Full-body workouts are exercises that require you to use more than one muscle group or joint. These exercises are multiplanar, meaning that you need to move in different directions to perform -- such as moving front to back, side to side, or turning left and right. Rodney Corn, co-founder of PTA Global, recommends this method to build muscle because it also helps overcome plateaus, improves movement patterns and develops speed and power.
Features
There are hundreds of different ways to perform full-body exercises. All involve upper and lower movements and using your core muscles -- which includes the inner and outer layers of muscles and connective tissues in your abs, hips and back -- to maintain your balance and posture. You can combine different isolated exercises and blend them to create a full-body exercise, according to Corn. For example, you can do a squat press by holding a pair of dumbbells over your shoulders with your arms close to the center of your body and your legs shoulder-width apart. Squat down as low as you can and stand back up, pressing the dumbbells over your head. Other exercises include push-ups, pull-ups, multiplanar lunges, jump-roping, medicine ball throws and kettlebell swings.
Isolation Vs. Integration
Isolation and integration methods are both used to build muscles. Isolation is training one muscle group at a time; integration training is using your entire body at once. In "Essence of Program Design," Juan Carlos Santana says isolation training provides the highest stimulus for building large muscles, a method that many bodybuilders use. However, isolation training does not train core strength, balance, multiplanar movements and other aspects of human movement. Also, not many people who exercise would like large muscles like a bodybuilder.
Integration training distributes the amount of stress and force throughout your body. Although the stimulus is not as great as isolation training, you still get some muscle growth. Many endurance and combat athletes and people who want to lose weight prefer this method.
Supportive Nutrition
Although strength exercise is essential to building muscles, you must have proper nutrition intake and timing to optimize protein and glucose synthesis in your muscles. Dietitian Ellen Coleman recommends that you consume a post-workout meal within 30 minutes after exercise. This should consist of lean protein, simple carbohydrates and no or very little fat. If you do not eat, your body converts the proteins in your muscles into glucose for energy, which inhibits your ability to grow muscles. Therefore, neither the isolation nor full-body approach is best for building muscle if you do not have proper nutrition.
Expert Insight
Coach Robert dos Remedios, author of "Cardio Strength Training," recommends that you do full-body workouts in an interval training manner. In interval training, you perform several exercises for a short a duration at high intensity with short bouts of rest between exercises. This method improves your stamina and stimulates better muscle growth and neural adaptation, and burns more calories in less time than doing each exercise individually.
Sample Workout
In a sample muscle-building workout using a full-body approach, perform each exercise for 30 seconds followed by a 20-second to 30-second rest. Then proceed to the next exercise and follow the same time variables. A round of interval training workout would include two-arm kettlebell swings, dumbbell squat press, one-leg push-ups, pull-ups and medicine ball overhead throws.
References
- "IDEA Fitness Journal"; Creative Total-Body Workouts; Rodney Corn; February 2010
- "Essence of Program Design"; Juan Carlos Santana; 2004
- "Cardio Strength Training"; Robert dos Remedios; 2009
- "Ultimate Sports Nutrition"; Ellen Coleman; 2004
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