In fitness there are a million-and-one ways to do everything, and as much as an exaggeration that is it feels true. Personal trainers and fitness enthusiasts alike have different styles of training, or typical styles that they enjoy. Also, certain structures of workouts can help busy bodies, body builders, etc.. Normally when choosing a style/structure to make your routine around can be daunting, and can seem like endless choices. Between split, pyramid, pre-exhaust, and many many more how can you determine which one is for you.
Today I am going to talk about why and how total body workouts can/may be beneficial to you and your lifestyle. Total-bodies offer the convenience of time for busy individuals who just seem to never fit in a workout. Also, you may/can work your body in more challenging ways, and bring you through a different experience than on a split style workout. Whether you are looking to increase your muscle size or endurance, total bodies should have a spot in a fitness enthusiast’s workout.
Total body workouts are exactly as they sound. You work the entire body in one sessions through various movements and exercises. The easiest way is to group your main mover’s into categories such as; chest, legs (quads and hamstrings to further split a total body), shoulders, biceps, triceps, and back. This is the most common way to structure a total body workout, and allows you to be pretty flexible with the exercises you choose. Just remember that you are working your entire body, and to choose exercises that are not to demanding on the body. You can also quickly group exercises with some various compound and combination moves. I will discuss this later on. Now If you want, you can divide up the muscles even further. Just remember that your workout length will increase, and its normally not good to workout for longer than an hour without the proper nutrition. A greater division would be Upper/Lower Chest, Anterior Deltoid, Posterior Deltoid, Calves, Upper/Lower Back, Quads, Hamstrings, Core, Biceps, and Triceps. Now that may feel like that is a lot to cover within one hour, but with manipulating a couple of parts of the structure and timing you can easily hit all these muscles within 30 minutes! Yes, that is having one exercise dedicated to each muscle. How you say? Well when you tweak timing, and rest periods within your workout you can easily achieve your total-body dreams with super-sets.
Now super-sets are different per individual, but normally you will find that it generally means they’re no rests in between two exercises. So that means to directly go from one set of an exercise to another set of a different exercise with no rest in between. This increases the intensity of the workout, and is actually quiet fun. You can even further a total body workout and convert a superset into a chain of exercises called a circuit. Circuits are exercises back to back, with no rest until the end. Normally exercises in a circuit are timed, but do not have to be. This is how you would achieve hitting all the muscles within a short period of time. Super-sets and Circuits are commonly implemented in total body workouts.
Try to incorporate total body workouts into your training regime at some point with your personal trainer in CT during the year. The will shake up your routine in a different way, and keep challenging the body.
