The Best Science-Based Full Body Workout for Growth (WORKOUT “A”)

Foreign full body workouts are one of the best routines for muscle growth and strength regardless of your training experience. They not only enable you to optimize your training frequency and recovery throughout the week, but are also time efficient and and in this case only requiring three workouts per week. However, in order to maximize the benefits of a full body workout routine, you need to adequately target all of your major muscle groups within each workout and you need to do so in a balanced manner such that your muscles grow and strengthen proportionately over time, which not only leads to a more aesthetic physique, but also minimizes your risk of injury. So in this video I'll show you exactly how to do so based on current scientific literature and our anatomical understanding of of the human body. But first off, just to clarify, this full body workout routine consists of three workout days per week and will alternate between two different full body workouts. Like so, workout A will be covered in this video and workout B will be covered in a follow up video. Each workout will consist of mainly compound movements with a mix of various accessory exercises to minimize any potential muscle imbalances. And do make sure to stick around until the end of the video where I'll provide you with a completely free downloadable PDF. The Workout so that next time you're in the gym you'll know exactly what to do. So without further ado, let's take a look at what the optimal full body workout might look like. First, exercise is the barbell bench press and it's going to be your main chest movement. For this workout, it's going to be responsible for contributing to most of your chest overall size and thickness over time. More specifically, due to the flat angle of the bench, it's going to emphasize the sternal portion or middle part of your chest while also developing your shoulders and trice. So as you perform this exercise, you'll want to really focus on feeling these highlighted muscles working with most of the tension being felt in your chest. Now, the bench press was chosen for various reasons. First off, it's great at activating the chest. Multiple studies like this 2000 EMG paper by Barrons and Buskies have found the bench press to elicit the highest chest activation when compared to other common chest movements, and this does seem to translate to better chest growth as well. For instance, two recent papers that tracked bench press strength and chest growth over time have found a strong positive correlation between them, suggesting that in most cases a strong bench does indeed equate to a big chest. And with regards to form, you'll want to Come all the way down to your chest to accomplish a full range of motion. This is because multiple papers have found that for compound movements like the bench press, a full range of motion is more effective for muscle growth, even if heavier weights are used with a partial range of motion. So unless you have past shoulder injuries preventing you from doing so, or your main goal is to improve a specific sticking point, then aiming for a full range of motion with this exercise would be your best bet for growth. Next, we're going to move on to a lower body movement before proceeding onto the next upper body movement in order to optimize the recovery and performance with each exercise. The barbell back squat is the exercise of choice here, since it's been repeatedly shown in multiple papers to elicit very high quadriceps activation while also heavily involving the glutes and various other lower body muscles. You should mainly feel the tension in these muscles that are highlighted as you perform the exercise. And again, with this compound movement, you want to utilize a full range of motion to maximize growth. In fact, illustrating the importance of this, a 2014 paper by McMahon and colleagues found that there was a two fold increase in muscle size after only eight weeks for subjects using full range of motion squats compared to subjects using a partial range of motion. And although what constitutes a full range of motion will vary based on your own anthropometry, I'd suggest sticking with what research recommends is optimal, which is to come down to at least slightly below parallel or deeper if your mobility enables you to do so safely. Pull ups are going to be the next upper body exercise and your main back movement. For this workout, the main muscle worked will be the lats, but as shown here, various shoulder and scapular stabilizers as well as the biceps and forearm muscles will be worked as well. As you perform this movement, you should feel these highlighted muscles working, but most of the tension should be felt in the lats. And once you're able to successfully complete around 10 to 12 bodyweight pull ups straight, you'll want to then start slowly loading it with weight using either a weight belt or holding a dumbbell between your feet. On the other hand, if you're currently unable to do pull ups, then band assisted pull ups, machine pull ups and or sets of slow and negative pull ups are decent alternatives to start with and progress until you're able to successfully complete bodyweight pull ups. Next, going back to the lower body, we're going to be using lion leg curls. I'd suggest trying out this variation with a dumbbell held between your feet, as it helps ensure that you're controlling the weight throughout each rep. As shown here, this exercise will mainly target the hamstrings. Again, as you perform each rep, you'll want to really focus on feeling the hamstrings working while avoiding any lower back involvement by keeping your abs engaged. Now, the main reason why this exercise is included is to further strengthen the hamstrings, which is crucial because as shown in this 2009 EMG paper, the back squat alone doesn't sufficiently activate the hamstrings and only reaches about 27% activation, which is much lower than other common hamstring movements. So since the hamstrings need to be balanced out with the quadriceps for injury prevention, this exercise is vital to include. More specifically, though, research has indicated that it's the eccentric strengthening of the hamstrings that's important for both enhancing athletic performance and preventing preventing injury, meaning that when performing this movement, you want to really control the weight and use a slow eccentric of a few seconds on the way down of each rep. Just be aware that for many this will cause quite a bit of post workout soreness. So what I'd suggest is just take it easy in terms of load and progress from there. The last major compound movement of this workout will be the standing barbell overhead press, which is essential when it comes to upper body development and strength. Although the full body is involved, the main muscles at play here will be the anterior delto triceps and the serratus anterior. This exercise has been shown in studies like this one by Baron Sebuskies to be the best exercise for the anterior deltoid. In addition, when compared to other similar shoulder pressing exercises, it enables you to lift the most weight and from a practical standpoint, it's also the easiest shoulder exercise to overload with more weight as you progress, which is why I'd recommend incorporating it into your routine. However, research does also indicate that the seated dumbbell press elicits similar activation, so feel free to use that as an alternative if it's a more comfortable movement for you. Next, we're going to move on to a couple accessory movements to help minimize any potential muscle imbalances as you progress. The first accessory movement is going to be the face pull, which is essential for shoulder health, posture and balancing out the pulling repetitions with all the pressing. In this workout, the main muscles worked are the rear delts, mid and lower traps and the various rotator cuff muscles as shown here. These can be done kneeling or standing, but regardless you want to Keep the elbows high and drive them back as you pull the rope towards your face. At the end position, your shoulders should be externally rotated such that you're in a biceps flexing pose in order to best emphasize the rotator cuffs and rear delts. I definitely suggest using relatively lighter weight for these and really focus on activating the right muscles. The last exercise is going to be the drag curl due to the shoulder extension component of this exercise. It's going to help preferentially target the long head of the biceps or the outer head which otherwise doesn't get as much attention with our previous exercise selection. To perform it, simply use a weighted bar or barbell and lift the bar as close as possible in front of your body by driving the elbows behind the body as you lift the bar and then you want to lower the weight in the same fashion. I suggest using a much lighter weight than you would in standard biceps curl and perfecting the movement before progressing. So to sum the video up, here is what your full body workout a could look like. Calves and or abs exercises can definitely be added as part of the accessory movements as well. Just keep in mind that if you're a beginner lifter then sticking to just the main compound movements and the low end of the range of sets per exercise would likely be best to start and then you can gradually add more volume over time. Also keep in mind that you can play around with the exercise order of the workout. Several studies have shown a trend where lifters get better gains for exercises that are done early on in a session. So by knowing what each exercise in this workout targets, you can rearrange the exercises based on what you want to prioritize. For example, if you wanted to focus on pull up strength and back growth, you could simply perform the pull ups first rather than the bench press.

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