5 Benefits Of a Full Body Workout

Most of the bodybuilders do a full body workout in their beginner stage and as they become stronger, they substitute it with a more “advanced” split routine. The full body workout, however, has its own place in bodybuilding and not only beginners should use it.

In the old days, the pre-steroid era, full body workouts were a common type of training. Many famous bodybuilders like Reg Park, Steve Reeves, Marvin Eder, Casey Viator and even Arnold were doing full body routines.

You may ask why would you do full body workouts when there are more advanced split routines? Let us tell you about the benefits of a full body workout:

The 5 benefits of full body workouts

1. Muscle balance

Have you ever seen people in the gym that always work their favorite muscle group? Take for example the kid that trains biceps curls so hard, that his bench press is almost as equal as the weight he curls.

Or the guy that constantly blasts his pecs hard and only remembers to work his back or legs from time to time. A full body workout is efficient because it places an emphasis on working the entire body in one session.

This kind of training allows all the body parts to develop at the same rate and is beneficial at increasing strength and (if the nutrition is in check) muscle mass as well.

2. Low volume

At one exercise per muscle group you reduce the chances of overtraining.

Yes, it is still possible to overtrain on this kind of workout but when compared to a regular split routine, where you do multiple exercises for a single muscle group in one training session, super sets, drop sets, rest pause sets etc. the chances of overtraining are smaller.

3. Compound exercises

The exercises that are done in a full body workout are mainly heavy compound movements for obvious reasons. Movements that activate more muscle mass are included, because you are not doing 3, 4 or more exercises per muscle group.

4. Greater Glycogen depletion and faster fat loss

When it comes to burning fat and depleting the glycogen levels, you can’t compare split routines and full body routines. With a full body workout you expend greater amount of energy than training only one or two muscle groups.

Training your whole body in one session means that a lot microtrauma has occurred and more muscle repairing hormones are released to repair the damage done to the muscles. With this you created a perfect hormonal environment for building muscle.

5. Greater frequency of stimulus

With a regular split routine every muscle group gets worked 4 times a month (except the cases where you train 6 days a week ), while with a full body routine every muscle group gets trained 12 times a month.

If the volume is not very high and the diet is in check, you are sending a signal to your muscles to grow 12 times in a month. This means a faster progress than with the regular split routine.

A workout example:

Workout A

Bench Press 3 sets, 8-12 reps
Behind the Neck Press 2 sets, 8-12 reps
Barbell Rows/Chin Ups 3 sets, 8-12 reps
Squats 3-4 sets, 8-12 reps
Curls 2 sets, 8-12 reps
Triceps Extensions 2 sets, 8-12 reps
Calf Raise 3 sets, 15-20 reps
Crunches 3 sets, 15  reps

Workout B

Incline Bench Press 3 sets, 8-12 reps
Lateral raises 2 sets, 8-12 reps
Leg Press 3 sets, 8-12 reps
Deadlifts 3-4 sets, 8-12 reps
Curls 2 sets, 8-12 reps
Triceps Extensions 2 sets, 8-12 reps
Calf Raise 3 sets, 15-20 reps
Crunches 3 sets, 15  reps


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