Fit to Transform
  • Coached by Nikias
  • About
    • About Me
    • Contact Me >
      • Collaborations & Guest Appearances
    • Terms & Conditions
  • Services
    • Online Coaching
    • Personal Training
    • Online Group Coaching
    • Custom Training Programs >
      • Free Programs
  • Blog & Podcast
    • Blog
    • Podcast
  • Resources
    • My Links
    • Recommended Resources

INFORM & TRANSFORM

KNOWLEDGE IS YOUR MOST POWERFUL WEAPON

A Beginner’s Guide to Designing a Full-Body Workout

1/27/2021

6 Comments

 
Picture
If you can build a muscle, you can build a mindset.
––Jay Shetty
​Are you at the beginning of your fitness journey and want to design your own workouts? Then you’re in the right place. Read this article and learn to apply basic principles of exercise science to create your own full-body training sessions.
 
First of all, I’ll be completely honest with you: A single blog article is no substitute for a personal trainer or coach, who can teach you correct form and draw upon their expertise and experience to craft a training program suited to your current fitness level, skills, and individual body.
 
But not everyone has access to a coach, and some training is better than no training.
 
As a beginner, what you need the most are consistency and practice, so you can get great results for months with a simple, well-structured full-body workout.
 
I trained this way three days a week for six months when I started bodybuilding. I have clients who do the same, even if they’re not beginners anymore, and still get incredible results.
 
Now that I’ve spent long enough singing the praises of full-body training, let’s get into the basics.
 
In order to create a science-based muscle-building workout, you need to understand:
 
  • Exercise selection
  • Exercise order
  • Reps
  • Sets
  • Rest intervals
  • Tempo
 
Ready? Strap in.
1. Exercise selection:
 
Training full-body two or three times per week means that each session is going to target every major muscle group in your body:

  • Chest
  • Upper back
  • Lats (mid- and lower-back)
  • Shoulders
  • Hamstrings or quads (or both if you have the time)
  • Core (abdominals or obliques)
 
Compound exercises – like squats, deadlifts, and bench press – train multiple joints and muscles at once, so they build muscle in the most time-efficient way possible. Compounds will therefore be the staple of your training.
 
If you have the time, you can include exercises for smaller muscles, like biceps, triceps, and lateral delts. These are called isolation exercises because they target a single joint and muscle, like biceps curls, triceps extensions, and lateral raises.
 
However, compound exercises for bigger muscle groups will also train your smaller ones in an indirect way. So, if you’re short on time, make sure you do your compounds and don’t worry about biceps curls!
 
To choose your exercises, you can consult online databases like ExRx.net. 
 
Lastly, ensure your exercises tick the following boxes:

  • You can do them with little to no pain or discomfort
  • You can do them with good form
  • You feel them in the muscles they’re supposed to target
  • You can progress them by increasing their difficulty (for bodyweight exercises) or by adding reps, weight, or sets over time
 
As a last piece of advice, you can design two full-body workouts, with different exercises to train the same muscles, and alternate them in an ABAB fashion. For example, on Day 1 you could do leg press for your quads, then on Day 2 you could do Bulgarian split squats instead.
 
This way, you won’t get bored, you’ll learn a variety of lifts, and you’ll train your muscles in a variety of ways across the week.
 
2. Exercise order:
 
The two main questions to ask yourself about exercise order are:

  1. Which are the hardest exercises you’re going to perform?
  2. Which muscles do you want to prioritise in this workout?
 
At the beginning of a training session, you have the most amount of energy, so you’ll perform better than fifty minutes into it.
 
That’s why your first exercises should be:

  • Most importantly, the most difficult technique-wise, such as lower-body compounds, so you’re less likely to injure yourself
  • Secondarily, the exercises for the muscles you want to grow the most, so that you perform these at your best
 
As a beginner, you want to develop each muscle for a well-rounded physique, and you’re still learning proper technique, so your priority is to keep injury risk to a minimum. Therefore, your first exercises should be the most complex.
 
When you’re more experienced, you can switch up the exercise order from most important to least important in order to bring up your weakest body parts.
 
In general, compound lifts are more challenging than isolation moves, and lower body compound exercises are more difficult than upper body ones.
 
