Basic Training Advice for Full-Body Workouts

Some Thoughts on Programming Design and Proper Technique for Learning the Major Lifts

Advice for Beginners or Those New to Full-Body Workouts or Serious Strength Training

     Although I have covered the material below in various articles and essays, I wrote the following based on a couple of emails from new lifters that I have received the last few weeks.  If you’re new to full-body workouts or need to get “back to the basics” then pay attention!

     When it comes to utilizing full-body workouts, I generally suggest using around 5 “big” compound lifts.  If you’re trying to pack on a lot of muscle—yes, this goes for any aspiring young bodybuilders who might actually be reading this instead of scrolling through mindlessly stupid Tik Tok shorts or YouTube videos that spit out the same information ad nauseam—then this is the route you want to take.  Whole body training isn’t just for strength training or for athletes, though if you are an athlete, sure, it’s what you ought to be doing.  Athletes use all of their muscles in their competitive sports—some decidedly more than others, that’s true, also; the football player, MMA fighter, or rugby player uses more of his muscles than a marathon runner, but even runners rely on more upper body power than you might realize—so it only makes sense that they should train all of their muscles in a workout rather than with multi-muscle group splits.

     I’ve written this before, but there’s just something about full-body workouts—especially when done with free weights, be they barbells, dumbbells, or even kettlebells—that builds muscle faster than split training.  Perhaps training your entire body in a session sends an anabolic “signal” to your body that it needs to grow bigger in order to adapt.  A heavy squat-only workout probably does the same thing, though maybe not to the extent that squats plus everything else does.  I doubt your body receives that “signal” from a few sets of curls and triceps extensions.  Don’t get me wrong, once you’ve already built some muscle, multi-bodypart splits and pump training might be exactly what you need at that point.  So, I’m not “knocking” split training—I write, and will continue to do so, quite a few split training programs.  But that’s not the point of this essay, so I digress.

     A handful of movements for full-body training seems to be just about right.  A squatting movement, a “hinge” or lower body pull lift, an upper body press, an upper body pull, and a curl of some type—barbell curl is usually the correct answer—works well.  Not everyone needs to do curls.  If your arms grow easier than other muscle groups, then you’d do even better with a squat, a lower body pull, an upper body pull, and two different kinds of upper body pressing lifts—a vertical and horizontal one.  In other words, some type of bench press and overhead press.

     Five lifts per session is a good “average” number.  I wouldn’t do more than six, though only four or even three might be better for some lifters.  Some guys, pure and simple, are “low volume lifters” who would do fine with just three lifts.  A squat, a lower body pull, and an upper body press covers just about all of your muscles.  That’s all some lifters need.  If you’re an athlete, then all you really need is some type of squat, a quick lift, and an overhead press.

     Three to five lifts (maybe six) works well assuming, as well, that you’re doing enough on each lift.  What’s enough?  Well, that depends on the lifter, how he responds, and his specific goals, but around 25 to 30 reps total per lift is a good starting point.  That’s the reason the classic 5x5 workout works so well—25 reps total.  If you’re training really heavy—and your goal is more strength than just pure size—then 15 to 20 reps total is fine.  3x5, 5x3, or even 8 to 10 doubles on each lift.  Conversely, if muscle size is the sole goal, you can push the total reps up to 40 to 50.  You can do 4 to 5 sets of 8 to 10 reps and you’re on the right track.  A good “middle way” might be 4 to 5 sets of 6 to 8 reps per lift.  You’ll gain size and strength, and some guys do well with 6 to 8 reps even when size is their only goal.

     All of this also assumes that you’re training 3 days per week.  Some lifters make great gains on just 2 full-body sessions per week.  That’s particularly true for you if you like to go all out at all of your workouts.  As much as I push the “everything moderate” approach to full-body workouts, I also understand that some lifters just can’t not train hard.  If you insist on always taking your last set or two of each movement to complete momentary muscular failure, then 2 workouts is enough.  Even then, however, I think you’d get better results by training 3 days per week and doing one “light” session.  If you train Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, then go ahead and push hard on your Monday and Friday sessions, but pull back at the Wednesday workout.  A simple method is, on the light day, to do around 80% of the work that you do on the other days.  Maybe even less, though you don’t want to train so light that you might as well have just sat at home and binged the latest Netflix show.

