Full Body Workouts For The Advanced

We keep saying the same thing actually I thought you'd though I was saying that full body workouts got me too sore to move. No of course, it is not the goal here. Goal is to stimulate all your body to get bigger and stronger sufficiently (which doesn't mean you should kill your muscles) and recover as fast as possible to come back soon and work your whole body hard again. I was saying the feeling was different; you don't feel a specific part but your whole body is tired and worked in general. You still have energy to use all of your muscles of course. But think about it as sprinters; They never sprint till they can't walk. If you force yourself until you can't move like a marathon runner, you'll need to rest for days. If you want to do full workouts, you need to choose the former (This doesn't mean you just do "a little bit of everything", it's actually very challenging). I think we don't disagree here

I am really really grateful for this thread. Excellent read.

Just wanted to give this thread some love, I think it should be a sticky personally. I absolutely love the full body pump you get by putting together a routine as suggested in the OP and it makes it really simple to keep your routine interesting when you are only doing one major compound exercise per body part since there are so many ways to change it up. Thanks again for this dodo, this is my absolute favourite way to structure my workouts.

Personally, i'd make it 3-4 sets if you were going for 6-8. Rule of thumb for me on full body is to aim to keep it 25-35reps (-ish, some exercises vary).

Just thought I'd chime in here with a routine I've been doing if anyone is looking for a full body routine to use themself. Based on everything dodo talked about in the first post but I am doing 3 workouts vs. 2 and all the exercises are done as supersets to maximize efficiency. I picked 6 big compound exercises, 1 horizontal push, 1 vertical push, 1 horizontal pull, 1 vertical pull, one quad dominant lower body and one ham dominant lower body and I split it up so the days cycle through which muscles are being worked twice (push, pull or legs) with more isolated style exercises at the end that hit are pull and push on a leg dominant day, push and leg on a pull dominant day or pull and leg on a push dominant day. Everything is totally balanced this way, I'm pretty satisfied with how it turned out!

Here's an example of what I've been doing...

Day 1 (Compound Push Day):
1a) Bulgarian Split Squats (Quad Dominant)
1b) Chest Dips (Horizontal Push)
2a) Chinups (Vertical Pull)
2b) Military Press (Vertical Push)
3a) Dumbbell Curls (Iso Pull)
3b) Calf Raises (Iso Legs)

Day 2 (Compound Pull Day):
1a) Romanian Deadlifts (Ham Dominant)
1b) Chinups (Vertical Pull)
2a) Chest Dips (Horizontal Push)
2b) Bent Over Rows (Horizontal Pull)
3a) Stability Ball Leg Curls (Iso Legs)
3b) Close Grip Pushups (Iso Push)

Day 3 (Compound Leg Day):
1a) Bulgarian Split Squats (Quad Dominant)
1b) Military Press (Vertical Push)
2a) Romanian Deadlifts (Ham Dominant)
2b) Bent Over Rows (Horizontal Pull)
3a) Close Grip Pushups (Iso Push)
3b) Dumbbell Curls (Iso Pull)

I love this workout, keeps things interesting without being complicated and without a seemingly random selection of exercises. Every exercises is there for a reason and like I said before everything is balanced. I wanted to stick to just 3 iso movements to cycle through but I find I don't get enough of a hamstring burn with just the deadlifts alone so I threw in the ball curls. Didn't want to can the calf raises completely either though so this seems to work out alright.

@Helldozer: It looks like you just wrote three random different fullbody routines. I wouldn't pick most of the exercises you did and they're not designed the way I described, but what I wrote in the article is not rule or anything, try and see if you enjoy it.

@GameMstr: Not really, it won't overtrain. I can increase Uglok's range and say 25-40 reps. If you train heavy (4-6 reps per set) then do about 25 reps in total, if you do relatively lighter (say 12 reps per set) then do about 35-40 reps. If you alternate heavy&light workouts throughout the week, it means you'd do about 100 reps per muscle group. That's about other advanced splits have in one session. Say you do 4 exercises, 10x3 each. It makes 120. If you don't overtrain by doing 120 reps in one session, you won't overtrain if you spread it into 3 sessions. In fact, your muscles will never feel "dead" the way splits make you feel (which is the reason people need huge periods of rest to be able to work them again).

Dodothebird,

Yeah, I wanted to mix it up and keep from hitting the muscle the same way each workout. I figured by doing a different exercise each workout, I would be able to work the muscle at different angles throughout the week.

Is this not a good way to do it? Or, do you think it's better doing the same exercises 3 times a week?

Thanks for your input, appreciate it.

Helldozer