Why Full-Body Training Totally Rocks

Imagine if there was a technique which could help you burn more fat, build more muscle, recover faster, and be more consistent in the gym.

Well, imagine no more!

I’ve just described the benefits of full-body training.

Those of you who have been using my online training programs will already be fully aware of the huge benefits it offers, but the vast majority of people in gyms remain oblivious so let’s break it down today.

What About Volume?

Whenever I speak to people about full-body training, the first question is always the same.

“How can I give each muscle enough volume to grow?”

This concern makes sense, because on the surface it appears that there’s no way you can provide each muscle group with the same level of volume when you are trying to work so many different muscle groups on any given day.

However, you needn’t be concerned.

Remember, your total training volume refers to the number of sets you do across the whole week, not in a single workout. (2)

So let’s say you currently follow a traditional bro split where you focus on one main muscle group per workout (e.g. “chest day”, “back day”, and so on). With this type of program you would hit your chest with 12-20 sets on Monday and then this muscle would not be trained again until the following week.

Meanwhile, if you used a full-body training split your first workout may consist of 5 sets each for chest, back, arms, shoulders, and legs. If you train 4x per week then by that gives you’ve accumulated the same amount of volume for each muscle group.

So although it looks different, you’re not actually doing any “less” at all!

What About Recovery?

Here’s the second most frequently asked question about full-body training.

“How can my muscles recover if I train them in every workout?”

Again, this concern makes sense.

After all, most people have always been told that our muscles need 48-72 hours to recover from a workout, so how on Earth do we train every single muscle in every workout?

Well, it’s important to remember that full-body training doesn’t play by the same set of rules.

Yes, if you annihilated your chest with 20+ sets on Monday it’d make perfect sense to give it a few days before you even think about training it again…. but we don’t need anywhere near as much recovery time when we drop the volume to just 5 sets per workout!

You might also feel like you don’t need as much rest time between sets. This happens because you’re switching muscle groups on a frequent basis, so people tend to fly through the workout versus when they’re pummelling a single muscle group.

What If You Need To Miss A Workout?

This is where full-body training comes into its own.

Let’s face it, nobody likes missing workouts. I’ve been known to trudge 5-miles through snow to get my leg workout in. However, sometimes life gets in the way and we’re left with no other choice but to skip a session.

This can spell bad news if you are following a bro split.

Let’s say you cancel Thursday’s workout which happens to be “shoulder day”. The last time you trained your shoulders was a week ago, and by the time it comes around again in the schedule you haven’t trained them for two weeks – all because of one missed workout!

Those of you who use a full-body program do not have this concern, because if you cancel Thursday’s full-body workout you have already hit every single muscle group with 15+ sets for that week, so nothing gets neglected.

Is Full-Body Training For Beginners Or Advanced Lifters?

It can be used by either, but for very different reasons.

Beginner lifters can take advantage of the faster recovery between sessions, so they won’t endure the crippling pain of being unable to walk for 4-days after a brutal leg workout. This helps them hit the gym more frequently during those all-important early days where we are trying to build new habits, and those “newbie gains” are there for the taking.

Meanwhile, advanced lifters often report that they can train even harder because the target muscle always feels fresh. To put this into perspective, think of how many guys you’ve seen in the gym looking gassed halfway through a big chest workout, and how much more productive many of those sets (particularly those in the latter part of the session) could be if they were done when the muscle was still at 100%.

How To Use Full-Body Training For Fat Loss

Back in 2016, a team of researchers from New Zealand set out to test the fat loss benefits of full-body workouts. (1)

They used a bunch of experienced rugby players, and had one group of trainees following a traditional 3-day split (where every muscle is trained over the course of three workouts) and one group using full-body workouts (where they train every muscle in every workout).

Both groups performed the same volume overall (same number of sets for each muscle).

