How to Approach a Full Body Workout

One of the most underused methods of fitness is the full body workout. Most gyms and exercise regimens tend to put the focus on isolating certain muscle groups in separate sessions and use this as a way to approach general fitness and health. When you work out your whole body you can have the benefit of building your muscles evenly. You can also lower the amount of workouts that you would need in order to make progress on your full body. You will find it to be both rewarding and challenging to begin working out your entire body

The planning process is just about as important as the actual workout. Heavy lifting is important when you are using weight training for a routine to work your entire body. You should lift between 65-90 percent of your maximum weight capability with every exercise that you do. Your maximum weight is actually determined by what is the heaviest amount that you can lift for five reps.

In addition to lifting heavier, you should also keep it to one exercise for every major muscle group. Every time you work out, you should begin with a different muscle group so that you won't always be giving all of your best effort to the same muscle group.

One of the best full body exercises is swimming. It actually adds resistance to almost every muscle on an even and constant basis. Even though most exercises work the abdominal muscles, you should still try to isolate this part of your body during your workouts. Abs and calf muscles are used to getting more stress, so they require more exercise.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you are usually better off using free weights than exercise machines. Dumbbells and barbells will require you to balance and stabilize your movements with other muscles, while machines only isolate specific muscle groups.

Some effective full body exercises are squats, bench press, dead lift, pull-ups and sit-ups. You should change to a new exercise for every muscle group each time you work out so that you will be bringing about a new response from the same muscle.

The major muscle groups that you should be focusing on are your chest and triceps, shoulders, biceps, deltoids, hamstrings, quadriceps, calves and abdominal muscles. You don't have to work all of these muscles every time in order to do a total body workout. You could just do a simplified routine that combines the muscle groups into compound categories.

You can work your chest, shoulders and triceps with push-ups, incline bench press and dumbbell flies. You can work out your lower back, quads and hamstrings with dead lifts, squats and lunges. You should specifically focus on your calves and abs, since they experience heavy daily use. For calf development, try calf raises, stair climbing, and jump rope. You can work your abs by doing leg lifts, sit-ups and oblique crunches.

It can sometimes be challenging to regularly maintain a full body workout, but the positives greatly outweigh the negatives!

------

For more information about Full Body Workout and Workout Routines, visit http://www.thefitnesschronicles.com/206/full-body-workout-routines/ today!

http://mrguru.articlealley.com/how-to-approach-a-full-body-workout-2184506.html