Holistic Help – A Break Down Of Full Body Workouts And Their Benefits

“For 90 percent of people, 90 percent of the time, total body training is the way to go”, says Tony Gentilcore, one of the leading strength coaches in the USA. It is clear there is a common gym trend of people endlessly pumping bicep curls in the hope it will grant them a ticket to the ‘gun show’. Alternatively, Tony’s logic suggests that performing a movement like a chin-up is a more effective method of training biceps, as it works for other group muscle groups like back and abdominals in addition to the bicep.

Whether your goal is to build strength, gain size or shed a few pounds, performing full body workouts is beneficial and can also result in an enhanced neuromuscular and cardiovascular system.

Maximise Workout Efficiency

Most of us seek time efficiency in various components of our lives. Therefore, why not broaden and extend this habit into the gym? Full body workout exercises work various muscles at once. This alone exemplifies workout efficiency and many studies have gone to prove the importance of full-body exercises and their associated benefits.

If you live a busy lifestyle and only have 30 minutes to spare in the day, getting a barbell with some bumper plates and performing a full body workout will make good use of this time. By doing this, you will be stimulating various muscles across your entire body at once. This works similarly if you’re someone that doesn’t enjoy spending copious amounts of time in the gym to get a sufficient workout completed. Maximising workout efficiency is something everyone should take on board and performing full body workouts is a great way of establishing this concept into your training regimen.

Burn more calories in less time

One of the primary, most discussed benefits of full body workouts is that performing them will burn more calories in less time. This is explained by the body’s natural tendency to exert more energy when a higher number of muscle groups are being used simultaneously. If more energy is being used, more calories are being burnt, with this all taking place across a shorter time frame.

This delivery of dynamic results in a short time frame is another demonstration of how beneficial full body workouts can be. This becomes clear if you were to compare a full body exercise, like deadlifts, to another exercise, like bicep curls. In this example, the bicep is a very small muscle group and therefore requires very little energy to coordinate. However, deadlifts use various muscles simultaneously and will, therefore, require more energy and as a result, burn more calories.

Frequent Muscle Development

Many studies have proven and clearly support the idea that consistently increasing the frequency of muscle breakdown will result in an increased muscle build. This study has been undertaken by many health specialists across the globe and the majority of them have come to the same conclusion that there is a direct association between training frequency and muscle development. This can be explained by the body’s natural tendency to remain in an anabolic phase for 2 days prior to a workout.

For example, if an individual were to train biceps on Monday, the body’s tendency to rebuild that specific muscle will only last for 2 days, meaning, one should look to train biceps  x3 times a week for optimal muscle development. Training a muscle group x3 a week may sound extreme, however, this is easily achievable when performing full body workouts.

If your ordinary gym routine is to perform 15 sets of chest exercises on a Monday, this can be rearranged to 5 sets on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with all of them incorporated into a full body workout. Clearly, this is the same total volume but due to this increased frequency, the chest muscle will increase at a quicker rate.

As you can see there are profitable benefits associated with full body workouts and incorporating them into your exercise routine is definitely something worthwhile.