Bodybuilding 101: The Total Body Workout

The trend in bodybuilding over the last many years is to train one body part at a time, once per week. Although this protocol can be quite effective, it often can cause overtraining and it takes a heavy commitment of time. If you find yourself too busy to make it to the gym 5-6 times weekly or you believe your body is overtrained and you will need a refreshing change, the entire body workout might be just the thing you require.

Initially you will wonder how you can work your entire body in one workout. In the end, most people are so accustomed to doing 4-5 exercises per body part for approximately 12-20 sets which they can't envision properly training a body part with anything less. This mindset has to be opened up. In working your entire body in one workout, you'll be performing just 1-2 exercises and 4-6 sets per body part. However, the training frequency is going to be 3 times each week.

The entire body workout involves a focus on fundamental, multi-joint movements. These exercises stimulate the maximum reaction from the body in terms of not just the muscle fibers recruited, but also from the discharge of the vital hormones to promote muscle development. Additionally, working all major muscle groups in one session will have a synergistic effect on your body's reaction to the training session. In a nutshell, your body should react well to this sort of training, particularly if it's a radical change from what you've been currently doing.

The secret is to keep the training sessions relatively brief (less than 1 hour) and extreme. Work the big muscle groups (thighs, chest, and back) and the smaller muscle groups (arms and shoulders ). By focusing on basic, compound movements you will supply your body with the utmost recruitment of muscle fibres in the shortest period of time. By way of instance, when you train chest with bench or incline presses, you're also recruitment heavy work from the shoulders (especially the front deltoids) and triceps. This is effective training. Together with adequate intensity, it is going to create excellent results.

With this system, leg training simply can't be neglected. The easy old-fashioned barbell squat is the best bodybuilding exercise, period. Routine intense squats performed in great shape will stimulate muscular growth on your whole body. As a matter of fact, most people would benefit from a regular focused on just squats, deadlifts, bench, bentover rows, and chins. These exercises work since they stimulate muscle growth. These are exactly what the old-time greats focused on. So do them.

Here are the exercises recommended for your Total Body Workout:

Quads: Squats, Leg Press, Hack Squats

Chest: Bench press, Incline press, dips (presses can be performed with dumbbells or barbells)

Back: Deadlifts, Chins, Pulldowns, Bentover Rows, T-Bar Rows

For a sample exercise, simply choose 1-2 of these basic moves for each body area and perform no more than 6 sets. By way of instance, a workout could include squats for 5x5, bench press for 3x8, incline press for 3x8, chins for 3x10 and bentover rows for 3x8. You get the idea? It is pretty straightforward. Incidentally, a 5x5 or 3x8 protocols works really well for the complete body workout.

You can follow these basic movements with the next isolation exercises:

Hamstrings: Lying or seated ham curls

Calves: Seated or standing calf raises

Shoulders: Shoulder Press (dumbbell or barbell), front or lateral increases

Arms: Dumbell or preacher curls, lying triceps extension, triceps pushdowns

Abs: Crunches

For the regular, simply choose 2-3 of those muscle groups and perform 2-3 sets of your preferred isolation exercise. The following workout, do another 2-3 muscle groups. By way of instance, if you did arms and shoulders one exercise (at the end of your thighs, chest, back regular ) do hams, calves and abs another workout.

The entire body exercise should be performed 3 times each week on alternate days. A Monday-Wednesday-Friday routine functions well and it leaves the weekends free for you weekend warriors. The main thing is to remember to not do the exact same exercise twice in a row. Therefore, if you did squats, barbell bench and chins and barbell rows on Monday, alter it to leg press, dumbbell incline press, pulldowns and deadlifts on Wednesday. This is a simple routine to follow.

If you're interested in getting maximum results with limited time, this regular rocks! If you're interested in a change or something new to stimulate new growth and strength, the entire body workout may be just the ticket. Give it a try - you might just love it! Get to the gym and train with intensity.