Isolation exercises for smaller muscles are best suited to the end of a session as they don’t require much technical ability or effort.
 
For example, if you’re doing a dumbbell press, a lat pull-down, a barbell back squat, and a cable triceps extension, a smart way to set up your exercise order would be as follows:

  1. Lower body compound: Barbell back squat
  2. Upper body compound (pull): Lat pull-down
  3. Upper body compound (push): Dumbbell press
  4. Upper body isolation: Cable triceps extension
 
The role each muscle plays during a lift can influence exercise order, too.
 
For instance, the agonists are the muscles at work during an exercise, whereas the antagonists oppose the agonists and are therefore at rest when the agonists are engaged.
 
In other words, your muscles can be “paired” into agonists and antagonists as follows:

  • Upper back and chest
  • Lats and shoulders
  • Hamstrings and quads
  • Biceps and triceps
 
To create a well-structured workout, you can follow up an exercise for one muscle group with another for the “opposing” muscle group, for example a bent-over row (for the upper back) and a flat dumbbell press (for the chest).
 
This way, your fatigued upper back gets a chance to rest during the flat dumbbell press, whereas your chest will still be fresh for pressing because it was at rest during the row.
 
3. Sets:
 
The number of sets you do will affect the rate at which you build muscle. In simple terms, doing more sets can build more muscle, but only to a point. Moreover, as a beginner, you’ll be able to grow a lot from fewer sets than you’ll need as a more advanced lifter.
 
So you don’t have to worry about doing too many sets too soon, a big mistake a lot of people make (including me!).
 
At this stage, focus on quality over quantity: Start with two sets per exercise and work up to three or four over time, as you get stronger and more proficient with each exercise.
 
When you have at least six months to a year of solid training under your belt, you may need to do more sets to continue making progress. Until then, instead of trying to do as many sets as possible, make sure your form is the best it can be on every single rep.
 
4. Reps:
 
As a rule of thumb, you can do more reps with a lighter load and fewer reps with a heavier load, relative to the maximum you can lift for one rep (1-rep max or 1RM).
 
Lower reps done with heavier loads are better for the first exercises in your session for two main reasons:

  1. They don’t fatigue only your muscles, but also your nerves, which impacts your ability to maintain proper technique, so you want to be as fresh as possible for such heavy loads.
  2. They work best with bigger muscle groups, which makes them great for compound lifts.
 
On the other hand, higher reps with lower loads are less risky and can give your smaller muscles a nasty pump, so they’re generally better for isolation exercises.
 
5. Rest intervals:
 
You don’t need to overcomplicate this. As a rule of thumb, when your heart rate and breathing rate return to normal, and you feel mentally ready for another set, you’re golden.
 
In general, you’ll need around two to five minutes between lower-rep sets of compound lifts, particularly for the lower body, and one to two minutes between higher-rep sets of isolation exercises.
 
6. Tempo:
 
This is another aspect of training that many people (again, me included!) can get way too anal about.
 
Make sure you lift the weight explosively, then lower it under control, without letting gravity or momentum help you out, as this would take some tension away from your target muscles – and you need all the tension you can get to grow! 
 
Putting It All Together
 
This is an example of a basic full-body workout with some isolation work for arms, based on everything I’ve talked about so far:

  1. Lower body compound 1 (quads): Barbell back squat – 3 sets x 8-12 reps with 2-3 minutes’ rest
  2. Lower body compound 2 (hamstrings): Dumbbell Romanian deadlift – 3 sets x 8-12 reps with 2-3 minutes’ rest
  3. Upper body compound 1 (chest): Flat barbell chest press – 3 sets x 8-12 reps with 1-2 minutes’ rest
  4. Upper body compound 2 (upper back): Bent-over row – 3 sets x 8-12 reps with 1-2 minutes’ rest
  5. Core: Abdominal cable crunch – 3 sets x 8-12 reps with 60-90 seconds’ rest
  6. Isolation 1 (biceps): Cable biceps curl – 3 sets x 10-15 reps with 60-90 seconds’ rest
  7. Isolation 2 (triceps): Cable triceps pushdown – 3 sets x 10-15 reps with 60-90 seconds’ rest
 
Your Turn:
 
Comment your training session below and I’ll give you some feedback on it!
6 Comments
Wrangler Twins
7/9/2021 03:22:44 pm

We work out at home with just a few items - pull up/chin up bar, adjustable dumbbells, and elastic bands.

