There are three scenario in which you can you need a full body workout routine. Firstly, if you are a beginner to the world of gym, it is always a good idea to train your full body at every session instead of working on isolated muscles. You should do this at least of 1st month of your gym membership. It builds a nice base for further development of muscles.
Secondly, if you are more into health and a little less into muscle gains, then you should go for full body workout. Not to say, that it will not help you build muscles. Our muscles have an innate quality to work in unison and to reap the maximum health benefit these muscles should be trained simultaneously.
And, lastly, following a full body workout routine once in a while is always a good idea for intermediate to advance body builders. The reason behind this is that fact muscle building works under a simple concept and that is “to throw your body, mind and muscles away from the comfort zone.” Your body gets use to the routine, which cause a decrease in gains. When you drift a little away from your comfort zone it helps higher muscle development.
Things to do remember before a full body workout routine
Proper warm-up
When you are about to train every body part then it is important you to do a full body warm up. I would suggest you to do a little stretch exercises for legs and back, before hitting the treadmill. First, walk for 3-5 minutes, then gradually increase the speed. Run till little you break a little sweat. After doing that, you warm up your upper body a little and you are good to go.
Eat the right thing
First of all, don’t eat food that is very rich in fibre and fat, it takes a while to digest them. You do need carbs. Now, there are two types of carbs, simple and complex. Simple carbs gets digested quickly and provides you with instant energy. Whereas, complex carbs is digested slowly and give you a flow of low but constant current of energy. So, idea is to have both of these carbs.
Complex carbs – Brown bread, oats, cereal, brown rice.
Simple carbs – Fruits, sugar drinks, jam
Utilize and not exhaust
Since, you will be training each and every muscle group it is important to keep in check level of exhaustion you are subject a muscle too. When we too a full body circuit, our main purpose is to utilize every muscle and not exhaust them because if you work too much on one muscle you won’t be able to concentrate on the rest. To prevent muscle loss, it is important to train them in regular intervals.
Switch between exercises
So, you will be training different part of body with different exercise. It is better to switch between exercise set after set. Lets say, you can do one set for your shoulders and then you switch you back, and then again switch back to shoulder. Doing this will help the muscle shoulders recover as you train your back. And, vice versa. You can switch between 2-3 exercises. And, the choose the muscle groups carefully, like you can switch between upper body and lower body muscles. (Chest <-> Hamstrings)
Don’t take too much rest
Actually, resting is the necessity of a workout routine but too much it is not good for you. A rest of 10-15 secs between two sets and 60-90 secs between two exercises is more than enough. You need to keep the heart rate up. Don’t just stand there chatting with a gym buddy or your trainer. You are in the gym for a purpose and not to socialize. You can do all the socializing that you want after your workout is complete.
Body weight exercises
When you are doing a full body workout routine, you must do exercises involving your body weight as much as you can. First of all, you body weight is enough to produce enough tension in the muscles. Using weight might exhaust you completely after a few exercises. And, if you want to use weight than you can use light weight dumbbells or a barbell without weights.
Your Full body workout routine starts here
Surya Namaskar
It is an Ancient Indian Yoga exercise, which means “sun salutation.” It is made up of a set of 12 different yoga poses. Probably of the most beneficial exercise in the world. If you have very less time for workout then you should do SuryaNamaskar. It targets almost every muscle fibre in your body. Not only the skeleton muscles but is beneficial for your cardiac and smooth muscle also.
It is also a good warm-up exercises. For warm up purpose, you can do 1-2 rounds of it. The speed with which you do this will either make it a cardio exercise or help you in toning the muscles. You do it in nice pace and it is one of the best cardio exercise. And, if you do it slowly, it will help you to tighten those sagging muscles.
It is a pretty exhaustive exercise and it is important to do this in the beginning of your workout. Plus, doing this will drive blood to each and every part of your body which will help in enhancing performance in later exercises.
Push ups
Push ups for chest, back, triceps and shoulders
Push ups is a good body weight exercise which workout well for your upper body. Although, majorly focus on your chest and triceps but it also hits your shoulder, your back, your biceps too.There will be people who can’t do more than 8-10 pushups at a time. It is ok. If you can do 10 pushups at a time, then do 3 sets of 7 push ups. It shouldn’t be like doing 15 push ups in first set and only 4-5 in the next. Be consistent.
If you are a complete beginner, then you should focus more on form. Ask a friend or the trainer to check your form while you do it. Or, you can do it in front of a mirror. You have connect your muscles with your mind. It means, you should know which muscles are your working on while you do an exercise. While there are lots of ways to do pushups, you must stick to the normal one.
Biceps
There are two heads of biceps and in order to have a big and strong biceps muscle you must train these two heads equally. There two heads are called the Long head and the Short head.
Dumbbell curls for short head of biceps
Dumbbell curls is the best exercise to train the short biceps head. It is a very simple exercise but you have to keep two things in mind while doing it. When you are pulling the dumbbells up make sure to squeeze hard at the end point and while going down, you must go slow.
Decline seated biceps curl for long head of biceps
It is hard but very effective exercise for the long head of the biceps. The decline part is very important, it channels all the stress on the desired part, i.e, the long head. You bring your hands right to the bottom and while bring them up try not to take the help of other muscles. Use light weight and keep your body still, the only part muscle that should be working is your biceps.
Legs
Your leg can be divided into 3 parts: Hamstring, Quads and calves. But, as you are doing full body workout routine you shouldn’t target them in an isolated manner. To train your legs doing body weight exercises such as Squats and lunges is best for you.
Squats target your quads, hamstring, calves, hip-flexors and glutes, which muscle your target more will depend upon which variation of squats you are doing. The distance between legs, does your knee go over your toes or the direction to which your toes are pointing can make a huge difference. You can say that, just by doing squats you are targeting almost every muscle in the leg. If you already have very strong legs and your think you require some resistance, then your can do dumbbell or barbell squats also.
Back
Your back consist of lats, your traps, mid-back and lower back. Although, most of the people don’t consider traps as a part of back but it is and we will train it together. Your lats can be again divided into 2 parts: Lower and upper lats. To train your upper lats all you need is a pull up bar. You might have see some people in magazines and T.V with V-shape body, your upper lats give you that shape. But, for many people doing pull ups is very tough, they can do hammer strength pull down to work on those lats.
Now, lets talk about your middle back. Dumbbell and barbell row is all your need to build the middle part of back. But, for both of these exercise you need the right technique and perfect for to achieve some results. Initially, you might require someone to check your form or you can get it completely wrong and it might become a habit.
And, for lower back all you need to do is dead lift. Start with light weight and gradually work your way up.
Bench press
Bench press for chest, biceps, triceps
Bench press is one of the most common compound exercise and it hits your chest, your back, your triceps and your shoulders. Too try to go too heavy on it. You can use the barbell only, without any weights. While bench pressing lots of people make a common mistake. They keep their mid-back touched to the bench. There should a little curve in your back. Initially, with less weights, it might not a problem, but as you’ll increase they weight you’ll need to do that. So, it is better to get use to it.
This is the full body workout routine that will hit almost all the muscles in your body. And, as I have said before it don’t use heavy weights at all. And, if you want to you can do only one set of each exercises with higher reps.
