing your training effort.

Compound exercises also allow you to lift heavier weights. In turn, you increase the demand on your endocrine system, thus require the release of more anabolic hormones that aid in your muscle growth.

List of compound movements for your full body strength-training workout:
Back: Pull-ups, barbell rows, deadlifts, rack pulls
Chest: push-ups, chin dips, barbell or dumbbell bench press
Shoulders: Military press, clean and press, push press
Arms: close grip chin ups, tricep dips, dumbbell curls, close-grip push ups
Legs: barbell squat, deadlifts, lunges, Bulgarian split squat

Set and reps
Setting up a strength training routine for full body means that you need to add variation for sets and reps. Your best advantage is to alternate movements in supersets.

To perform a superset, you work two different movements back to back without rest. Supersets typically work muscles groups that compliment each other.  Your number of reps can vary along with your sets. In most workouts you want to try 3 sets of 6 to 8 reps.

Example of a superset:
A1) Barbell row: 3 sets, 8 reps
A2) chin dips: 3 sets, 8 reps
Rest 60 seconds between sets.

This means you perform each exercise once consecutively. You then rest 60 seconds before repeating the process. Perform the superset three times.

Putting it all together
Choose one exercise from each group to perform in one full body strength-training workout. Decide how many sets and reps you plan to do. Work in supersets, or variations that add 3 exercises to keep your intensity up. Your workout should last 30-60 minutes. Perform this for 3 non-consecutive days every week.

START BURNING FAT LIKE AN ATHLETE TODAY!