Total body workout training program

This movement is essential for shoulder health, posture, and balancing out the pulling repetitions with all the pressing in this full body workout. The main muscles worked are the rear delts, mid and lower traps , and the various rotator cuff muscles as shown here:.

These can be done kneeling or standing, but regardless you want to keep the elbows high and drive them back as you pull the rope towards your face.

You also want to ensure you aren't compensating by arching your lower back as you perform the movement:. The last exercise of this full body workout routine is going to be a biceps exercise ; the drag curl. To perform it, simply use a weighted bar or barbell and lift the bar as close as possible in front of your body by driving the elbows behind the body. Lower the weight in the same fashion. Lying Hamstring Dumbbell Curls: sets of reps.

And then you can gradually add more volume overtime. Also keep in mind that you can play around with the exercise order of the workout. Several studies have shown a trend where lifters get better gains for exercises that are done early in a session.

So by knowing what each exercise in this workout targets, you can re-arrange the exercises based on what you want to prioritize. For example, if you wanted to focus on pull-up strength and back growth, you could simply perform the pull-ups first rather than the bench press.

It shows you the full workout, rest periods , what muscles each exercise targets, step-by-step tutorials with visuals, and more:. Click the button below to download Workout A:. Click the button below to download Workout B:. These are manipulated to stimulate growth and allow for recovery within a given training week. There are many, many ways to organize HLM training. The program presented within the spreadsheet is just one example of how the training can be organized.

The spreadsheet was purposefully made to be flexible enough to accommodate other HLM training configurations. It is for lifters that can no longer achieve weekly progress and squeezes out gains on a monthly basis. As long as equipment is not a limiting factor, these exercises should be the bread and butter of any effective full body workout program.

The squat is one of the most effective compound exercises for your lower body and core muscles. From your upper back and lats all the way down to your lower back and calves, the squat engages your body in a way that few other exercises can.

Deadlifts are right up there with the squat in terms of the number of muscles engaged in each rep. It truly is one of the best exercises for engaging nearly every muscle of the body. For boulder shoulders, look no further than the overhead press. Combined with the bench press, the overhead press provides a potent one-two punch in triggering hypertrophy in the delts.

On top of that, the upper pectorals and triceps are also working hard on each rep while the trapezius helps position the scapula for maximum pressing efficiency. Just about every muscle of the upper body is engaged in some way. When it comes to building a bigger, more defined back, if you wanna grow, you gotta row.

The lats, rhomboids, posterior deltoids, and lower trapezius are all engaged in the barbell row. Bodyweight movements are good choices for assistance exercises performed after the main work of a training session or substitutions when certain equipment is not available.

For example, push ups, chin ups, dips, or burpees are good choices for exercises to perform at the end of a total body workout if you still have some time and energy available and it makes sense for your training goals. Bodyweight squats are a reasonable substitution when weights are not available, though they have the downside of not being able to easily accommodate progressive overload. This can be fixed by finding a dumbbell or kettlebell to hold in order to perform a goblet squat.

The following exercises utilize either a dumbbell or a kettlebell. These are good substitutions when barbells are not available. BodyFit is your solution to all things fitness. Join today and unleash the power of BodyFit! Building muscles is all about spending hours at the gym, right? The only true way to build a chiseled, muscular physique is hours upon hours of slaving away over rusty iron, day after day, year after year.

Yes, hard work is still needed. Like anything in life, you get out of your workouts what you put in. However, you don't have to train on a split system four or more days each week to see gains. The full-body workout can help you progress and is easy to fit into your schedule. If you're finding it simply too hard to stick to a workout plan, why not try a full-body workout program?

The idea of working your whole body in one training session has gotten stereotyped. Many people picture a lightweight circuit workout designed so that the trainee is hopping from machine to machine, while in between workouts, he's reading up on the latest celebrity gossip.

A real full-body workout performed by an athlete with a goal in mind induces maximal muscle contraction with heavy weights, allows for full recovery so you can grow and still train hard, and prevents the inevitable burnout caused by overtraining. Probably the biggest positive about training your entire body at once is that your gym frequency decreases to around two to three times every seven days.

Plus, you'll only be spending an hour in the gym for each session. Build muscle with only hours of gym time during a week? Squeezing a solid sets per body part into a minute workout session gets your cardiovascular system up to speed in a hurry!

The main limitation here is that the training frequency for some muscle groups has now dropped from twice to once a week. The chest, for example, is now being trained directly just once a week.

Hitting a muscle group just once a week can and will make that muscle grow. But most people are going to see better results and by better results, I mean a faster rate of muscle growth training each muscle group at least twice every seven days. Exercise number one is the bench press, which is a highly effective way to build size in your chest, shoulders and triceps.

Next up is a vertical pulling exercise, the wide grip front lat pulldown. Check out these lat pulldown alternatives. The squat is a great exercise for building your lower body. A parallel squat or even slightly higher than parallel is still deep enough to make your legs grow.

While hip extension moves like the Romanian deadlift do hit the hamstrings hard, you need some kind of hamstring curl to fully develop the hamstrings. And studies show that the seated leg curl works better than the lying leg curl for hamstring hypertrophy.

Next up is a vertical pressing movement, which you can do with a barbells or dumbbells. The overhead press targets the triceps and shoulders, with most of the work being done by the anterior, or front deltoid.

The first exercise in the second full body workout is the incline dumbbell press, using a bench angle of around 30 degrees. Like the bench press, this exercise also targets the chest, shoulders and triceps, but shifts the emphasis to the upper part of the chest.

Do this exercise with a wide wish grip, flare the elbows out to the side rather than keeping them tucked closed to your body and row the bar closer to the chest. This helps to emphasize the muscles in the upper back. You can also replace this exercise with the barbell row. The leg press is a great exercise for targeting the quads and glutes.