Both groups used the same exercise (leg press, barbell squats, lying leg curls, calf raise, bench press, bent-over barbell row, wide-grip lat pulldown, shoulder press, and biceps curls) and both groups performed the same total volume overall (same number of sets for each muscle over the entire week).

Interestingly, the trainees using full-body workouts lost significantly more body fat (a whopping 6% reduction versus 2%)!

The two groups of trainees also had similar gains in size and strength, which not only showed us that it was superior for fat loss but also that it was just as effective in other areas.

And finally, the researchers claimed that the more experienced and stronger a trainee was, the better the results they saw, doubling down on what we said above about experienced lifters being able to benefit from switching to a full-body program from time to time!

How To Use Full-Body Training To Gain Size

The muscle building process is largely the same no matter which training split you use.

By that, I mean if you are consistently striving for progressive overload (increasing the weight or the number of reps over a period of time) and pushing your muscles towards the point of failure, your body adapts by growing bigger and stronger to handle the workload.

Interestingly, several studies show that full-body training will produce at least the same level of muscle growth as a bro split, and in some cases it can be even better! (3)

Norwegian researchers have also shown that full-body training enables us to capitalize on an often overlooked muscle building pathway:

• High frequency training

As the name suggests, this is where we hit each muscle multiple workouts in the same week.

It’s a technique which is traditionally associated with heavy duty bodybuilding programs (e.g. Arnold’s two-a-day program from the 1970s) where you’d let the gym take over your life for a while and have two “chest days”, two “leg days”, two “back days” (and so on) per week.

Having short blocks like this can really ramp up muscle growth because it increases the number of times your body experiences the muscle recovery process, where key muscle building hormones (testosterone and cortisol) and spiked, which creates a superior environment for building muscle.

Unfortunately, most people simply cannot do this type of training because a) a busy work and family life forbids them from spending all that time in the gym, b) they can’t eat enough food to recover from this amount of exercise, c) the risk of injury dramatically increases, and d) they’re not pumped full of “vitamin S”.

Interesting, huh?

So you’ll be delighted to hear that full-body training enables you to tap into the benefits of this high frequency training model because, even though you’re not following such a schedule-eating workout plan, you are still in fact hitting each muscle group several times across the whole week and triggering that same hormonal response. Boom!

So what do these benefits look like?

Well, at the 17th Annual Conference for the ESS (2012), Norwegian researchers showed that switching a group of powerlifters from their regular 3-day split to a 6-day split (the same total sets, just in shorter and more frequent workouts) led to an astonishing 10% spike in muscle growth! This is even more impressive when we consider that a) they are elite level lifters so it’s very hard to make such gains, and b) they’re not actually doing any more volume than they already were! (4)

A properly structured full-body workout program will help you unlock all of the benefits I’ve shown you above:

• You’ll hit each muscle with just the right amount of volume to maximize results!
• It’ll “spread the load” to ensure your recovery game is always top notch!
• Your sets will become even more productive because the target muscle feels fresh!
• You’ve minimized the damage an unplanned skipped workout can cause!
• The additional muscle building benefits of a high frequency training model are unlocked!

Put simply; full-body training totally rocks!

Further Reading:

If you enjoyed this blog, then you’ll probably also like reading these.

>> How To Train To Failure
>> High Reps Vs Low Reps
>> Why I Ditched “Clean Eating”

References:

1. Crewther B. T., et al. The effects of two equal-volume training protocols upon strength, body composition and salivary hormones in male rugby union players. Biol. Sport (2016).
2. Hammarström D., et al. Benefits of higher resistance-training volume are related to ribosome biogenesis. J Physiol (2020).
3. Schoenfeld B. J., et al. Influence of Resistance Training Frequency on Muscular Adaptations in Well-Trained Men. J Strength Cond Res (2015).
4. Raastad T., et al. Powerlifters improved strength and muscular adaptations to a greater extent when equal total training volume was divided into 6 compared to 3 training sessions per week. Book of abstracts, 17th annual conference of the ECSS (2012).