Full Body Training To Gain Lean Muscle Faster
I have a great series of articles starting today for you from Chad Waterbury. Chad is one of the biggest proponents of full body workouts. And to get away from the mind numbing bodybuilder workouts those of us looking to gain lean muscle should be scaling our workouts to total body training.
Over the next few days Chad will take us top to bottom of how to use full body workouts for lean muscle gains.
Lean Muscle Workouts Why It Works
Training your entire body, each time you suit up for a workout, is the fastest way for 99% of lifters who look to gain lean muscle. I can’t make it any simpler than that. Full body workouts (aka total body training) is as popular as ever because that’s what the vast majority of lifters out there need.
I’ve written countless articles and three books that revolve around full body workouts: Muscle Revolution - The High-Performance System For Building A Bigger, Stronger, Leaner Body, Men's Health Huge in a Hurry: Get Bigger, Stronger, and Leaner in Record Time with the New Science of Strength Training (Men's Health (Rodale))
In fact, if you do a Google search for "full body workouts" or "total body training," the T-nation article I wrote a few years back on the subject is the first to come up. (Out of 71.1 million possible results.)
It’s safe to say that my name is synonymous with the total body training philosophy, yet I still get frequent emails from avid lifters who want to try it but don’t know how to set up lean muscle workouts.
So that’s why I decided to write this post. With the following information you’ll have all the tools you need to make full body workouts to gain lean muscle work for you.
First, let me explain why this type of total body training works so well. There are three reasons: exercise selection, hormonal response, and frequency.
Exercise Selection:
Any body part split can be effective if it’s comprised of compound exercises. However, when you target specific muscle groups with body part split training you invariably do a bunch of isolation exercises that have little to no impact to gain lean muscle to your frame.
With full body workouts, there’s no time to mess with concentration curls, kickbacks, and a host of other subpar exercises. By default, total body training steers you to compound exercises and to gain lean muscle that gives you the most bang for your buck.
Hormonal Response:
Research shows that growth hormone will increase after an intense bout of exercise. And when growth hormone increases it signals the body to produce more IGF-1, a powerful anabolic hormone.
Research also shows that working the largest muscle groups results in the highest output of growth hormone. A full body workout creates an intense demand for your body to upregulate anabolic hormones – significantly higher than workouts that only work a few muscle groups (eg, arms and shoulders).
Lean Muscle Workouts Testosterone Release
Through research, it’s been shown that the amount of muscle mass stimulated in lean muscle workouts is proportionate to the amount of testosterone that’s released.
Put simply, workouts that stimulate the most muscles produce the most testosterone produce testosterone and what happens? You gain lean muscle.
I’ll concede that the relationship between strength training and the impact it has on testosterone is still a little fuzzy, but my empirical data (and common sense) tells us that full body workouts augment testosterone better than a day of arm training.
Full Body Workouts - Frequency:
With total body training, each of the primary muscle groups are stimulated at least three times per week, as opposed to a body part split that only hits everything once per week (yes, there’s some carryover between a chest/back and arms/shoulders workouts, but you get the point). Make no mistake about it: training more often is the key to gain lean muscle fast.
However, you can’t just train everything three times per week and recover from those workouts unless you follow these steps.
Step #1: To Gain Lean Muscle Start with three exercises in one workout.
- Total Body Training Marathon Workouts Not Required
For a workout to be full body, it only has to consist of an upper body pull, an upper body push, and a squat, deadlift or lunge variation. Here are two examples of a full body workout:
1B Dip
1C Deadlift
1B One-arm shoulder press
1C Reverse lunge
As you can see, to gain lean muscle, full body workouts can consist of single-limb exercises, too. Your lean muscle workouts are not just about bent-over rows, push presses, and squats.
There are countless exercise variations you can use in the workouts.
Later on I’ll tell you how to add more exercises to full body workouts in order to target lagging muscle groups. But for the first few weeks, start with three exercises per workout to get your body accustomed to this type of training.
One of the problems lifters run into when they embark on a full body training plan is they try to do too many exercises in one workout.
No one would argue against the principle that training a muscle group more often results in faster muscle gains (provided you can recover between the workouts). three of the most important hormones for lean muscle gains are testosterone, insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), and growth hormone. when you train everything in one workout you must be wise with the exercises you choose.
Of all the variables that make or break your ability to gain lean muscle, exercise selection is number one.