We train 3 - 4 times a week and have concentrated on upper body muscles with intention of getting top surgery.

Our work outs are something like this:
Day one
6 sets of chin ups to failure with 4 minute rests between sets.
6 sets of dumbbell one arm rows. Dumbbells are slightly over 25 pounds and we do 20 reps. each set. Two minute rests between sets.
6 sets, 20 reps of face pulls with elastic bands. Two minute rests

Day two - Rest day, though we take care of ranch chores.

Day three:
6 sets, 25 reps of pushups - 3 minute rests between sets
3 sets, 25 reps of inclined pushups - 2 minute rests between sets
6 sets, 20 reps of chest fly with elastic bands - 2 minute rests between sets

Day four - rest day

Day five:
Back to same routine as day one

Day six - rest day

Day seven:
Back to same routine as day three

Reply
Nikias link
7/9/2021 03:26:13 pm

Thank you for taking the time to read and comment.

There is a lot of back and chest work in your program, which is great if your goal is upper body strength and muscle mass.

I would personally include some lateral raises for your side delts, and at least one or two exercises for the lower body, just to make sure your physique is well-proportioned and well-rounded.

I wish you the best with your top surgery plans.

––Nikias

Reply
Keith
2/29/2024 03:44:32 am

Monday
Squat 3 sets 8-12
Bench press 3 sets 8- 12 reps
Deadlift 3 sets 8-12 reps
Military press 3 sets 8-12 reps
Barbell curl 3 sets 8-12 reps
Close grip bench 3 sets 8- 12 reps
Situps 3 sets 20

Wensday
Leg press 3 sets 8- 12 reps
Incline dumbbell press 3 sets 8- 12 reps
Barbell row 3 sets 8-12 reps
Upright row 3 sets 8- 12 reps
Chinups 3 sets 8-12
Tricep dips 3 sets 8-12
Situps 3x20

Friday
Dumbbell lunges 3 sets 8-12 reps
Cable chest flys 3 sets 8-12 reps
Pullups 3 sets 8-12 reps
Latteral raises 3 sets 8-12 reps
Hammer curl 3 sets 8-12 reps
Dumbbell extensions 3 sets 8-12 reps
Situps 3 sets 20

Reply
Nikias link
2/29/2024 10:42:45 am

Hey Keith, thanks for reading and for your comment.

This isn't at all a bad beginner's training program.

As for my suggestions, I'm assuming the amount of volume (sets per body part) is appropriate for you in that you can make progress and recover from it, so I won't comment on how many sets you're doing.

These would be some changes I would consider:

- Instead of keeping all sets within the 8-12 rep range, I'd use 5-8 for heavier compound lifts (e.g. squats and deadlifts) and 12-15 for lighter isolation lifts (e.g. lateral raises).

- I'd include the intensity of effort, e.g. 3 sets of 8-12 @ RPE 9/1 RIR.

- I would include some isolated cable work for triceps to hit the long head. An example alternative would be replacing the close-grip bench with overhead cable tris extensions.

- Similarly, I'd include some cable work for the lateral delts to bias the lengthened range, e.g. cable lateral raises with the pulley level with your wrists instead of the upright rows.

- Sit-ups tend to hit both abs and hip flexors. I'd choose different exercises if your goal is to isolate the abs.

I hope this helps!

––Coach Nikias

Reply
Rathika Radia
5/4/2025 09:41:44 pm

Workout 1
Deadlifts ( full body)
Single arm rows (upper back)
Bench press with dumbbells (chest)
Shoulder press (shoulders)
Russian twists (obliques)

- with deadlifts alternate with doing single leg on different weeks

Workout 2
Squats (lower body)
RDLs ( glutes and hamstrings)
Bents over rows (upper back)
Push ups (chest)
Dips (triceps)
Oblique crunches (obliques)

- with squats and RDLs alternate doing single leg on different weeks

Workout 3
Dumbbell snatches ( back and shoulders)
Barbell bench press (chest)
Hips thrusts (glutes)
Lunges with dumbbells (quads)
Kettlebell swings ( glutes and hamstrings)
Crunches (core)

notes :
- start of each workout do 8 - 10 negative pullups or using bands

- each exercise perform 6 - 8 reps depending on weight e.g less weight more reps and more weight less reps

Hiya I have been going to the gym a bit and normally follow a push,pull and legs based plan but I wanted to change it to doing 3 full body workouts as it's more convenient for me with work. I also run a lot so I've tried to put in some single leg movements too.

