Why You Should Focus on Full Body Workouts

There are many benefits to full body workouts, which is why we focus on this style of training at W10.

There are a variety of ways you can structure or split up your workout routine and quite frankly with the amount of information out there at the minute, it can become overwhelming for anyone to get in shape.

At Foundry we structure our programming around total body workouts, which to clarify is when you hit the whole body with one or two exercises in each workout, as opposed to say the traditional bodybuilding style of splitting your workouts into body parts and work a different body part each day or say an upper-body/lower-body split.

There are a number of reasons we choose total body workouts:

1. Time efficiency

One of the main benefits to utilising total body workouts is that it requires much less time commitment. People lead busy lives outside of the gym, our members included, and therefore cannot commit to working out every day of the week. A realistic target however might be to get to the gym 3 days a week and therefore it’s going to be most beneficial to hit each body part in every single session instead of splitting them out.

It’s also not a disaster if you miss a workout as you have at least worked your whole body twice that week and not just your arms for example.

2. Balance

As opposed to body part splits for example, where you might workout one or two major muscle groups once per week spread over 4/5 days. Full body workouts allow you to strength train 2/3 days a week, leaving time for recovery (especially if you’re a beginner), or maybe to train in other sports and activities whether it be yoga, boxing or running training for a 5/10k run.

3. Training movements not muscles

During full body workouts there is an emphasis on movement quality and compound exercises which incorporate more muscles, and generally, transfer better to athletic performance whilst giving you more bang for your buck in terms of adaptations.

4. Frequency

The more frequent you stimulate a muscle group, the more likely it is to grow and get stronger. Though it should be of consideration that you must vary the intensity, types of exercises and rep range so as not to fry your central nervous system and risk injury or overtraining. High/low days are a good way to break this up meaning if you lift very heavy on a Monday, then it might be better to focus more on light to moderate weights on Wednesday.

5. Greater Energy Expenditure

Full body sessions will yield more energy expenditure per workout than split routines generally due to a large amount of muscle mass used in each session. For example, squats, pull ups and deadlifts will induce more of a metabolic response in comparison to bicep curls or triceps extensions. This will aid with fat loss without compromising too much muscle mass when in conjunction with proper nutrition. This fits with a large majority of the general population’s goals. I.e. To get stronger, leaner and fitter.

Hopefully, this might give some clarity on why we use this method of programming. At the end of the day there is no “magic” programme, what is the most important thing to remember is that consistency is key and you can rest assured that those who achieve the best results from their training are turning up week in, week out and building it into an integral and enjoyable part of their lifestyle.

Final note: there is a time and place for insolation moves but these should be viewed as the “icing on the cake” or a way to work on weak or lagging body parts and not for the majority of your programme.

Full Body Training

We help our members with a nutritional programme that works for them, if you’re struggling, give us a shout at one of our London gyms or try out our personal training and we’ll help you work out a plan that suits you.