     You can’t go wrong with Bill Starr’s heavy-light-medium method, either.  It’s been popular for a long time—and will continue to be for many years going forward—because it works.  Sometimes we can overcomplicate the method.  I have an entire book on just it—if you want the lowdown on multiple ways that it can be used and how to get all of your lifts strong and all of your muscles bigger, then check out my book The Strongest Shall Always Survive. A simple way to use it, however, is like this:  At the first workout, the “heavy” day, go all-out, give 100%.  At the 2nd “light” session, do 80% of what you did on the heavy day.  On the 3rd “medium” day, do 90% of what you did at the heavy session.  Train on Monday (heavy), Wednesday (light), and Friday (medium) or whatever 3 non-consecutive days you wish but follow the system.

     If you are one of those lifters that just has to go all-out at every single session, you can still use the heavy-light-medium system but let “exercise selection” determine what is heavy, light, or medium.  Let me explain.  You might be able to back squat quite a bit of weight but on your front squat, you’re not going to be able to use more than 90% of your back squat weight.  That makes the front squat a perfect medium day lift.  What about the light day?  Starr suggested barbell lunges, since your 5-rep max on it is going to be significantly lighter than your back squat weight and also less than your front squat weight.  Modern strength coaches often hate on the barbell lunge.  A few of them even consider it worthless.  I’ve had my fair share of hate mail regarding my recommendation of it, as well, but if Starr liked it then that’s good enough for me.  But you can always substitute it with overhead squats or even something like dumbbell or kettlebell goblet squats.  Even if you could use weights heavy enough on goblet squats, good luck finding heavy enough weights to make them more than a “light” movement.  Using the system, a week of workouts might look like this:

Monday - Heavy

Back squats

Bench presses

Deadlifts

Wednesday - Light

Double kettlebell front squats

Military presses

Power snatches

Friday - Medium

Front squats

Incline bench presses

Sumo deficit deadlifts

     The key to making the system work is to use the same set/rep combination on each lift.  If you’re training with the 5x5 method, then make each day a 5x5 workout.  You don’t, for example, want to do 5x5 on back squats and front squats but 5 sets of 25 reps on double kettlebell front squats.  Even though the kettlebell squats are going to be “light”, your workload will be through the roof, potentially making it quite a bit “heavier” than your heavy day.

     Another option if you want to train hard and/or heavy on each day is to do one lift heavy on each day and train light or medium on the others.  So, you might squat heavy, bench light, and do a medium pull on Monday, bench press heavy, squat light, and do a light pull on Wednesday, and deadlift heavy, and bench and squat medium on Friday.

     A benefit of 3 days per week, full-body workouts outside of what I’ve discussed so far is that it allows you to master the lifts.  One reason that lifters—I’m not sure if you can call this kind of trainee a “lifter” but that is neither here or there—don’t squat this frequently is because they’re just not good at it.  I’ve known many trainees who do hard, heavy, and voluminous bench press and curl workouts but just go through the motions on their leg and back workouts.  Eventually, some of them just give up those workouts altogether.  Do that long enough and you’ll eventually develop all kinds of muscle imbalances and a boatload of injuries down the road.  Oh, and you’ll also walk around looking like an ape.  Your big chest, arms, and potentially shoulders will cause you to walk like a hunched-over gorilla, or, heck, the Hunchback of Notre Dame.  That happens even if you deadlift hard but don’t squat.  Good training makes you stand up straight and gives you a dignified posture.

     To get good at something, you need to do it!  Dan John tells a story in one of his books about an athlete he coached or a lifter he was working with at a workshop—sorry if the specific details allude me at the moment—who told him that he doesn’t squat because “it hurts” him.  John asked the man to show him his squat.  He then told the guy that squats don’t hurt him but whatever-the-hell movement he just did hurts him.

     If you’re not good at squats—perhaps you have trouble going deep or squatting without your toes going forward—the best exercise to fix your troubles is the goblet squat.  Hold either a kettlebell or a dumbbell on your upper chest/shoulders and squat down, keeping your body upright and letting your elbows go between your inner thighs.  Squat down and into your heels, allowing your knees to go out.  Again, keep your body straight.  Your knees should not move forward.

     When I first decided to compete in a powerlifting meet back in 1997, I had been lifting weights for around a decade.  I was already big and strong, but I had always squatted like a bodybuilder.  I squatted to parallel or just above parallel.  I had done reps with 500 pounds in the gym, so when the powerlifting meet rolled around, I wrote down 405 for my opener.  After that, one of the guys running the competition showed us what would qualify for a “good” squat at the meet—butt below parallel.  I “bombed out” on my opener after missing 405 pounds on three consecutive attempts.  I left the meet mad at myself, but also determined to become a good powerlifter and never let that happen again.  With my ego slightly deflated, I returned to the gym and from that point on did all of my squats “ass-to-the-grass,” letting my butt touch my calves at the bottom of the lift.  I did have strong quads and even a strong posterior chain from all of my previous training, but what I had neglected was my glute-hamstring “tie-in” muscles.  Within a couple months of training, I was back to squatting over 405 but with deep, proper form.  I never missed an opening squat ever again in competition, and eventually went on to squat over 600 pounds in competition in the 181-pound class, always squatting even deeper than what was needed to ensure that I consistently got “white-lighted” by the judges.  Why do I tell you this?  One, so that you will know what equals a “good” squat; two, so that you don’t get demoralized if you haven’t been squatting that deep; and three, so that you will understand that you can get your deep squat to quickly match your above-parallel numbers if you just stay at it.

