A full-body workout routine is advantageous. Rather than just having a leg or a strength-building day, you’re strengthening your entire body at once. You do several exercises throughout a single workout to work muscles all over your body.
This type of workout is best for those who want a generalized fitness routine rather than focusing on bodybuilding, or cardio workouts, making it perfect for everyone, not just fitness junkies with a ton of at-home gym equipment. However, sticking to a fitness routine takes commitment, and you may find yourself waning over time.
What Is a Full Body Workout?
A full-body workout works muscles all over your body rather than singular muscles or several muscle groups simultaneously. For example, you could couple sit-ups with weightlifting and lunges. You work your core, arm muscles, and legs in one workout.
Of course, full-body workouts are more complicated than this simple routine, with varied exercises each day of the week that works different muscles all over your body to keep things balanced.
The Benefits of Full Body Workouts
Full-body workouts take less time than traditional single-day workouts, plus you don’t work each muscle as hard, which means it’s easier to do. You get to maximize your calorie burn to shed pounds quickly, and you work your body harder overall, which means improved fitness all over your body.
You don’t need as much recovery time if you were working on your arms for the day, and by the fourth arm exercise, they’re done. Instead, you spread each activity throughout the week, which means fewer breaks and less time spent at the gym.
Plus, on each rest day between workouts, your body can fully recover before returning to work, which anyone who has overworked their screaming muscles at the gym can appreciate.
While you won’t see the same gains as with traditionally focused workouts, with full-body workouts, you’re focused on improving your fitness all over your body a little bit at a time, which is why staying committed to the full-body routine is so important.
Sticking to a Routine: Maintaining a Full Body Workout
Typically, you’ll work out three to four times a week with an excellent full-body workout routine, with one day of rest in between each workout to give your body the rest it needs. Setting a pattern, planning around that routine, and sticking to the training will improve your fitness and body.
The goal is to have the routine become a habit, so you don’t even have to motivate yourself to do it. You just do it automatically.
Stay Accountable
One of the best ways to stick to a workout routine is to have a way to hold yourself accountable, so you’ll always show up and put the time in to get those gains. Having a workout buddy is a great way plus. You can encourage each other when you start wavering or don’t feel like working out.
It can be someone you work with or text a couple of times a week to tell about your workout routine and that you’re staying on track. If you’re not brave enough to ask someone to be your workout buddy or share your workout life, browsing fitness social media feeds is a good alternative.
Just have something in place to keep you working out, even when you don’t feel like it. Whether it’s a reward, a punishment, or something else entirely, get creative, and you’ll never want to skip another workout.
Use Your Body Weight
If you don’t have any at-home gym equipment and have the time or money for a gym membership, you don’t have to give up your fitness dreams. Get acquainted with exercises that use your body weight, like squats, sit-ups, lunges, and push-ups.
The best piece of exercise equipment is the human body, and bodyweight exercises are a great way to cultivate your strength-to-mass ratio, or how easily you can lift and maneuver your body. It’s strength training, stretching, and a full workout all rolled into one.
Use What’s on Hand
If you don’t have any at-home gym equipment, you can still make do with what you have in the house. Chances are there’s something where you live that you can manufacture into some exercise equipment. Take a towel and throw it over a branch to do Ring Rows, jump over your laundry basket, or use a shoebox for Toe Taps.
The only limit is your imagination, so take a good look around and think about what you can use to help you get moving.
Important: Getting Proper Rest
You might think that if you turn your three-day workout routine into a five-day one that covers the entire workweek, you’ll get more gains, right? Wrong. Getting proper rest between each workout routine is essential for health.
Your muscles need time to rebuild after a challenging workout, so working out, especially the same or similar muscle groups, several days in a row makes your muscles weaker, not stronger.
Giving yourself plenty of downtimes will help your muscles come back stronger than before so you can repeat the process of strengthening your muscles. Plus, working out multiple days increases your soreness and saps your energy, which is never a good thing when trying to stay committed to a workout routine.
Vary Your Routine
So, working the same muscles with the same routine over and over again just doesn’t work. You’ll eventually plateau and won’t see any improvement, no matter how much you work out. The key is to vary your routine to work different muscles.
With full-body workouts, you should naturally vary the routine by the day of the week, but don’t be afraid to take it a step further. Find activities that work the full body and try them out, vary the exercises in the routines themselves, or keep things fresh with a different type of workout altogether.
It keeps things interesting, and you find another physical activity you love. All while keeping your muscles growing and fitness goals headed up.
Reset Your Goals, but Keep Them Reachable
Having unrealistic goals is one of the most demotivating things you can have when you first start working out. You’re not going to be able to run the Boston Marathon, bench press three hundred pounds, or lose fifty pounds when you’re first starting.
Start small. Have a goal of losing five pounds, bench pressing fifty pounds, or running for a mile. With full-body workouts, maybe your goal is to have better cardio, get more sleep at night, or lose calories. Set goals, track them, and you’ll soon reach those small goals, which provide a serotonin boost that encourages you to select another, larger goal.
As you bust through each goal, you’ll find yourself going beyond your original unrealistic goals in pursuit of better health and fitness.
Full Body Workout: Slow But Fulfilling
Full-body workouts are great for the everyday person who wants to be healthier but doesn’t have the time, money, or energy for traditional daily workouts. You don’t need at-home gym equipment. You don’t need a gym membership. You must be determined to stick to the routine to see results eventually.
Full-body workouts don’t give you results right away. They aren’t quick fixes for losing pounds or getting muscles for swimsuit season. They’re a way to keep your body healthy and help you get fitter over time while fitting in with your life, making exercising and being healthy much easier.
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