Reply
NIkias
5/6/2025 03:58:06 pm

Thanks for reading the article!

If it's more convenient for you, then shifting to full-body sounds like a great idea.

These are some tips on how to improve the program you laid out:

- I wouldn't alternate single-leg movements on different weeks. Instead, I'd do bilateral deadlifts in session 1, then unilateral RDLs in session 2, and always keep the same exercise. This makes it easier to get better at form instead of changing the lift all the time.

- You're doing a lot of lower-body exercises if you run a lot. You certainly need to strengthen glutes, quads, and hamstrings to keep yourself injury-free while running + get fitter for the running itself, but I would caution you to start this program with fewer sets than you intend (e.g. 1-2 sets per exercise instead of the 3 most people do), then monitor how well you're recovering before adding any sets. Stop adding sets if your recovery tanks and/or performance declines, as that's a sign that you may be trying to do too much.

- Workout 3 looks quite intense with those two power-based moves (snatches and swings). I'd probably move the snatches to workout 1 instead.

- I would vary your rep ranges instead of doing everything for 6-8 reps. Normally, I like to start a week with a lower-rep session, then increase reps throughout the week, e.g. 6-8 reps in session 1, 8-12 in session 2, 12-20 in session 3.

Within a session, I usually assign lower rep ranges to technical compound lifts, and higher rep ranges to isolation movements. This can vary. Anyway, the principle is, I would not keep all lifts in the same rep range, as certain lifts are more suited to a rep range than another.

I would likely have more suggestions if I were your coach and knew more about you, but, if you apply these, your current will benefit.

I hope this helps!

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Nikias Tomasiello

    Welcome to my blog. I’m an online fitness coach with a passion for bodybuilding, fantasy, and bread.

    Want to work with me? Check out my services!

    Coaching

    Archives

    January 2025
    November 2024
    September 2024
    July 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    December 2023
    October 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    March 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018

    Tags

    All
    Assigned Female At Birth
    Assigned Male At Birth
    Beginners
    Bodybuilding
    Body Positivity
    Body Type
    Bulking
    Carbs
    Cardio
    Client Perspective
    Cutting
    Diet
    Eating Disorders
    Exercise
    Fat
    Fat Loss
    Fitness
    Flexible Dieting
    Food
    Gender Diverse
    Goal Setting
    Gym
    Health
    Hiit
    Holidays
    Hypertrophy
    Iifym
    Intensity Of Effort
    Intermittent Fasting
    Intuitive Eating
    Keto
    Lifestyle
    Lifting
    Meal Frequency
    Meal Planning
    Mental Health
    Mindset
    Mini Blog
    Muscle Growth
    My Story
    Myths
    Nutrition
    Nutrition 101
    Nutrition Coaching
    People Who Menstruate
    Personal Training
    Protein
    Recipes
    Recovery
    Self Help
    Strength Training
    Supplements
    Testimonial
    Tips
    Training
    Training Frequency
    Training Volume
    Transgender
    Vegetarianism
    Women
    Workout

    RSS Feed

Follow me on social media

    Subscribe to my newsletter to receive:

    My FREE training program & nutrition guide
    Evidence-based nutrition & training content
    News & offers on my products & services

Click Here to Subscribe

Get in touch

Click Here to Contact Me
© 2018-2025 Veronica Tomasiello, known as Nikias Tomasiello – All rights reserved
  • Coached by Nikias
  • About
    • About Me
    • Contact Me >
      • Collaborations & Guest Appearances
    • Terms & Conditions
  • Services
    • Online Coaching
    • Personal Training
    • Online Group Coaching
    • Custom Training Programs >
      • Free Programs
  • Blog & Podcast
    • Blog
    • Podcast
  • Resources
    • My Links
    • Recommended Resources