     A lot of lifters “inflate” their squat numbers because they never squat deep.  I’ve had a lot of guys I know tell me how much they could squat.  When I invited them to my home to train with me at my garage gym—assuming they took me up on the offer—none of them were actually capable of squatting the weight they said they could when forced to go below parallel.  This is nothing new.  In my Bill Starr book, I tell a story from Starr about when he was a strength coach at John Hopkins University.  It goes like this: “Just about every other year I’m told that I’ll have an incoming freshman who can squat more than the gym record, which is 625.  The reports are always that he did more than 700 in high school.  That’s great—that is, until I actually see the prodigy do a squat, and it’s barely a quarter squat.  When I force him to go below parallel, the 700-pound squat suddenly becomes a 385-pound squat.  Sometimes, their egos are so shattered by that humbling experience, they never fully recover.  As yet, none of the wonder squatters has actually done a full squat with as much as he supposedly used in high school.”

     If you’re new to training, then start your training by always doing a full squat and that won’t ever be a problem.  Proper full squats will also keep your knees healthy and improve the numbers in your lower body pulls—the various deadlifts and the quick lifts.  Partial squats don’t do that.

     Outside of the squat, perfect your other lifts, as well.  It’s hard, if not damn-near impossible, to teach proper form of the quick lifts in a blog post or article.  Find a good weightlifting coach if you want to learn.  Other than that, you can find some good videos on YouTube or other places on the internet that can demonstrate proper technique.

     The deadlift in whatever variety is pretty easy to learn without much guidance.  I also don’t think there is one superior way to deadlift.  I pulled over 600 pounds in competition and always started the lift with my shins a few inches away from the bar.  I also deadlifted with my back slightly rounded.  Both of those would be considered “bad” form by most powerlifting coaches.  The point is to find what form works best for you.  The techniques you do want to use include remembering that your arms are “hooks” and should remain straight at all times and that you should push into the floor with your heels.  Don’t start the lift with bent elbows as some beginners do and try deadlifting with flat-heeled shoes or even barefoot.  I always envisioned attempting to push the floor down as I pulled the lift.

     Even though it might be a popular lift, most gym-goers don’t bench press with proper form, either.  A few basic points to consider.  Keep your butt and your head on the bench at all times.  Drive your feet into the floor.  Squeeze the bar hard.  Keep your elbows tucked in to your sides, especially when going for max lifts.  If you don’t compete in powerlifting, then there’s no reason for a big “arch” as well.  For general strength and size building just keep your back relatively straight or use, at most, a minimal arch if it better gets you in position for the lift.  Lower the bar to your chest and, even better, pause the bar on your chest for a second or two.  Press the bar up until your elbows are locked out.  Bodybuilders who are doing high reps and want to focus on isolating their chests can stop the bar short of lock-out for continuous tension and can keep their elbows flared out.  Everyone else should follow the entirety of my advice.

     If you’re brand new to training, ignore my suggestion to rotate lifts at each session.  Pick one squatting movement, pressing movement (or two), lower body pull, and upper body pull and do them at every single training session.  Do that for at least 6 weeks straight and then you can start changing to some same but different movements.

     Full-body workouts for size and strength are the best programs for you if you’re just starting your lifting journey.  Even if you’ve been training for years but have never done full-body workouts, maybe it’s time to give them a try.  Train 3 days per week with full-body sessions.  Use the “correct” lifts for your goals (or your sport if you’re an athlete).  Master the lifts if you’re new to them.  Use lighter weights if you need to in order to ensure that your form follows the advice above.  Get on a specific program instead of just going to the gym and “working out.”  Follow that advice and your success is guaranteed.

     If you liked this article and want even more advice, then consider purchasing one of my books.  My Bill Starr book mentioned in the essay or my first book, Ultimate Strength, would both be good choices.  For information on all of my books, click on THIS link.

     Of course, as always, if you have any questions, then send me an email or leave them in the “comments” section below.