Life is pretty fast paced these days with enough attention being placed on work, family, and friends. This means physical training has become quite difficult to squeeze in for thousands of people, but there is hope by performing a one hour full body workout that is great for your overall health. You do not have to be an advanced fitness enthusiast in order to enjoy the benefits from a full body workout. Let’s look at why this would be beneficial for you.
Are Full Body Workouts Legit?
Absolutely! Full body training programs are quite common now because they eliminate the necessity to train 5-6 days a week. Instead, you only train 2-3 days per week to get the best results. A full body workout is generally going to focus on compound lifts for strength training, and then cardio to condition and strengthen your heart and lungs while also reducing body fat.
One hour is also enough time for you to get a great training session in, which may sound great especially for those who have trouble keeping the minimum amount of training. Since it is full body training, you are capable of hitting numerous muscle groups simultaneously during each exercise, which by the end allows you to shave the training time down to 45-60 minutes. This is determined by the amount of weight you used to calculate rest times needed between sets.
Strength Training Benefits
Strength training is one of your top priorities when it comes to health and your full body workout because of all the benefits you can receive. Increasing the strength of your skeletal muscle is the primary benefit, which includes your muscles, joints, bones, ligaments, and tendons. All of these pieces to your body keep you moving and functioning throughout the day.
This type of training does not mean muscle gains to where you look like a bodybuilder. You have to consume a high amount of calories per day to support such gains. Instead, you are simply strengthening your bones and muscles. The size of your muscles slightly grow as fat converts over and is lost, but nothing too major.
Cardio Conditioning Keeps Your Heart Strong
Cardiovascular conditioning simply means you are trying to strengthen your heart by elevating it beyond normal conditions. This is not bad in terms of training since you need to strengthen your heart just like any other muscle. Your arms and legs are useless when it comes to an unhealthy heart. Cardio is carried out through what is called the aerobic pathway.
The aerobic pathway is when you are using oxygen to supply your body with energy, which takes higher intensities to accomplish. Interval training between sprints and running is one way to accomplish this task. However, this could get boring and make you not be in the mood to train after a month or so. Instead, mixing up the two different training types keeps you motivated and excited to train.
One Hour Full Body Workout
This workout only requires your body and is great for home use. This takes away the necessity to have a gym membership with high rates and contracts. Bodyweight training is just as beneficial for you since your body has no idea how you are placing resistance upon your muscles. You could perform curls with a rock that weighs the same as a dumbbell and your body will not know the difference.
For the strength training portion, you will take a 60 second rest between each set. Perform each exercise in the cardio group back to back with no rest unless you really need to. If you do rest, perform simple stretches to keep your muscles from tightening up.
(Exercise – Set x Repetitions)
Strength Training
- Squats – 3 x 20
- Lunges – 3 x 20 (alt. sides)
- Heel Raises – 3 – 25
- Push-Ups – 3 x 20
- Floor Dips – 3 x 20
- Planks – 2 x Hold 30 seconds
- Reverse Crunches – 2 x 25
- Lying Leg Raises – 2 x 15
- Oblique Crunches – 2 x 15 (alt. sides)
Cardio Conditioning
- Jumping Jacks – 60 seconds
- Mountain Climbers – 60 seconds
- Steam Engines – 60 seconds
- High Knees – 60 seconds
- Jumping Jacks – 60 seconds
These may seem like the most basic exercises that a person sees often. Well the truth is they are that simple and easy to perform. You do not need all these fancy movements to increase your overall health and drop some unwanted fat.
Actually training is the hardest part of it all. You have to make time to perform these workout routines three days of the week for one hour. The days you train are easy to follow as well. Perform the full body workout and then take a 24 hour rest to allow muscle recovery. Repeat this until you have trained three days, and then Saturday-Sunday are rest days if you started on a Monday.
This is how it looks assuming you start Monday:
- Monday – Train
- Tuesday – Rest
- Wednesday – Train
- Thursday – Rest
- Friday – Train
- Saturday – Rest
- Sunday – Rest
Rest and Recovery is Important
The rest days given are important because after you train for an hour your muscles are damaged. Nutrients are sent to these damaged muscle fibers and take a minimum of 24 hours for protein synthesis to complete, which is when your damaged cells are repaired and have the chance to grow slightly larger. Sleep is also important because this is the time your body is hard at work recovering from the day’s activities, so you should sleep for 6-8 hours every evening.
