Answer Fitness®: Practical Fitness Advice for Everyone

Total Body Workout with Weight Machines | Workout Routines

Not ready for the free weight room? This total body workout routine uses the most common weight machines at the gym to give your entire body a great workout in under 60 minutes.

Total body workouts (also known as “full body workouts”) are a great way to build muscle, burn fat, develop core stability and strength, and cut down on your overall time in the gym. Generally, total body workouts are most effective when they are built around compound, multi-joint exercises that use free weights like dumbbells and barbells.

But not everyone feels comfortable in the free weight room, and if you are just starting a resistance or weight training routine, it can take some practice to learn how to perform free weight exercises with good form.  Weight machines can provide a way for newcomers to get a feel for basic form and movement, build a nice strength foundation, and eventually feel more comfortable transitioning into free weight exercises.

Incorporating weight training machines into your workout can also benefit advanced trainees as well, since machines allow you to go with heavier weight than you can typically use in a free weight lift. This can be useful for breaking training plateaus. And because weight machines don’t require you to swap out plates, you can typically move through your workout more quickly — a plus if you are pressed for time.

So by popular demand, I’ve created a version of my free weight full body workout that is adapted to give you a total body workout using weight machines alone. Actually, this workout uses a combination of multi station weight training machines, cable exercise machines and some body weight exercise equipment like chin/dip stations. With a few exceptions, the same rules and guidelines of that total body workout apply to this version. We’ll recap those a bit later.

But first, let’s take a quick look at the advantages and disadvantages of using weight machines, instead of free weights, as part of a total body workout routine.

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Full Body Workout Plan | Workout Routines

Full Body Workout Routine Not Only Builds Muscle But It Torches Fat  … in Less Than 60 Minutes.

Can you spare 60 minutes, three times a week?

If the answer is “yes” I have the perfect workout routine for you: A “Full Body Workout” program that will get you in-and-out of the gym in less than an hour, will amp up your metabolism for the next 48 hours and — after about a month — will give you noticeable improvements not only in your strength, but also your physique.

Oh, and expect to drop some body fat in the process.

Why A Full Body Workout?

Full body workouts are probably the single most under-utilized workout routines in the gym.

Regardless of your experience level or existing strength, working your entire body in a single session is not only challenging, but an extremely effective way to build muscle, strength and even burn fat in the process. Even experienced bodybuilders can reap the benefits of switching to a full body workout, especially if they’ve been on a split routine plan for an extended period of time.

Before we actually take a look at a full body workout routine, let’s quickly discuss some of the advantages of working your entire body in a single session and the basics you need to know about before getting started.

The Benefits of Full Body Workouts

There are a number of benefits to performing full body workouts, including:

• Better core development
• Less overall time in the gym
• Improved recovery intervals
• Reduced risk of overtraining
• Greater training frequency per muscle group
• Increased energy expenditure during and after training
• Increases in beneficial growth hormones
• Highly customizable to different training goals, whether that is strength, muscle size (hypertrophy) , endurance or a combination of the three
• Better overall muscular development and symmetry
• Reduced risk of developing muscle imbalances, especially among smaller stabilizer muscles
• Secondary cardiovascular benefits
• Appropriate for all ages and levels of experience, from beginners to advanced trainees

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How Often Should I Workout? | Fitness Tips

Workout frequency is highly individual. Learn how to find your perfect schedule and avoid over training.

How often you should work out is really a matter of your current fitness level, the types of exercises you are performing, the intensity of your workouts, and how much time you actually have available to spend in the gym.

Current Fitness Level

Your current fitness level is one of the primary factors used to determine workout frequency.

Beginners will typically need more recovery time between workouts than more advanced trainees, bodybuilders or well-conditioned athletes or runners.  Nearly everyone has experienced one of those workouts where you “over did” it and couldn’t move for three days. While this can happen at all levels of fitness, it’s more common among beginners who are still gauging their strength, stamina and recovery ability.

The body also makes certain adaptations with training over time that may shorten the required recovery time. So while some people can go heavy in the gym every day, others may need to take a break every-other-day.  

As a general rule of thumb, a good training frequency for someone who is new to the gym, or returning after a lengthy break, is three resistance workouts a week lasting between 45 and 60 minutes. This will allow you to work each major muscle group with at least one exercise and give yourself 48 hours for recovery between workouts.

This full-body workout is ideal because it helps build a solid foundation for later, more advanced training; encourages overall core development; discourages the development of muscle imbalances that can accompany “split routines”; and may burn more calories after training.

And by the way, this is actually also an excellent workout for an advanced trainee. The difference is they will work with heavier weights and may do more total sets for each exercise than a person who is less-experienced in the gym.

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